‘I USED TO BE A BOOK WORM’

Sharing his current reading list, actor Rohit Roy opens up on his love for books and more

I’m currently reading three books at the same time. The first is Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Simultaneously, I started reading 50 Modern Thinkers Who Changed the World, and was riveted by it. I missed reading The Immortals of Meluha, when it was first released, so I started that too. I don’t know if I can call it the best, but my favourite is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I remember reading it in my late teens and it left such an impact on my psyche. I wanted to grow up to be like Howard Roark. But when I entered the real world, I realised it is impossible to be like him. Several. I like authors such as Vikram Seth, Paulo Coelho, Jhumpa Lahiri and Rhonda Byrne. I also love reading travel authors because I’m an avid traveller, and it gives me a strange sense of familiarity when I land in a place I’ve never visited before. I love reading Gulzar and Javed (Akhtar) saab’s poetry. I enjoy reading all sorts of books, especially biographies of actors and directors. These books satiate my reading pangs and teach me about the process of the actors/ directors, while they are at work. My favourite is Marlon Brando’s Songs My Mother Taught Me. I don’t avoid any, but I don’t care much for spiritual books. Usually, any book that is native to the place I’m visiting. For example, on a visit to Barcelona, I was reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Every place we visited had been mentioned in the book, so you knew a part of the history of the place. Rubino Romeo Salmoni’s In the End, I Beat Hitler made me weep. It was such a touching tale of survival. All of Groucho Marx’s books make me laugh out loud. (As told to Kaushani Banerjee)

PHOTO: YOGEN SHAH