A cheap ticket to travel the world
TODAY is World Book Day. How wonderful it is for bibliophiles that we get a whole international day dedicated to us.
From the moment my dear mother taught me to spell and string words together, my best friends have been between two covers.
And we have indeed been the very best of friends. No bullying. No competition for attention. No stealing your sweets or breaking your toys.
Books are simply ideal companions, silent ones that don’t talk back. They don’t get upset when you set them aside and pick another.
You can return to them time after time and they never change their storyline.
You grow, however, and the more you read, the bigger your world becomes.
Just out of my teens, I left my Bangladesh market district to study in that big, mythical country our folks called England.
Arriving there, the first thing I discovered was that the place was so small. It was quite unlike the wide, open space and the huge sky of the African continent of my birth.
It was full of people of every hue and eccentricity, always in a hurry. They didn’t stop to talk or ask about your grandparents or invite you home for a meal. Tribal Scars communist John Mortimer, who created the barrister Horace Rumpole to fill the pages of his hilarious books.
Rumpole, I am told, was inspired by Mortimer’s father, Clifford. An autographed copy of one of Mortimer’s first editions enjoys pride of place in one of my bookcases.
That familiarity with England through my books was replicated many times over.
In the United States it was as if I had crossed the Bridges of Madison County before. In Russia, thanks to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, it was if I had been personal friends with The Brothers Karamazov.
Likewise in India, I recognised the Coolie and Untouchable from the epic novels of Mulk Raj Anand.
As I headed north in Africa, I recognised the culture of the Igbo first encountered in Nigerian Chinua Achebe’s novels.
Friends in Senegal were amazed that I knew so much about their intimate practices brought to the page and the screen by a great like Ousmane Sembène.
This World Book Day will be no different for me. Like readers everywhere, I will get stuck into something exciting.
That sheaf of paper is our cheap ticket to travel to the furthest villages and sip from the pools of the greatest cultures. Pick up a book and come along.
• Higgins promotes #Readingrevolution via Books@antique in Windermere and at #Hashtagbooks in the Shannon Drive Shopping Centre in Reservoir Hills.