All for nature
Jackie Shroff enjoys detective fiction but he loves reading about nature more, he tells SHIKHA JAIN
Livestock guy
I enjoy books like Biopiracy by Vandana Shiva and The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka. I like suspense, thrillers... Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie kind of stuff. Reading about farming fascinates me the most. I like to read and discuss environmental issues. As Delhi is totally polluted, keeping Snake plant/ Mother-in-law’s tongue, Areca Palm, Ram Tulsi, Spider plant will clean up your environment and you will breathe fresh air. I also like to read about music and old Sanskrit texts. I recently started looking at it because somebody sent me a play in Sanskrit and I couldn’t understand it, so I said that I better start learning it and now I feel I’m back to school!
Say no to paperbacks
‘Ring-a-ring o’ roses, A pocket full of posies…’ — that was the first thing that I ever read. I am fond of reading, but unfortunately I haven’t been getting time to read anything. I end up reading scripts a lot because that has been my priority for ages now. And since I can’t read through books I scan through the internet and read. It’s very sad because I used to like the smell of the paper... the books. But then I realised that one has to take care of nature and can’t go really crazy about paper and books any more.
Read to improve
Reading helps you imagine things, the brain gets exercised because we read these things and imagine. Hence, imagination makes your brain exercise, but nowadays if you think of a dinosaur you can see it on YouTube; earlier we didn’t have that option. The best part of reading is that you gain knowledge and understand things you don’t know but it depends from person to person. Some people read to sleep, some read because they are addicted to the smell of the book, but for me it is the information which leads me to taking nature forward, how to take care of it so that we are able to leave something behind for the next generation — our children’s children.