read between the lines (literally)

There is something magical about the way we connect with the world. Each and every one of us has our own doorway, something that lets us step outside into the shared human experience. For me, that doorway is books.

“I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time, because I read.”

Books. A world in words, a glimpse into an experience you know nothing about. With books, anything is possible - being teleported back into time and seeing the Mahabharata from Draupadis perspective (The palace of illusions); understanding the ways in which squirrels give unconditional love (the inner world of animals); glimpses of alternate lives we could have led (the midnight library) or being caught up in matchmaking games in the country village of Highbury (Emma).

Something wondrous happens when I read a good book. Right from the moment I take a new book home - flipping each page carefully, the scent of fresh paper laden in the air, and suddenly life take a pause. I turn the page to a new life I would like to explore. I sit idle for hours, immersed in the words of another, I feel a rollercoaster of emotions for the people I do not know, but inexplicably love and occasionally hate. Eventually as I go on, I feel an invisible string connects me to them. And as days go by, I step out of the world I so beautifully imagined, and return to my life - but not empty handed. I return to my life with an understanding of another; subtly shaping the way I see my own.

Books give us a portal into lives we’ll never live, connections to people we never imagined we’d know. They give us a world of possibilities and hope. They open us up to feeling intense emotions for fictional characters we grow fond of within the pages, give us a sense of wonder, a reason to live. As you flip through, your heart grows fonder, your imagination runs wild and you are left with a sense of fulfilment. You feel whole.

Without books, my life would feel empty. Even now, I drift through bookstores, smelling each and every book until I find the copy that is just right for me. It is a different feeling all together, to touch feel and smell a book. It is part of a ritual, an encounter that is ironically beyond words.

Books do more than just entertain; they articulate experiences that seem too vast to hold alone. Words help externalise, internal things. And when authors write down things we can’t express, they make the invisible visible. There is magic in that - a reminder that we aren’t alone, that others have felt what we feel and that no matter how lost we feel, someone else has been there two. Reading gives us an escape; someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

Books are a source of comfort, a weight in your hand when hope seems lost, a way to understand the world and perhaps most importantly - a way to understand ourselves.

By Sarah Makani