Carl Sagan once called books “an astonishing thing… a flat object made from a tree… imprinted with lots of funny dark squiggles” that, when glanced at, allowed you to hear “the voice of someone, perhaps dead for thousands of years, speaking clearly and silently inside your head.” Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds less like a medium of information and more like a séance. But then again, Sagan always did have a way with words. His point, though, was clear: books collapse time. They are proof that humans are capable of working magic.
So, naturally, today on World Book Day, when I was asked on a radio show, “Which are the three books that have affected your life the most?” I smiled the sort of smile that says, not this again. Because that question is a bit like asking, which are the three best meals you’ve ever had?
Go on. Try.
It’s not just difficult. It’s impossible. Or at least it should be, if you’ve lived a reasonably full life with taste buds and a library card.
You see, just like meals, books are consumed. And just like meals, they nourish, they delight, they disappoint, they surprise, they heal. And most importantly, they are contextual. You don’t just read a book. You read it somewhere. You read it while something is happening in your life. You read it as someone specific, young, old, tired, heartbroken, hopeful, broke, in love, or somewhere between existential dread and a third cup of chai.
If you’ve ever had pani puri, you know what I’m talking about. Ask someone where the best pani puri in the world is, and you’ll get a passionate, confident answer. But ask them why it’s the best, and they’ll mumble something about the chutney or the crunch or the spicy kick. Push harder, and you’ll find it’s where they first had it. Probably with cousins. In a narrow lane. Under a fading sun. The first explosion of tamarind water in a teenage mouth. The world never tasted the same again. Ditto your first paav-bhaji, or butter chicken, or gazpacho, or banana split, or rack of ribs, or sushi, or your first taste of Guinness, or champagne, or a million other tastes that abound in this world and your life.
Books are like that.
You might one day stumble upon a forgotten paperback or comic at a railway stall, or something you picked up in a dentist’s waiting room out of sheer boredom, and one line will jump out and slap you across the face to rearrange the furniture of your mind. Meanwhile, some Booker Prize-winning masterpiece may leave you untouched, unmoved, and underwhelmed.
Are there objectively good books? Of course. Just like there are Michelin stars and MasterChef finals and ten-course degustation menus. There are critics and canons and cult classics. But none of them guarantee that the book will matter to you.
Because what matters is the you that meets the book.
It could be The Guide by R. K. Narayan, or the pirated Lonely Planet you bought in Hampi which accidentally changed how you saw the world. It could be Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, or a crime pulp with a ripped cover and missing last page that somehow made your mother’s rage feel poetic.
I’ve found more meaning in a dull engineering textbook preface than in entire volumes of spiritual enlightenment. That might say more about me than the books, but we’re not here to judge.
And in fact, that is exactly the point.
It is less about the book and more about me. Which is why the original question,
Which three books changed your life?
might be entirely the wrong question. Maybe we ought to flip it. Maybe the better question to ask is,
Which three points in my life did I change the most?
And then, work backwards. What was I reading then? What was I eating? Where was I? Who was I with? What did the sky look like? What kind of silence was there in the room? What did I believe before the change, and who was I becoming just after? Indeed,
Who was I when that book ran into me?
That might give you the answer you’re really looking for.
But in that entire cocktail of coincidence and chemistry, there is no denying how often books show up.
They are almost always there, those quiet, page-turning witnesses to our becoming. Sometimes they light the spark. Sometimes they hold our hand. Sometimes they simply sit by, patient and non-judgemental, waiting for us to be ready to listen. I have known books to do for me what even the best advice could not. They have shown me mirrors when I was least ready, given me words for emotions I did not know had names, made me laugh in dark corners, and once or twice, when I thought I had reached the end of something, reminded me that I was only at the middle.
So no, I won’t name three books that changed my life.
Because the truth is, they all did.
Some fed me. Some bored me. Some felt like medicine. Some like dessert. Some were forgettable, like most aircraft meals. Some felt like home, like Maa’s cooking. And one or two, in moments I didn’t even know I needed them, saved me.
And that, dear reader, is why we read.
Not to remember the books.
But to remember who we were when we read them.
