Strong, Medium or Light?

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Half a century ago, in the 1960s, while we were students at Visakhapatnam, we used to frequent the Ajanta Hotel in Maharanipet (all of them evocative names: what has the bright star Visakha got to do with the seaside town, why the Cavernous Ajanta for the gloomy restaurant, who was that artful Maharani?).

We were too poor to order anything but Coffee (that too: one/two). In spite of the fact that we were daily visitors, the Bearer would ask his routine question: "Strong, Medium or Light?"

RKN wrote so much and in such detail about his Coffee preferences that anyone trying add to that would have to be gutsy or foolish. But now times have changed and our Coffee World is not quite the same as his. Even in RKN's time, his was a middle-class South-Indian-Brahmin perspective. In our Village those days, pure 100% Coffee was unaffordable for most folks with large families. So, there were diluted versions of RKN's grand thing.

For one, dried tamarind seeds in the proportion needed were mixed with Nilgiri Coffee seeds and the two fried together, before being ground. As a cheap alternative to white crystalline sugar, raw brown sugar or even (RKN would turn in his Heaven) jaggery was used as the sweetener. And, in cheap wayside 'bunks' goat's milk (a la Gandhiji) acted as a whitener.

Later on, chicory came to be used to adulterate our coffee. Chicory is a great impostor: it has the same color, texture, taste (but not flavor) of pure Coffee. But it is more catholic in its soil and water preferences and is grown widely and so is much cheaper. And, although it is as acidic as Coffee, it has no Caffeine. So it is less addictive and doesn't act as a stimulant. On the other hand, it is a mild sedative. All in all, a proper mixture of Pure Coffee and Chicory is a blessing in several ways.

Thus, when I visit a 'Coffee Day' outlet in Hyderabad nowadays, instead of "Strong, Medium or Light?", the question asked is: "60-40, 70-30, or 80-20?"

My unthinking answer to all such questions, like Feynman's, is: "Medium", the Buddha's Middle path (also to the fastidious A/C Barber in our locality).

But I digress.

Coming back to books and their relation with people, I can roughly divide the set into six subsets:

Bibliophobes (Book-Haters): Strong, Medium, Light

Bibliophiles (Book-Lovers): Strong, Medium, Light

In the previous post I talked exclusively of Strong Bibliophobes. So, I skip it.

As for Medium Bibliophobes, I have seen quite a few even in the Academic World. Other than their professional books, they tend to avoid all others. There was this student of mine who purchased the entire set of very expensive Landau-Lifshiz Physics Volumes out of the money he made by coaching students for IIT JEE in his Summer Vacations. One day I happened to ask him which newspaper he reads. He replied without batting an eyelid that he never reads newspapers, magazines, novels, and stuff. He just watches the 'News at 9' Headlines. When he met one of my brothers-in-law at Bangalore on an errand I dumped on him, my b-i-l tried to chat him up and found he was not interested in ANYTHING other than Physics and appeared to have zero General Knowledge. He reported this to me rather contemptuously. I replied that this very curious Dilliwala would be in Princeton 3 years hence. And he was! And then at Harvard for his Post-Doc to the amazement of my b-i-l.

Coming to Light Bibliophobes, my son is the best example. He loves to spend all his precious little spare time on his 'passion': Music. Name a music system and he has it, from the tuck-in Sony Walkman of his High School Days to the I-Pod or whatever he bought in the US, via the Philips Home-Theater 5.1 or such gadgets which are anathema to a tone-deaf chap like me. Music, like poetry, leaves me cold. At our Qrs B-140, owing to lack of space in our bedroom with a double-cot, I installed my book-case in his bedroom (with a 1.5 cot specially made for his 'daddy-long- legs'), with the secret desire that by proximity at least he would pick up one of my Collection and read it. That didn't happen apparently. But, when he got engaged to be married, I suggested jocularly to him that he better read the book in my book-case by Dr. David Reuben, MD. He promptly replied that it was the only book he picked up and read cover-to-cover in his Class XI. I should have guessed he is Project Manager Material, and not a useless-born-teacher like me.

As to Light Bibliophiles, I count myself as the Standing Example. I read many English books, but I was (and am) always very choosy. I have no love for Poetry and avoid reading it, although I bought Palgrave's Golden Treasury once and donated it to the Club Library next day, in exchange for the Autocrat (this facility was there then). I also avoid dark novels. My reading is confined to Light English Prose like Wodehouse, Thurber, Mark Twain, Alistair McLean et al. I read RKN's 'Personal Essays' many times over but avoid his novels. As a matter of taste I don't like stories. Of course I read all of Maugham in my teens; and 'Crime and Punishment' for its art and craft rather than its insipid story (it is an expanded version of Poe's short story 'The Imp of the Perverse'; ok, let that lightning bolt strike me as Shobhaa De is fond of saying).

So we come to the famous: "gps theorem: Dark characters prefer light reading and vice versa".

Medium bibliophiles I have seen many. They have a large collection of books and they can't go to bed without one of those in their hands. The best examples from my own family are my brothers-in-law, Sri G Ranga Rao IAS and Doctor LVK Moorthy. GRR paid me the best compliment: "I wish I were your Graham Greene", and wrote the Foreword for my 'Limericks & Light Verses'. LVK did it to my latest booklet 'Tall Tales'. After a tiring day at his Clinic, LVK picks up the latest English novel he can lay his hands on and goes to bed with it. And when he was vacationing at his daughter's place in Glasgow for a couple of months, the first thing he did was to walk into the Lending Library across the Road and become a member.

I also include in this honorable class (or caste) Aniket who wrote the Foreword for my 'Chatty Essays', and SPK who is going to write his to my next booklet, if there would be one. Indeed this category includes all those who are compulsive readers of my silly blogposts: That proves it, doesn't it!!!

The best example of a Strong Bibliophile I met is Professor S H Rao of IIT KGP. He told me that from his childhood he was a voracious reader and spoiled his eyesight by continual reading. His home-library was the Court of Last Resort for checking anything in the Book-Line. He is a walking encyclopedia and it is a pleasure to 'switch' him on any topic from the Trojan War to the Second World War. After four or five hours of listening to him with rapt attention, you would give up; not he. And our learned Director KLC chose him as the Coordinator for the new Course: History of Science & Technology.

He retired a couple of decades ago, but he still keeps reading his vast collection of books and adding to them. He shifted his entire home-library from KGP to Hyderabad; and his day starts with a cup of coffee over the Online Times (London) Crossword.

Rare nowadays!!!

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