As any curious young kid in India in those days, I would read anything that I could lay my hands on. I always used to feast on an array of books for free because my dad was on the University book selection committee & was a chairperson at the local public library. Going to the library in those days was like having any smart phone with Wi-Fi except you didn’t have to pay through your nose. Mom yelling at me, to keep the books aside & study, was the same though. I think moms are timeless universal beings irrespective of any parameters. Kids are their precious treasures yet they seldom mind letting that little treasure mind its own business.
One day my dad received a big parcel by mail (we used to call it post then and we used to have postmen) and I was told to open it. As a carnivore jumps on its prey, I clawed away the wrapper and found 5 copies of a book with a cover showing a picture of a bearded man in a lawyer type of coat. The book was heavy with about 400-500 pages and, to date, I still remember the soft silky touch and smell of the new book. Although the picture of the person was unrecognizable; the glossy colorful cover and the title of the book was very inviting. The title read “An Outline of American History”. Of course, it was translated into my mother tongue. Later I was to realize that the picture was of Abraham Lincoln the 16th President of the United States of America.
Those were the days of space age and quantum mechanics. From the TV serial of Fire Ball to the day-to-day discoveries of quantum particles to the imaginative science fictions based on alien visits and encounters were some of the musts of the everyday news items. America was my hero, landing the 1st man on the moon. Several years later when I saw a conspiracy theory video on Fox, “How the Moon Landing was Fake!”, I couldn’t contain my dismay, but that’s a separate story and it almost costed me a couple stitches to my fist. Hardwood floors don’t appreciate when you punch them.
Anyways, this book started out with the May Flower and went all the way to show classy pictures of metal cutting laser beams and Boeing 747. For a nerdy kid like me this book was the feast of a multi course dinner on an empty stomach. I can’t remember how many times I had seen the pictures of the great personalities in that book and read the captions underneath. There was a picture of Charles Lindberg with his plane, then there was General Eisenhower, and also a picture of Mt. Rushmore. It never occurred to me then that I would be visiting it several times in the future. There were pictures of Eskimos and pictures of whale hunting. After I arrived here, I didn’t see Eskimos; though I did almost live like one for 12 years in North Dakota. For a person coming from Mumbai, Fargo was nothing less than an igloo in winter.
When I read this book for the first time, I was just browsing through it and registering pictures and captions of interest in my mind, so I could come back later and read it in detail. That was one of the tricks I had learned from my grandfather. Not how to read a book but how to buy fresh of the fresh grocery at the farmers’ market. He used to take me around and just stroll through it all over without buying anything but just checking the prices. Then the second round was stopping at places where he thought there would be a chance of negotiation. Then after wasting an eternity, he would buy one item and move on to his next prey. I never adopted that style for shopping but did use a similar approach for a thick book with pictures. And it paid off. Within a few scans over the hour I earned my first Ph. D. in American history…of course only among my friends who just knew ‘A’ for America.
This book, however, helped me immensely. Those pictures triggered my curiosity to read and explore more. A small kid in the rural in-skirts of India was talking about the American legends, inventions and started sleeping with dreams of a land that he would one day visit. That was my first encounter with America. c
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