Growing up in rural West Bengal, we didn’t have much to do. As a child, I was always sickly and wasn’t really good at sports. I spent most of my time at home. I always enjoyed listening to my mother’s stories, which ranged from local tales to epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

My love affair with books began when I was twelve. At an age when all my friends would go out to play, I would spend hours in my school’s library, engrossed in one book or the other. I still remember my mother telling me a fable every night to get me to sleep. It felt Read more…

The first book I remember reading in my childhood is Vivekananda in Pictures. Even though I was just a toddler at the time, the pictures and stories from the book are still fresh in my mind. Right from the scene of Vivekananda’s mother scolding him for getting himself in trouble to exclaiming that Shiva sent Read more…

There was a time when books were only available as printed copies; smartphones and tablets had yet to revolutionize the way we perceive and look at books. I belong to a generation that grew up in that era, luckily in a family that valued knowledge as much as any other quality needed for survival. Textbooks Read more…