On reading a book with illustrations in childhood

On reading a book with illustrations in childhood

The illustrations I saw in childhood have stayed with me. Phantom punching in Indrajal comics, Mandrake's magical house, James Herriot's Yorkshire Moors and him hurrying to a barn to give birth to a calf, the little girl who dies of cold on a Christmas in Hans Christian Andersen's tale, the hound's crying call in the story, the lone wolf on the snow in jack London's book.

I always wanted to read All Holmes' stories in a walnut grained leather bind, sober and matte- finished, with an etched pipe on the front, smoke lacerations on leather slowly becoming fog on the back leather strap, where the hound is partially hidden, her red eyes staring at you.

I always wanted a minimalist house, like in Chandamama (or in Tamil ambulimama) where husband wife sit in middle of an austere room and a thief is hiding behind a clay pot on the loft.

When it rains in hills, at Ranikhet or Manila or Bhimtal, I would wish the window, which, when opened, would let in branches of a pine tree or neem tree in, like Ruskin bond had, at Maple cottage, having returned in abject poverty from England to pursue a poor but determined writer's life in Dehra...