The pages of procrastination

Right in the middle

As a young girl, I read only Chandamama, a Kannada monthly with colourful pictures and fascinating stories, and the Sunday magazine section of Prajavani, Saptahika Puravani, whenever my older siblings gave me a chance.

My reading habit actually started in high school with Enid Blytons, which my neighbour’s son would lend me. It lasted until the library from which he borrowed exhausted the EB collection. Reading came back to me in college, when a good friend introduced me to Daphne Du Maurier and Leon Uris. He too borrowed books from a library and shared them with me. My love for reading grew with this uninterrupted supply.

The chain of supply continued with my elder sister taking the baton. She brought home books by Ayn Rand, Irving Stone, Leo Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. But my growing college activities barely let me dig into these. Yet I preserved them to be read during free time. Meanwhile, I too bought a lot of books on various topics, of course, with the intention of “reading later!”

I was married soon after college, and my hope was that without college, there would be much time to read. So I packed all my novels and travelled to my husband’s home. But managing the family setup with frequent guests and festivities was too hectic to take time out for reading!

But the habit of collecting books continued, in anticipation of leisure in the future. Procrastination is powerful. Whatever little free time was available to me was spent completing chores, often utterly unimportant. Reading was postponed. I would enviously watch my daughters reading Amar Chitrakatha and men reading P G Wodehouse or Bertrand Russell, as we the womenfolk were busy cooking up a spread on demand.

Bedtime was ideal, I thought. With a book in my hand and the head nestled comfortably in the pillow, I would slip into a slumber just a couple of pages later. The pandemic-induced lockdown was a golden opportunity to start reading, if only I could read anything other than about the dreadful virus, its spread, impact, immunity, and quarantine.

My investment in books on psychology, music, philosophy, literature, etc., continued unabated. I believed I owed them an honourable place, and thus came a made-to-order bookshelf. I was overwhelmed by the huge collection of unopened books waiting to be stacked on the shelf! I instantly decided to start reading. But where to start? Procrastination had led to a problem of plenty and the agony of choice. When I did finally start reading, the pressure to read as many books as possible took away the pleasure of reading.

Finally, aided by lockdown, I decided to stop buying more till I read what I have. Habits, they say, die hard. I bought a book recently, on my friend’s recommendation. The books pile up, and I continue to procrastinate reading them.