EVEN in a small conversation for about 30 minutes with the young couple was enough to create an impression of their immense interest in reading -- in a traditional manner (books, magazines, poetry, essays, biographies, travelogues, autobiographies ...!). They said, they read in every possible minute they happen to have. To hear that was a happy experience.

 

“We read a lot,” the young husband said, while his young good lady nodded and smiled. They read about 7-8 books in a month, she added later.

That somebody reads so much, gave the loud-thinker a genuinely happy feeling. What followed in the next one hour or so was a conversation about books. “Books are our common engagement. We find time together and sit down to read books. We got married three years ago, but we feel happier when we have books for company”, the young man, mechanical engineer by profession, added. Referring to the young wife, he added, “She also works in a business establishment as a senior administrator. We like travelling, all right, visiting places. Yet, our more enduring passion is books.”

 

What about your social circle, your friends, the loud-thinker found himself asking the young couple.

“Yes, we have friends with whom we spend some time every now and then -- especially on Sundays when we are at home. But the moment we are back from meeting friends, we delve into our books,” the young lady said. “But Sir, there is really nothing greater and better than reading a book in the spare time. We find books a better company,” the young lady added.

 

Movies do not attract this couple. There is little to see, the man said. Instead, they love spending time in the park near their home, sitting in one corner either on benches of cement steps around lawns, or even on the grass under those thick canopies of dwarf trees. In those moments, “we find books as our best friends. And what is most pleasurable is to talk about books we have read. You know, we have no time to fight or argue. Our colleagues in office or friends or relatives calls us ‘funny people’, but we do not mind. For, we really have no time and tendency to argue on nonsense of shallow living”, the young man said.

 

So pleased was the loud-thinker with that conversation some days ago that he decided to dedicate this edition of ‘Loud Thinking’ to the young book-loving couple. He can vouchsafe that the life of that young couple is going to be full of eternal charm -- on several counts. One, since books occupy their minds all the time, they have no time to waste on fighting on stupid issues. Two, they have enough to talk about since books keep adding to their information and cognition . And three, enriched by books, their mutual company is an extremely happy time together without any rancour.

 

The loud-thinker sought their permission to write about them without sharing their names with the readers. When young people find their lives having been enriched by books, they realise that futility of pettiness that fills spaces in their lives is nothing but a huge nonsense.

The loud-thinker shares that feeling in totality. He has found books life’s greatest company, and the best healer of hurt from life’s vagaries. For him, books have always remained the most trustworthy, the most heart-warming, the most poetic, the most romantic company in whose presence nothing wrong can happen. With books as your company, there is no trace of any loneliness in the least. For, when one is alone, one is actually steeped deep in the pages of books. So, one is never lonely even when one is alone.