The Golden Treasury

I wouldn’t say Palgrave’s Golden Treasury was a constant companion of my father. But surely it was the book he would read most often after the eight-volume leather-bound set with the expository title Book of Knowledge, and the 28-volume Encyclopedia Americana, which was the biggest investment in his lifetime. (He couldn’t afford to buy The Encyclopaedia Britannica.) His library was an eclectic mix of books of poetry to religious texts to biographies to history to popular science, and quite a few tomes on Gandhi. However, for some reasons, he never touched fiction.

For long, I preserved my father’s torn and profusely underlined hardbound volume of The Golden Treasury, but I cannot find it now. However, this morning, I found another copy of the same treasure, a later and fatter edition. The book was gifted to my daughter by her pishidida, that is, my pishi (my dad’s sister).

As I leafed through the book, I found a note written by aunt.

Dear …,

It was perhaps over sixty years ago when we, girls and boys, sat enchanted as some poems were recited in class. Even now I can feel traces of that sense of enchantment.

I am giving the poems for you to read. And I have marked in pencil some of the lines that I loved; I still do.

Hope you will like them.

Affectionately,

Pishidida

If I am not a complete ignoramus, it is primarily because I was born in a family that valued literature in particular and knowledge in general. I have always felt – forgive me if I sound snooty – that those who’ve never read literature haven’t seen perhaps the second most beautiful facet of life after Nature. And also, those who read are somewhat different from those who don’t.

If you are a young man or woman who reads only on the social media, I would request you to read serious literature. You will never look back. Trust me!

How do you know what is serious literature and what isn’t? There’s a simple way not to get cheated. Read any book that was published 50 years ago or earlier and which is still available in the market.

As I secretly bowed to the men and women who kindled in me a love for reading, I flipped through the Golden Treasury and randomly opened a page to find these lines by Percy Bysshe Shelley (To a Skylark) marked on the side in pencil:

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of the saddest thought.

12 September 2019