Realising the Strength of your Roots...

My journey back to my true love!

- Joanna Shalom John, II M.A. English

The book fair was the perfect place for the intoxication of paper and words. For someone whose world revolves around words that create the ideal world, this became the tangible utopia! There were various publishers with their best books on display. My eyes roamed through every pack of books that I’ve admired for years such as Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. The second-hand book stores provided their taste to life with book with notes of love and wishes on the front page. Ironically this was the first time that my eyes fell on so many Tamil books! The letters spoke to me like no other. And for the first time, I went around searching for one Tamil book through around 200 stalls…and stopping by each to ask for Karukku by Bama. Since I had been introduced to the English translation of the text, the insufficiency of the English language to hold the Tamil mind lingered on and no distance could’ve been a barrier to grabbing a hold of the text! There was one Tamil stall that I landed on and asked for this text. The helper in the stall said that he had a copy of it... his search felt endless, through the dust… the joy on my face was unimaginable, something that only my friends got to see when he pulled out that one copy that they had.

There are times when you realize that your roots are way stronger, and that it takes something much more than 22 years of English education to uproot it! The joy within is one of a kind and for me it was a reminder of who I truly am!

Thanks to the anna who tirelessly searched for one tiny text in that entire rich storehouse that Discovery Book Palace Ltd had.

This is a picture of the place where my journey ended with absolute satisfaction of quenching my thirst for the ‘original’!!