I have always been able to visualise and have been able to evoke images into my mind. It is why I enjoy reading so much. Words can present themselves to me as vividly seen events or objects. To me, words have a life of their own. They are not letters running across a page. Under and through them I perceive a content of knowledge and experience and have an awareness of the innumerable shades that lie hidden beneath and behind them. By very simple effort of will I can evoke vivid images into my mind of the distant places they portray. Place and distance cease to be of importance. Real or imaginary I have always played games with mental images. Perhaps the above explains why I was a late reader. Not only did I have to contend with learning the words but also with the images they provoked!

I have a habit of jotting things down, anything that concerns or interests me into notebooks which I constantly carry around with me. They contain expressions from my children, thoughts, bits of conversation that might be useful, comments and reflections on current affairs, on books I read, descriptions of people I meet. Much of it is totally irrelevant and would be incomprehensible to others but I suspect it has helped with putting my thoughts into words.

I came late to reading. It wasn’t until I was eight and a half that I picked up my first book - Enid Blyton’s ‘The Circus of Adventure’ which a classroom teacher in primary school was reading. She was only halfway through the book when classes finished for the Easter break. I asked her if I could borrow the book as it had somehow caught not only my attention but also my imagination and for the first time, I couldn’t wait to hear how the story ended.

I can recall the look of amazement on Ms Pembleton’s face even today. She handed it over to me without hesitation but with strict instructions not to bend the corners of the pages and to read it with clean hands and to take care of it. I carried it home very carefully, a treasured possession.

My parents too were amazed - I didn’t read, I didn’t write, no one could understand a word I spoke. (Apparently, I gabbled; words came out backwards, I turned sentences inside out, started in the middle and ended up at the beginning and I missed words altogether - something I still do today if overly excited!) Only my Mother and Father truly understood my chatter and here I was returning home with a book in my hand. Nothing was said as I carried it proudly to my room. And there I lay struggling with its words during the first day of my vacation; within an hour I had read a page, within 2 hours a chapter, within a day, I had finished the book. My father was overjoyed and that Saturday he took me to my first bookshop - a second hand bookshop - and told me I could choose any book I wanted. How I browsed those shelves but Enid Blyton had won me over and I selected another of her novels “The Sea of Adventure’. My father, as I recall, excitedly explained to the owner my sudden remarkable ability. He too took an interest and told me that once I had finished the book I had selected, I could exchange it at no cost for another and thus my feet were set upon a path.

I suspect I had always been able to read and write before reading Enid Blyton but had never been interested until that point in time. I continued to dream most of my school days away, most of the teaching went over my head. Was it boredom or was I just not interested? Looking back I’m not sure. Yes, I was terribly bored, so I made a little world for myself and disappeared into it during school days. Popping out occasionally when life became interesting. I lapped up English Literature though I wasn’t very good at English and I stood shivering before mathematics. I would certainly have never made it at being a scholar! Yet, in some ways I enjoyed school but now how I wish I had paid more attention. I suppose I did work conscientiously, but not with enthusiasm. Most of the time my head was buried in books, always reading. I read hugely, indiscriminately, just for the fun of it; I still do. Swinging from Shakespeare to the modern novel, from biographies to poetry.