I returned to work after my maternity break in May 2018. Around the same time I got into to the habit of listening to TED talks during my daily commute to work. I did not have the energy or time to commit to reading a book. My obvious interest included talks on reading and books. There are two talks that gave birth to this blog.

Ann Morgan’s challenge of reading a book from every country in the world. She talked about cultural blind spots we carry as readers. She talks about how her acceptance of this lacunae in her reading behaviour led to the challenge of reading a book from each country. I was intrigued, I disagreed. I was convinced that my reading was diverse. I decided to take a critical look at my book shelf. I saw a pattern. I had books by American and British authors, mostly thrillers. Books I collected from the countries I have travelled to (They continue to spark joy as I run my fingers along their spines. Every single time.), books in Malayalam, a few Bengali translations and numerous adaptations of Indian mythologies. I had a meagre collection of non-fiction books on Indian Politics. I went through Morgan’s blog , interested but disconnected. It was a challenge I loved but it was not for me. I was happy reading about the books she read and the people and the lands that opened up to her from the pages of those books. I had an idea, may be I should do one too. It was a passing thought, one I forgot as soon I stepped on the errant Lego piece as I walked into my living room after work.

As kismet would have it I happened on a talk by Elif Shafak. A prolific writer from Istanbul, a city that charmed me on a trip back in 2011. I remember having to choose between The Forty Rules of Love and The bastard of Istanbul , both by Elif Shafak, at the Atatürk Airport. I brought the former home and, incidentally, am reading the latter as I am writing this post.

In her talk she talks about the power of circles. She explains,

“.. I learned, amongst many other things, one very precious lesson that if you want to destroy something in this life, be it an acne, a blemish or the human soul, all you need to do is to surround it with thick walls. It will dry up inside. Now we all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle.We all do. We’re born into a certain family, nation, class. But if we have no connection what so ever with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted, then we too run the risk of drying up inside.Our imagination might shrink; our hearts might dwindle, and our humanness might wither if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons.Our friends, neighbours, colleagues, family if all the people in our inner circle resemble us, it means we are surrounded with our mirror image.”

When she said, “Stories cannot demolish frontiers but they can punch holes in our mental walls. And through those holes, we can get a glimpse of the other, and sometimes even like what we see.“,  she defined what I believe to be the very essence of reading.

As people we are defined by the people surrounding us. Our interests, the way we dress, the food we love, our political stands and even the books we have come to love. And it is not coincidental when I find books I loved or marked as “to-read” appearing on a friends reading list in good reads. And it is not by random some authors and books are absolute favourite in our friends group. Now it all fell in to place, my reading was not as diverse as I thought it was. My reading habits are strongly influenced by my like minded book worm friends. (And at my age you don’t make new friends but treasure the ones who have stuck to you despite your eccentricities.) I decided it is a good time to break free from my comfort zone and read a bit more about my own country. I thought this would be a fun project to do, not as time consuming as reading the world but fun enough not to drop mid way.

So the idea is to read a book from each state written in a language spoken in that state. If there are multiple languages spoken in a state, I attempt to find books in all  those languages. I have excluded english language books for this challenge. (May be we will do a challenge solely based on english books next year). This year we stick to books written in regional languages.

I have listed out the languages spoken in different states and union territories. I am discovering new authors and books. Thanks to wikipedia, google and friends.I am crippled two fold in language proficiency and geographic positioning. I can read fluently in English and Malayalam. So I have to find translation of books into these two. I live in Perth, Western Australia so have limited access to physical books. I rely on amazon kindle store for the availability of books.

Thank you for joining me as I embark on an exciting journey of reading books from different languages spoken in India. I hope you find as much joy in discovering new books and authors as I do. Let the journey begin!

P:S: In the past few years I have not written anything creative but for a handful of reviews on good reads. As I type, I am painfully aware of how haltingly the words seems to flow. I refuse to be deterred by it. I think of the rusty old pipe in an abandoned home turned on for the first time in many years. Once all the air, mud and filth has passed, the water will flow, slowly at first, trickling but clear and eventually built enough pressure to create a cascade. Hopefully.