Page 54 - English Class 08

Do you like to read books?
Which kinds of books you like to read?

When I was in Paris with the troupe, at the age of eleven or so, I began reading all the great

classics of our literature whose stories every Indian is familiar with. I started with Bengali
translations of our two fast Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana which tells of the adventures of
Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu and the Mahabharata whose main theme is the struggle
between two families, one good, one evil, but which includes many other episodes, among

them our favourite Bhagwad Gita, the dialogue between Krishna and the mortal prince
Arjuna. The Mahabharata is many times longer than either of the Homeric epics , but I read
the stories many times over. Through them, I learned all our beloved customs and traditions,
and as I sat and read in our house in Paris, I could feel myself grow even closer to India and

her ways. Within these epics lay the whole world, all the drama, romance, humour, pathos,
the science fiction and the scientific theory, all the beauty of the mortal and the grandeur of
the divine. Then, I read some of the stories of the Puranas, a huge collection of ancient tales
dealing in a wonderfully entertaining way with every aspect of Hindu customs and ideas.

Some of the stories of the Puranas are also mentioned in the epics, but here they are told
with very elaborate detail. One of my favourites was the story of Krishna in his childhood. A
story that impressed me deeply was the life of Sidharatha-Buddha and the fact that he had
so much, yet was able to renounce everything and still live within the world.

As my french improved, I tried to finish some of
the books we had been reading in school; novels classics : great books
incarnation : being born as a human being
of Victor Hugo and Anatole France, but it was
mortal : that must dies
less of an effort for me to read detective stories homeric epics : the epic poems composed
and comic books. I was making progress in by the greek poet homer
English too, but I still much preferred to read in

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