This post is the Loose Consortium Bloggers’ Friday post when Ashok, Conrad, Grannymar, Magpie11, Marianna, Maria, Gaelikaa, Helen, Judy the latest addition, and I write one post each on the same topic. Please visit the other blogs too to have different views on this fascinating subject.
I am a compulsive buyer of books and can thus qualify for possessing a library conisisting of over 300 books. This after having got rid of over 200 books just six months ago! I have read almost all of them and those that are yet to be fully read are normally where I sit to read on my easy chair, or near my bed where I read before sleeping every afternoon and night. The subjects that you will find in my eclectic collection will be, History, Philosophy, Economics, Religion, and many other odd subjects. While most visitors will find it difficult to locate a particular book that they know I have, it will be no problem for me and within a couple of minutes I can locate any book in my, rather, haphazardly arranged library.
Usually, reviews in magazines and newspapers or references from friends will trigger off a hunt for a book and I normally buy online from an Indian bookseller who is highly competitive in his pricing and offers free delivery by courier to one’s doorstep.
The other tangible things that I collect are Recipes. I have them in the form of books, print-outs, handwritten notes, typed notes, pages removed from magazines and books etc. These are in reasonably good order and I can easily locate what I want without spending too much time searching for any particular recipe.
Before illness felled Urmeela, she was an avid collector of curios, wooden carvings of all kinds and Tanjore mirror paintings. Apart from her own works, these are treasured and stored away. Some are used as wall decoration, but most of them are simply wrapped and stored away. A couple of years ago, on an impulse, Urmeela took down all her collection and chose only those that she thought would be right for Ranjan, to be stored and had a bonfire with the rest of the stuff including many of her own paintings. A kind of spring cleaning as it were.
Old memories of people, events and places collected over a rather eventful life are the intangible collections that I cherish too. Many things trigger them and with modern access to all kinds of information and thanks to google, I can revisit many of them. Some times it gets to be quite maudlin and I do not often indulge in such reveries. It is however quite rich and at least for me, worth visiting every now and then.
From June of last year, I have started a new collection and that is priceless. I have made a collection of friends via my blog and many other blogs, and though except for a couple of them, I have not met any, I feel as though they have been my friends for long. Blogging enables people to be more open than they normally would be on face to face situations and perhaps that is why, the friendships made in the blog-world are more informal and shall we say, interesting!
For all my Blog Friends in general and my fellow Loose Consortium Bloggers in particular, this is to wish you a very Happy Diwali. By the time this gets published, I would be out of Pune for two nights and shall return only on Sunday evening. My comments on the other LCB posts will have to wait till either late Sunday night or Monday morning my time. Please however leave your comments for me to peruse on my return. I shall be eagerly looking forward to them.
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