About Books And.....More Books!

Before we actually relocated to Nairobi last August,I had been here with the kids last May as well to have a dekko at the schools and to do a recce of the system of education here.My dear friend from Dar Es Salaam, who had relocated here earlier,took me around to a different school everyday and we managed to cover the top eight schools this way!
We finally discovered that the American school was one of two which offered the ten plus two system of education(the same system is currently being followed in India) as opposed to the British curriculum schools in Nairobi that follow the eleven plus two system.We had to zero in on one of them to avoid an extra academic year for the children in the long run.
So a crisp,cold,cloudy Nairobi morning found us shepherding the two children to face the ogre of an entrance exam for the coming academic year.My daughter was specially disgruntled as she had just finished a gruelling school year,topped by the dreaded 'final' exam which signifies the end of an academic year in the Indian system and was in no mood to appear for yet another one!We handed over our lambs to the teacher who was going to administer the test and were asked to go and wait in the Middle and High school Library.
Both my husband and I were deep in our own thoughts.The thought uppermost in my mind was whether we were taking the right decision by shifting home and hearth to an alien land just when our daughter was entering her teens.Africa was not new to us but earlier she had studied in the Indian School in Tanzania and the transition to and fro had been very smooth.Now she was growing up and would be uprooted and transplanted into a third culture,the American one,albeit in Kenya.It was enough to send shivers up my spine!
Then we entered the library and book lover plus book worm that I am,I automatically began scanning the shelves.To my unabashed delight,all my favourite American and Canadian authors,whose books I had grown up with,were on those shelves!Of course our daughter,a voracious reader, loved them too!From Louisa M Alcott's Little Women  to Susan Coolidge's Katy series,from Jean Webster to Laura Ingalls Wilder,from Beverly Cleary's Ramona to L.M Montogomery's Anne Of Green Gables,from Ann Martin's Baby Sitters to Nancy Drew,every possible book I had painstakingly collected over the years(with help in raiding book shops from my mother and sister) was lined up on those shelves!I later discovered my son's favourites(the Berenstain Bears top his list!) in the Elementary Library.Suddenly my spirits lifted.Our children would not look like most of their counterparts(Indians can never be natural blondes!),they would not speak in the same way(at least to begin with),they would not eat the same kind of food(we are hard core vegetarians),but they had read the same books!They had such a solid link to connect them to this system that I was immediately reassured that they would feel at home from day one.This was surely a more tangible link than Mcdonald's and Pizza Hut,Reebok and Nike!This was the one legacy we had given them that would not change or diminish!
And so it was with deep regret that I read the news that one of Pune's oldest book stores,Manney's,would be downing shutters this month.It is from this very book store that my first memories of choosing a book for myself when I was scarcely higher than my mother's knee stem,here that I spent my school academics prize vouchers every year,only here that I found so many out of print authors-both British and American.I hunted for the newest edition of Dr.Spock here(my mother's dog eared copy was more than two decades out of date!)before my daughter was born and here that I led first my daughter and then my son to pick their own books and to initiate them into the delights of buying and savouring a book!
My husband has been repeatedly asking me if he should buy me a Kindle.I am steadfast in my refusal.The school library is currently more than fulfilling all my book needs.Can you snuggle up in bed with a Kindle?Can you breathe in the incomparable aroma of a newly minted book with it?Will you have memories of when and where you bought a particular book with it?And what about the joy that comes from spotting a long searched for book in a used book store?There are certain delights that only a book can offer!