My earliest recollections of reading for pleasure are about the comic books - the illustrated versions of Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Life of the Buddha. The Phantom and the Mandrake came a little later. The picture of the character and the speech cloud over it provided ample opportunity to imagine what is not there - the person behind the speech, the feeling behind the expression, the ambience from the background and the illusion of movement from the static frames, each succeeding the other through rapid eye movement. Some cartoon images recur long after finishing reading the comic and snatches of conversation echo in the mind. I return to the illustrations time and time again, whenever an image floats into the mind or a conversation is remembered.
The stories create a world utterly different from my own. The scenes imbued with vibrant colors and decorated with artifacts from the distant past possess a magnetic quality that is hard to resist. The anger, the hate, the fear, and the tender feelings - all emotions resonate in the heart. The story came alive within me, lived and moved within me, any number of times. I became one with the stories whenever I read them. It was not just the words and the pictures, but the emotional interactions between them and the reader that brought them to life. The world of imagination to me was more real than the actual world around me.
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