Kindling a New Interest
I confess: Technology intimidates me. When I buy electronic equipment, the accompanying manual perplexes me. To understand the 'dos and don'ts' of using equipment, I'd have someone explain it to me rather than having to push through a field of technical landmines! Often I feel like Alice in Technical Wonderland hurling through the rabbit hole! Perhaps it's a gender issue. I once read somewhere that most women are put off by manuals, just as they are unable to read maps! Of course I suspect all manuals are written by men!
Naturally, I was mystified when the tentacles of technology reached out to a hitherto unreachable area: the world of books through its 'e' avatar gave us an 'e' reader, the Amazon Kindle! As someone who cut her teeth on books, the sensory appeal of books is among my earliest memories. I love to hold a book between my hands, run my hand over its spine, smell the fine print, and inhale the scent of the trees that linger like a lasting fragrance… sometimes as the pages turn musty and well thumbed, I experience the wisdom of the Universe enshrined in the pages.
Hence I was skeptical of e books. It was a frontal attack on my aesthetic sensibilities. A cousin, who first told me about Amazon Kindle, was shocked to know that I hadn't heard of it until then! He probably thought I was a thow back to the Stone Age! Reluctantly, I looked up the Kindle on the Internet. I admit I was impressed. Yet I was unwilling to cross over.
All it took for me to make the leap of faith was when I saw a Kindle with Mircea Samoila, Country Director, Projects Abroad, Romania. A keen reader, he showed me the multiple advantages of an e reader such as the ability to store 3500 books, the e-ink that makes for a reader-viewer friendly reading experience, and the cost effectiveness.
I recently got my Kindle—a gift from my husband. The very next day I sat up almost until midnight downloading several of my favorite classics, thanks to Project Gutenberg, the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or e-Books. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies. Some of the titles I downloaded include evergreen favorites such as Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Aesop's Fables. I was overjoyed to discover that the spontaneous free child in me was alive and reveling in my ability to reconnect with my childhood. Alongside I also downloaded spiritual classics such as the Bhagavad Gita, Siddhartha, and Walden.
The first book I read on the Kindle was The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson. Rereading it as an adult, I was amazed at the new perspectives I now gleaned, and to think we are so dismissive of the story as "airy fairy"! I have embraced my new literary e companion with all its technical wizardry, and in return, it has cast a captivating spell on me. Life, I am discovering, is all about increasing your bandwidth to accommodate a diversity of experiences. And yes, the Kindle feels just as sensuous as a book!
