A chubby little girl liked to read. This could be perhaps because she was too podgy to run, as others often taunted her, or it could simply be because she liked to live in multiple worlds simultaneously.

Her favourite reading spot was the magnificent mango tree that grew from a pile of rocks in the dining room. And it was from there that she sometimes strolled through the woods with Red Riding Hood and went to tea parties with Lewis Carroll.

She lived in worlds more and more complex as time passed. She recalls an Agatha Christie mystery that she shoved her nose into once at a film shoot, trying to stifle her giggles when an actor claimed that he had cancelled the shoot the previous day because he had dislocated his uterus. Wondering if it was medically possible to dislocate your brain and rolling her eyes, she took refuge in Hercule Poirot’s grey cells instead.

This bookworm is none other than me and among the hundreds of books that I have read, these are the ones that have inexplicably altered me and are truly printed gems.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: I did not read The Little Prince as a child but I bought it for my son when he was around three, thinking that the illustrations and the story of an asteroid-hopping prince would hold his interest and mine as well.

We started reading a few pages every afternoon with the book working at dual levels — a simple narrative that my son could follow about a prince from another planet stranded in the desert, and for me, an allegory about life, loneliness and love, all elucidated through simple conversations that the little prince has with various creatures that he encounters along the way.

At one point, the little prince meets a fox. “Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in the entire world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.’

An exchange that sums up such terribly complex emotions like love and bonding.

Right Ho, Jeeves by P G Wodehouse: This was published in 1934. A chuckle a day keeps the shrink away, and Jeeves and Bertie Wooster must have kept many at bay for a lot of us. I am so influenced by Wodehouse that I have a desi Jeeves in my book, Mrs Funnybones. Though while Bertie’s Jeeves is remarkably resourceful, mine sprays deodorant on wilting roses in order to freshen them up.

We are all gathering wrinkles as we go along and I would rather earn mine by laughing, as I escape into the land of earls, castles, pigs and fools.

The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov: The greatest science-fiction writer that ever lived, Asimov once said, “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”

The Foundation series is a must for any reader who has the slightest interest in science fiction. Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, credits the Foundation series with turning his mind to economics, as the closest existing science to psychohistory — this being a fictional branch of science postulated by the protagonist of the series, Hari Sheldon.
I started reading the Foundation series because my maternal uncle was a big fan. I faintly recall piling up heaps of his dog-eared hand-me-downs and spending hours travelling Galactic empires.

This turned into a lifelong interest in science fiction which, in turn, led me to a moment that was my version of winning the Nobel like Mr Krugman. In 2014, I was one among the very few who could understand large parts of the most baffling movie known to mankind, Interstellar. A small step for nerds like me and a clumsy giant leap into the abyss of inferiority for the rest of mankind. So, thank you Asimov.

I look at my daughter and though she is not the chubby wonder I was, I see bits of myself in her — in the slant of her eyebrows, in the way she tries to make people laugh, and in her love for books.

She has a library bag that she gets from school, four books each week, and she will carry them to her bed every night. ‘Read all, please!’ she squeals and we do.

Sometimes, I pull out my weathered copy of The Little Prince. She looks at the illustrations avidly just like her brother once did and we cuddle up in bed, absorbing multiple perspectives from the same pages. I hold her hand and we hop along, from one ink-stained asteroid to another, living myriad glorious lives; all within the single, brief one that we have.

This article was first published here.