Romance in the Library

An ardent follower of art during my teen years, I used to delight in learning about the various art movements. I enjoyed the simple pleasure of leafing through books of art and losing al sense of time and spce to pictures of great paintings, (and modern jewely, my other passion), (etc. etc.) in the great British Council. British Council, by the way, had a quaint romantic charm for us at that time. It was the shrine to which the Cambridge system (GCSE) students made a regular pilgrimage. We quizzed some famous Siddiqui Saab about what the deuce did that exam have in store for us. Where shall we be, Siddiqui Saab, where shall we be?! The polite souls were always a source of great comfort. Sometimes, they brought worrying news...

A few of us enjoyed membership rights in the library. For me, that meant unlimited access to a world of art, culture, education. I read some of the most influential literature of my life there. While mostly immersed in works of art, I also got introduced to books of an eclectic variety. The most influential remain books on clinical psychology, a certain tome on serial killers that taught me valuable lessons about human psychology, gay & lesbian literature, adult fiction, British cultural movements, and engineering design. A book on helicopters and "flying machines" inspired me to viasualize structural design in 3-dimension. The habit stays. I can visualize with the accuracy of a autistic child.

I discovered the work of many an artist. Apart from Monet whose impressionist art pieces resonated deeply with my psyche (if I could paint a picture of what I see in my beautiful dreams, it'd be a work of Monet!), Van Gogh was the man I most closely related to. In fact, I can say he painted a better picture of some of my dreams at those times.