I was 15 years old when I first heard of him. A lesson in my English text book spoke about a person, a philosopher unlike others. A person inspired by paternal figures, a person who did oddest of jobs until one day he went into the woods. His life in the woods was fascinating to hear about - a small cabin with no neighborhood and for a period of two years by the walden pond. There from his life in the woods, came a book called Walden. Now I wanted to read what he wrote in it, what his life in the woods was all about. If it was easy, hard, a relief or an escape. As much as I was expecting from the book, I was warned that it speaks of the most redundant things about daily life describing how to dig a ditch and how he conversed with random visitors. This made me put off reading the book. I was an avid fiction reader and I had no patience for realistic non-fiction let alone the themes in the book which were beyond my comprehension then.
Now this April, I was in Blossom book house (http://4sq.com/1EfOl5c) and in the dizzying piles of books, between the rows of old editions I spotted walden. An aged look with a crinkled bluish book cover and yellowed pages better yet it was the first edition in India. Unspeakably happy, I came home along with it.
To be continued..
