ONCE UPON A TIME….

10 years ago Abhilasha Sethia took over as President of The Ladies Study Group, Kolkata and  during her tenure she had the vision to start The Book Club and we have never looked back since then. Abhilasha sent out a notice to all the members suggesting this and she got a good response so it was decided to make two groups… one in Ballygunge and one in Alipore and people could join whichever group suited them better. She requested one person from each group to host the meeting at their homes and the meetings took place on the same time and day. After a few meetings one person was asked to conduct the meeting as the ‘champion’ just so that it would have structure and she would ensure that the discussion flowed well. It was so nice to get to meet like minded people in small groups and get to know each other over our common love of books. 

Then came the dreaded Covid but that did not deter our intrepid readers!! We shifted our meetings to Zoom and merged both of the groups and after a few hitches at the beginning we all got the hang of it and we managed quite well. When we were given the all clear to have physical meetings we decided to stay as one group and since the numbers were larger we started holding our monthly meetings in clubs or community halls. Thus was formed

“THE DANCING WORDS”

I have always been an avid reader right from my younger years in Manchester. My father used to take me to the local library called Didsbury Village Library and my eyes would become huge with excitement looking at the stacks and stacks of books. I could borrow 2 books every week, read them and go back with my father the following week to get more. I of course went through all the Enid Blyton books, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, Mallory Towers and then moved onto the classics David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights, The Railway Children…. Gosh there were so many!!! I even went through a phase of reading all the Mills and Boon books… I loved imagining that I was a heroine and waited for my Prince Charming to come and sweep me off my feet!! Funnily enough he did come but swept me straight to Kolkata!! When I came here I remember going to Park Street to buy my books from those men who opened their shops on the pavement. I was quite horrified but they got to know me and used to keep new best sellers aside for me. During those days whenever my mother used to come and go to the city I would always go to pick her up or drop her to the airport. In those days you could go into the terminal building and there was a lovely book shop there so Mummy would tell me to buy as many as I wanted and called it her ‘airport tax’!  Whenever I sat with my mother in law and sisters in law in our hall I always had my book handy to read. Vinay had a whole stack of James Hadley Chase books which I borrowed but although they were mystery books for some reason the covers all had pictures of semi naked women on them so I would tear off the front and back cover and read them so that my mother in law didn’t think I was reading porn or any such thing!!!

Anyway… I have totally digressed from the main point of my story… which I always have a tendency to do!! So,  we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Dancing Words and during this time we have read 104 books which is no mean feat. We have covered pretty much every genre from self help to mystery to mythological to historical to biographies and many many more. We are planning a big celebration at the end of the year and are currently brainstorming as to what we can do to make it special. 

Since this blog is already quite long I shall elaborate further in my next blog… after all I can’t give away everything in one go… the plot thickens!!!

Meanwhile, a couple of quotes I liked:

• “We came together to read more books. Instead, we accidentally created a small community of over 100 people with very strong fictional opinions.”
• “Our book club has survived plot twists, literary debates, missing bookmarks, and members who said, ‘I’ll finish the book tomorrow.”