The Lockdown Reads

When I first heard about the lockdown my first reaction was of shock and disbelief. The first thing i thought was that i wouldn't be able to go to Abids for more than three Sundays to look for books. The next thought was how could anyone stay at home for so long without going mad. But soon I realized that it was exactly the sort of break every bibliophile dreams about- hours and hours to read and read. I picked up the first book I spotted on my shelf- I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann. It was a wonderful account of the author’s life in Kenya and of course there are some gut-wrenching incidents that brought tears to my eyes. She loses her husband in an accident and her son to a snake bite. In it I read about some people she met who helped her and were doing wonderful work in wildlife conservation in that beautiful country. I finished the book in a day and half.

Apart from reading another thing I resolved to do during the lockdown was to sort my bookshelves and rearrange all the books. After one spell of sorting I found the copy of ‘Nine Faces of Kenya’ by Elspeth Huxley that I had bought some time back. I wanted to read it since it was about Kenya that I had just read about in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ and in the first few pages itself I came across the same persons and places that Kuki Gallman wrote about – Richard Leakey and also places like Naivasha.

In another pile I saw the copy of ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ by Richard Dawkins that I had kept aside a long time back to read but had forgotten. Idly I looked at the contents page and saw that some of the essays were about Africa. When I read the essays I was quite surprised to find the names of Richard Leakey, and also , Iain Douglas-Hamilton that I had read about in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ by Kuki Gallmann. The surprise was because I had come across them so soon after reading them first.