From: ksheth at tds.net <ksheth>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 3:49:04 +0000

After reading this thread for a while, I can?t help but write about my own memories. Growing up in India, I remember my grandmother would light an evening prayer lamp and then would open up Mahabharata resting on a special stand. She would sit on a low wo oden chair and my cousins and I would sit cross legged on the floor. When she finished reading we would beg for more. The flickering prayer light, the scent of plumaria, and the sing-song voice of my grandmother on a tropical winter night live in my heart. Later, my mother read fairy tales filled with singing waters, flying wooden horses, and golden guavas. My father, with his amazing memory, told stories from Mahabharata as well as Ramayana and Puranas. Unfortunately, none of my teachers read to us. There were 50 plus students in the class and there never was enough time. In ninth grade, my Gujarati teacher taught us figures of speech using poetry. Those poems are the ones that I still remember after 30 years.

When my children were growing up I read to them. I continued reading to them even after they were fluent readers. It gave me a chance to read the books I had never read as a child. When my younger daughter was five, I read National Geographic?s Our World time and again. Her interest in cultural geography made me aware of people and places. It also lead me to reflect on my childhood. I think reading aloud to a class full of children or to our own child brings us closer to our own emotions.

I just finished reading a novel, a historical fiction written in Gujarati, to my older daughter. She is twenty-four.


Kashmira Sheth Author: Blue Jasmine
Received on Thu 26 Aug 2004 10:49:04 PM CDT