[ For those with little time to read, here is a summary of observations:
The ability to read extensively often stems from episodic bursts rather than a consistent habit, driven by specific triggers or phases of life.
Trusted recommendations and situational factors—such as school-assigned readings, illness episodes, simple escapism, or exposure through family members—serve as powerful catalysts for developing a reading habit.
Confidence gained from completing one large, challenging book can reignite reading streaks and help overcome hesitation or fear of diving into demanding material.
While reading is immensely valuable and often transformative, it is not inherently superior to other forms of learning, such as lived experiences, meaningful conversations, or creative engagement—but it holds a prominent place among them.
Simple exposure to books early in life, even without reading them thoroughly, nurtures curiosity and builds a lifelong comfort with the act of reading.
Books act as milestones during pivotal life phases, providing both solace and opportunities for intellectual growth.]
A lot of people ask me how I developed the ability to read a lot. Besides the practice I got later in life, my reading actually peaked when I was down with typhoid at SCMHRD (Symbiosis), Pune. It was then when I thought I would kill the fear of reading heavy and dense boks by indulging in the biggest books that were known to me and I wanted to read in this lifetime: I started with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, then read Tolstoy’s War and Peace (which if you know is about 1200 pages long), then followed it up with Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, a full book on Sociology, a Biography of Napoleon, and Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov - all of this during my MBA was on. Needless to say, I wasn’t a great student during my MBA but I’m surprised to realize how much I now remember from my MBA program and was still able to read all these books - that too just in my second year of the program (not the first).
Interestingly, War and Peace got me my first job when in my interview they asked me something about talent management strategy and I picked up something I read from Tolstoy where he explains the winning and losing of an army can be explained by the force = mass * acceleration equation. I simply copy pasted his logic to the situation they gave me. Like this, many a times, mental models picked up during my readings have helped me sail through and come out on top.
This was one of many reading streaks I have had and many other streaks have fallen after a false start, only to recuperate again. This one during my MBA days, started with a professor asking me to read a book called Maverick during my internship between the first and second year of my MBA. I was interning at Philips in their plant at Chakan in the outskirts of Pune. Late Professor Prakash Waknis, who never taught me but supervised my internship advised me to read Maverick by Ricardo Semler and it was a fascinating book about how a family business owner in South America turned around his business through human resource interventions. On my one and a half hour ride from Pune to Chakan, aboard three different buses on each side, I immersed myself in reading this work and enjoyed how some of Semler’s observations actually played out on the factory floor at Chakan. This was not, thankfully, an office room internship. I spent most of my time at the factory floor interacting with workers who busied themselves in building x-ray and other diagnostic machines.
If I look further back, the habit of reading was something that my father tried to inculcate in me. When sending me to Mayo College, Ajmer, he gave me a bag full of books - Niccolao Manucci’s book that documents his travel through Mughal India, Wings of Fire by then President APJ Abdul Kalam and a few more - none of which I read cover to cover, but flipped through a couple of times here and there.
Then at Mayo, during the summer break, the college sent us Ruskin Bond’s “A Season of Ghosts” via mail over the summer. This was supposed to be read over the summer break and I read the spooky ghost stories with much delight as a class 7th student, more because of the beautiful descriptions of the various cities and hilly terrains of India. The life of Kumaon, Garhwal, Mussoorie gave me a vicarious respite from the hot weather in Firozabad (my hometown), New Delhi (my maternal grandparent’s house) and Mayo in Ajmer, Rajasthan - a dessert state (my boarding school).
Next year, I left reading again and the class 8 summer reading - Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger - was left untouched. But then I had the good luck of travelling with my parents to Mussoorie during that winter break and I asked my father if we could meet Ruskin Bond. He enquired with the friendly manager at Jaypee Hotel if a meeting could be arranged and one way or the other we found ourselves at Ruskin Bond’s apartment on Landour Road in Mussoorie.
We were rather early for the meeting or the family calling upon him before us was late in leaving and were occupying his living room sofa. Mr. Bond said to them in a jovial tone pointing at us, “I guess they will now just have to sit over you you (or in your laps - I can’t quite remember his exact words).” Everyone started laughing. They left and we were given a brief tour of his room, a lone writer’s den of sorts with a huge window and an unkempt bed facing it. We then sat in the sofa, in his living room, chatted a little bit about a lot of things and then my dad asked if if he actually believed in ghosts since he knew that the book I read over the summer was called “A Season of Ghosts”. I already knew what Bond would reply because he had said this at the beginning of his book:
"People often ask me if I believe in ghosts, and I tell them I don't believe in ghosts, but I see them all the time."
This he said exactly as in the book and burst out into a laughter along with my father. I was pleased to observe that you can predict what a writer would say by just reading their work in advance, a tactic I have deployed numerous times since then.
Anyway, he signed a new book of his - Rusty goes to London - a coming of age book which served me just well given that I was 13 years old. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one too and followed it up somehow with the first five books of the Harry Potter series. This was, perhaps, my first proper reading streak that lasted until the end of class 9. The only book that I read end to end after that during school days was Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone. So you can see I was pulled into the pop literature of the time.
When I really look back, I think the initial impulses of the reading ability (I’m not calling it a habit - I’m not big on habits), came from my mother who had us read Enid Blyton books and a book by Gulzar written for his daughter Boski while I was still in elementary school. She read to us (me and my sister) and we were encouraged to read these too.
There were many attempts of relatives afterwards who gifted us books but we never cared to read them. The recommender matters here. The need and situation matters too. The Mayo reading was compulsory and I stuck to it in the first summer vacation and later skipped all compulsory readings (including Arundhati Roy’s God of Small things which I decided was too heavy and depressing for me as a school going kid - and of course I never picked it up again). The impulse to read Maverick came from Prof Waknis and the impulse to not butcher my internship. The Harry Potter obsession came from Sadiq and other friends who were reading it at Mayo. And later, a book on the travels of Marco Polo, gifted by my father and some Sydney Sheldon type books and a law drama from my elder cousin, Eeshan’s collection to escape the boredom of class 11th coaching.
Academically, it was perhaps the history undergraduate that made me comfortable reading long tomes. And the impulse to read the Russian classics, which I continued reading for a long time after came from a student of NITIE Mumbai who was staying at the Symbiosis hostel in Pune during the summer internship with us over a late night conversation about his life and escapades.
I realise that I have read decently enough and found solace in reading (and quite some pride especially when I have read a book cover to cover in a single sitting or in 2-3 days at a go). But the impulses have been many and the reading sprees have been episodic. However, books have marked new episodes in my life.
Baburnama marked the beginning of my undergraduate studies (again read because I fell sick during the winters), and Ramchandra Guha’s India After Gandhi along with Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, and Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom were the books that marked my phase when I transitioned into a public policy career. I read the earlier of the two mostly on a trip to Belgaum in between jobs, living with my friend Abishek while waiting to hear from the National Commission for Scheduled Castes for an apprenticeship. Thinking Fast and Slow was gifted to me as a parting gift when I quit my first (management consulting) job - and this was the only intellectual input that I derived form there. Nelson Mandela’s book was gifted to me by Premraj Pillai, my boss there who was quite intellectually savvy. He took me to a book shop after dinner and asked me to pick any book as a parting gift and I picked the Long Walk to Freedom - Madela's autobiography. He then asked my why I want to read this one and not some other (I’m assuming lighter) book and I told him that when I see the quality of debates in the parliament I feel that our culture of politics could be helped if it had more well read people. He seemed to agree.
Anyway, there have been many more stories with books. The latest being when I found myself reading besides my grandfathers bed during his last days, during the COVID-19 lockdown - it was a book on Power by Steven Lukes- quite appropriate given my grandfather’s natural ability to command power in any situation throughout his life.
I am still not one of those who would prescribe reading as a very important habit that is necessary for your life (I’ve given that advice once to my younger cousins and while speaking realised how phony it sounded). People can learn from many different sources - from other people, from their own life experiences, movies, podcasts and general self reflection. Reading is just of the many ways to learn and is many times more trustworthy as a source. But I place no special value on a well read person. I place value on wise persons. There are many well read ones who haven’t read good things or have just read to show off (although it’s not something I’ve been averse to myself). The idea is not to be an essentialist but to know that it is a good habit to have and the best way to inculcate this habit is to go for the biggest book you know and want to read and read it end to end. Then it’s all smooth sailing from there. I guess this lesson applies to many habits or abilities that we develop through life.
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