Book Memory # 2: Gone with the wind

Book Memory# 2: It was 1991. I remember lying in bed in Sahaganj and reading Gone with the wind. ( yes, I've always been a librocubicularist. And yeah, I was 14 when I read GWTW and not 12 as I'd erroneously assumed before.)

The love story between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O' Hara drew me in like a bee to a honeypot. Scarlett was so unlike me at the time. I'd become rather reserved and diplomatic, a skill you learned to acquire when you were in a place surrounded by your dad's colleagues and their children.

I admired Scarlett's 'fiddle-dee-dee', her ability to say whatever she thought, her inner strength, her ability to not care about what people thought about her.

And I LOVED Rhett: The perennial bad boy who loved Scarlett for who she was. And I despised Ashley for being weak and lacklustre; Melanie for being bland and boring.

The love story drew me in and I also learned about the old south, Georgia, the carpetbaggers, Tara, the Confederates, the war and all of that. But that was incidental. What was larger than life were these characters etched by Margaret Mitchell-- and they stayed with me until I watched the movie several times over the course of my life.

Bad Book Memory: I bought the book in 1995 in newly minted condition and lent it to a neighbour. She promptly lost it. My mom had apparently warned her that I was very possessive about my books. So the neighbour replaced it. But I knew coz the cover was different. When I pointed this out to my mom, she told me the story. Anyway, at least the neighbour had the courtesy to replace it.

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