So, the nomad, as expected, took a tangential direction. After 33 years of service, I took voluntary retirement at the age of 52, at the end of the year 2000, the Y2K year. I felt like Hercules putting down his burden. A new year, no more office-going. All the time in the world. But how did I forget my temporarily divorced partner? For four or five years after that, I completely forgot about books, despite having all the resources and time. You only pine for things when you cannot have them.

By the time I realized my not-so-surprising foolishness, my eyesight had begun presenting new issues. Yet, in a buying spree, I went to the Annual Book Fair for two consecutive years and bought tons of books. As if that wasn't enough, I went to a neighborhood store—by this time, they were everywhere—and bought even more books. After a couple of years, I had to donate all of them, half unread. My sight was almost gone.

In the early 2000s, after taking voluntary retirement, I used to subscribe to three newspapers: *The Hindu* (which Madrasi can do without it?), *The Times of India*, and *The Economic Times*. Lots and lots of reading.

When one talks of *The Hindu*, one cannot forget the Sunday editions of the past, which featured *Bringing Up Father*, *Dennis the Menace* (what a cute baby!), *Phantom*, and were there some by Woody Allen and Art Buchwald? Gangadharan's weekly columns were masterpieces, full of candid humor. G.K. Reddy's columns, much before that era, were lessons in English writing. And who can forget the succession of great sports writers like S.K. Gurunathan, P.N. Sundaresan, Raju Bharatan, Rajan Bala, and Mohan? What language! They wrote literary pieces. Out of this elite group, I had the fortune of meeting P.N. Sundaresan once.

And the cryptic crossword—how could one weave humor into cryptic crossword clues? Later, of course, a group of setters contributed to the puzzles, each with their own style.

Once I returned to books, it was goodbye to newspapers. After all, one can listen to news throughout the day on TV. What was the point?

Perhaps television, after its birth in India, as a wonderful new-age medium, took our attention away from reading. And after growing up, the television ecosystem—I had to use this popular word somehow—forcefully pushed us, with its unending advertisements, nonsense, and nuisance, back to better things.

To be continued... 15. Bookishly Speaking - Part 5