Autobiography Of A Bengali Poet Comments

CHAPTER: 1

I was nourished in a family where education was adored as a holy thing. My mother taught me how to show honour to a book, even to a detached page of a book, what kind of book it was, was not the matter. All kinds of books were holy books to us because no mean type of book or unbecoming book had ever any chance to reach our home in that beautiful calm sweet-breathing village. According to Francis Bacon, there are three types of readers: those who are very simple admire the books; the cunning, condemn them; the wise, use them. We were not wise at all; but we were the true admirers of books. Many a day I saw my mother offering alms to the beggars, especially rice, if ever any book had happened to fall down from our hands. Not only that, instantly we picked up the book from the ground and kissed its cover-page again and again. Still now I do it when the same thing happens to any book I hold. Modern men may consider it superstition; but this superstition helped me become a lover of books.
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