A lot of us are blessed with the best of companions. They never judge. They expect nothing from us. Their conversation with us lasts as long as we wish. They are always there for us, even in the small hours. And they stand by us through thick and thin until the very end of life. These are but a few of their many virtues. Sounds too good to be true? Wait till you get acquainted with these lovely friends—books.

When was your first encounter with books? Some have acquired a taste for reading from a tender age. Others fall in love with the written word later in life. Carl Sagan, the renowned American astronomer and writer, extolled books as “proof that humans are capable of working magic”. The magical moments we spent with a book—the solitary hours of reading one under a quilt with a torch in the dead of night, the defiant delight in hiding a novel inside a textbook to read in stealth under the nose of the teacher and the thrill of visiting the library for the first time—are among the fondest memories of our younger days. The excitement and wonderment we felt as a child in those little black marks on paper are not lost on us; we continue to experience the same irrepressible pleasure every time we disappear into a book.

As we leave school and step out into the real world, challenges come in all shapes and sizes. It could be a troubled relationship, the loss of a job, a financial predicament, a health crisis, or a mission impossible. At times you feel like no one understands your pain and turmoil and you are the most unfortunate being in the whole universe, but then you read. You realise that you are not alone; someone has gone through the same plight and survived, or maybe not. Either way you can learn from their victories or defeats. Whether it is through the comfort of an old favourite or through an empathetic connection to the characters, books offer a tireless source of companionship and a sense of camaraderie during the times when you feel abandoned by the entire world.

Besides being our life counsellor, books are our muses. An unread book, literature in particular, is a work of art half finished. Writers create the stories and we, as a reader, bring them to life with our imagination. While we lose ourselves in a book, scenes play out on the big screen of our mind. The interpretation is contingent on our personal experience, mood, academic and cultural knowledge. It is unique and individual to every reader. Sometimes the imagery that a reader conjures up in his head is so vivid and powerful or the reading experience is so profound that it demands to be shown and shared with everyone, hence the endless literary adaptations. Few of them live up to the expectations of people who have read the book though. The readers have, after all, created a distinct piece of work based on the book, even if only in their minds.

They say you only live once. Not for readers. Through books a reader can live a myriad of lives and learn something new from each one of them. We have travelled to distant galaxies and explored whole new worlds; dived 20 000 leagues under the sea; reached the peak of Mount Everest; and escaped unscathed from tsunamis and avalanches. We have been an assassin’s apprentice and a welterweight boxer; at other times a hacker with a dragon tattoo and a forensic consultant, a galaxy hitchhiker and a gunslinger searching for the Dark Tower. We have traversed medieval Europe and ancient China; roamed the barren post-apocalyptic wasteland; lived through the building of a cathedral and the Great Wall; spent nights in taverns and lurked in the shadow of darkness. All these and more while we curl up on the couch with a book and a cup of hot chocolate.

Books are our faithful companions as we make our way through this voyage we call life. They carve our inner landscape, giving us perspectives and advice at the twists and turns along the way. Life is infinitely more interesting and rewarding with them. No one has articulated the joy of reading more eloquently and beautifully than Virginia Woolf:

I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards—their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble—the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”