There are some books that you read and forget. And then there are others that quietly rearrange something inside you and just stay there.
I've had a few of those. The kind that didn't only tell me a story, but changed the way I looked at the world and everything that came after.
Here are two of them.
The first door
I believe I was somewhere between eight and ten when I got my hands on The Secret Island by Enid Blyton.
I still remember it so vividly. It was a book that got handed down, with yellowed pages and loosened sheets. The hungry reader in me was so elated that I finished it in one go, and boy, if I say I was amazed - it will be an understatement.
The world it built. The little adventures those children went on. The house they made with their own hands. The way they dealt with ordinary days and sudden troubles, all of it with the same quiet courage - everything is still fresh in my mind, all these years later.
That book taught me something I didn't have the words for back then. That a book is a kind of magical portal. You open one and it can carry you anywhere you want to go. It was the first time I really understood that not every book is the same - that it matters who you choose to read, and each author has a different style of weaving stories, and that reading itself is a magic you can go back to whenever you want.
I didn't know it then. But that was the beginning of everything.
The stranger who opened it wider
Fast forward to the year 1999.
A chance encounter with someone very knowledgeable. The kind of person who has lived a lot and read even more. We got talking the way readers always seem to, and the common topic of discussion was of course - books & the love of reading.
He was well established in his own field, and there I was, still looking at the world with all the amazement I could hold. I honestly believe that chance encounters happen for a reason. Some people come into your life for a single conversation and leave a door open behind them.
He introduced me to Paulo Coelho. The Alchemist.
Such a magical little book.
I've genuinely lost count of how many times I've reread it. And here's the strange, wonderful part - every single time I take my trip around the desert with Santiago, it gets me thinking in a way it hadn't before. As I've grown older, I keep finding new meanings tucked into the same words. The same story, read by a slightly different version of me each time, somehow says something different.
I really believe that if I started rereading Santiago's journey right now - after all these years, after all those rereads - it would still find some way to surprise me. There's always another layer waiting. Another small truth I wasn't ready to see the last time.
Such is the beauty of reading. The beauty of a whole world built inside your own head, while you move through a story that first took shape in someone else's heart. Processed in their mind. Poured out onto paper. Made immortal with ink.
Someone you might never meet, hands you a world, and you rebuild it in your own imagination, coloured by everything you already are. No two people ever read the same book. And no single person reads the same book twice. Because, every person is different, so are the layers of emotions that built the person.
And it isn't over
I know there are more of these ahead of me. More books waiting to quietly move something in me and stay.
That's the part I love the most. It doesn't end. Somewhere out there is a book I haven't opened yet that will become the next door. The next pivot in how I see the world.
I just haven't met it yet.
