This pandemic, as I mentioned in a previous article, falls hard on readers. All of us had yearly plans and a list of books we wanted to buy but couldn’t because of the lockdown. That’s one whole year worth of reading missed out. Not cool at all. But, as much as I regret this year and wish it never existed, this time in the pandemic has actually served as a report card for all my years of reading. As I reach yet another year, my reading choice keeps growing for the better. And I hope it has for all you fellow readers too. Assessment: All these years of reading, go.

As a kid, my mom encouraged reading habits in my brother first. My brother dear has always been that kid-geek encyclopedia, and knew way more when he was in the first grade than what I know now. Embarrassing. But, when he first started reading the Tinkle magazine, I couldn’t help but get intrigued. And so began my reading journey, by picking up a Tinkle magazine and trying to comprehend the words written in tiny bubbles.

It didn’t take my family long to realize that I still had a long way to go to read Tinkle, given the fact that I was three. So, my mom booked ‘Magic Pot’ instead, and that worked as a good enough substitute. I was hooked on the magazine for years to come, and as much as I loved the short stories, the daily comic pages of Luttapi and Mayavi, the red demon and the good demon fighting in what was an endless time loop, acted as my first book love.

I could recite the introduction to Luttapi and Mayavi from my brain at any given time. Every week when we got our Magic Pot, I would first flip the pages for my favorite demon story. After reading it and trying to understand it (which, needless to say, was a futile attempt), would I go on to the other short stories and tales.

One con of Magic Pot I noticed as a child was the excess amount of “fun activities” in the magazine. When I would want to read the magazine for sheer fun and interest, I would be made to do math and science activities in the book, and saying I disliked it is an understatement. I slowly began getting distant from Magic Pot due to this reason.

Apart from this magazine, an early memory of my books was a pink 5-page Cinderella tale. How anybody can fit the story in five pages, I don’t know, but boy, I loved it. I remain one of the rare kids of the 20th century who has read Cinderella before watching it on the silver screen. I was also bought tons of jackal storybooks, but I didn’t like it as much as I liked the other books. I really don’t like animal tales, and this coming from a Fantastic Beasts fan, but still.

Soon after reaching mid-first grade/start of second grade, I dropped Magic Pot entirely. Until then, I wasn’t ready to let go of Mayavi, but I decided that I had to move on with other books, and I could go back to Luttapi and Mayavi anytime I wanted. After canceling our Magic Pot subscription, I began piggybacking on my brother’s magazine, namely, Tinkle.

I know, I know: all those years and my brother was still stuck on Tinkle, it’s weird. But you have to understand that he isn’t an obsessive reader. Reading to him compares to homework for me, meaning, burden. Though he liked Tinkle, he didn’t read a lot of mainstream novels until the ninth grade.

I was immediately impressed with Tinkle. I loved Tantri the Mantri, the poor soul, Super Weirdos, Suppandi, obviously, and so many other comic strips. Unlike Magic Pot, Tinkle didn’t have a lot of activities, and I had reached a stage where I just pushed off the pages I didn’t want to read. I would wait in front of the door like a hound dog for our fortnight version of Tinkle, and my brother and I had a policy where the person who first got their hands on the book wold get to read it first. Oh, how I pity the guy living below us. Once every fourteen days he had to witness a stampede happening above his head. I would usually outrun my brother and get my hands on the book first.

As a fellow reader, I hate spoilers, but not then, so I used up every chance of spoiling the comics to other people who read. A couple months ago, or years, I guess, when I found out Tantri had become the king of Hujli, I felt like life had lost all meaning. We had stopped our Tinkle subscription then, and when my friend told me what happened, the surprised Pikachu face I put up could’ve been meme-fied. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

I continued with Tinkle for a lot of time. Any person who has read Tinkle knows the characters are worth rooting for, and even the new characters like Wingstar and Wai Knot were hilarious. But then, in the third grade, with much argument and fact-checking with my brother, I peeped into the Wizarding World of JKR by buying Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone- and hated it.

See, this is what happens when you read books ahead of time, kids.

I guess I should’ve just stuck to some small-length novels first before jumping to Harry Potter. I had zero experience reading novels, so the first chapter of Philosopher’s Stone- The Boy who Lived, as fellow Potterheads would remember- felt like a drag. The chapters felt long and, I can’t believe how stupid third-grade Krithika was, she felt the books were boring. I know, I don’t forgive myself either. So I abandoned Harry Potter after the first chapter and went to Geronimo Stilton, which frankly, wasn’t a bad choice. Unlike people at my school, who are devoted to Geronimo, I felt a decent liking to it. Not too much, not too less.

Then, at the end of grade three/start of grade four, I started with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. I was the one who started it, but my brother still worships the books. He’s starting college this winter. Ah, the magic of a good book.

There was a time I was obsessed with DoaWK, though. It was light-hearted, funny, and was basically everything I searched for in a story. I almost have the entire franchise stacked, a few books as exceptions, and I was into the world of Greg Heffley for a few months.