By Navjeet Basraon
My love for reading began in the quiet corners of my school library. It was there that I discovered a small but life-changing privilege: you could bring books home. Until then, stories had belonged to classrooms and shared shelves. Suddenly, they could belong to me.
I started with Enid Blyton. Her adventures—full of secret passageways, midnight feasts, and brave, curious children—pulled me in completely. I remember the thrill of turning pages under a blanket, long after I was meant to be asleep. I wasn’t just reading; I was living inside those worlds. What began as curiosity quickly became something close to addiction. I measured my weeks not in days, but in chapters.
As I grew older, my reading grew with me. I wandered across genres—mystery, historical fiction, classics, contemporary novels—each book opening a new door. Jane Eyre remains one of my favorites. I read it with a kind of fierce devotion, hiding it behind a larger textbook so my mother wouldn’t notice that I was reading “extra” instead of studying. There was something deeply personal about that act: choosing a story, protecting it, making it mine. Jane’s quiet strength and resilience stayed with me long after I closed the book.
Reading shaped the way I think. It taught me empathy before I even knew the word for it. It showed me that lives could be vastly different from my own, yet connected by the same fears, longings, and hopes. It made solitude feel rich rather than lonely. Afternoons, especially, became sacred—sunlight spilling across the floor, the world moving slowly outside, and a book open in my lap.
Then I became a mother.
If I had once believed I was busy, motherhood gently corrected me. Time, which had once stretched comfortably before me, now came in fragments—between naps, after bedtime, in the quiet five minutes before the next small voice called my name. Reading no longer filled entire afternoons; it slipped into the margins of my day. At first, I missed it deeply. I missed the luxury of being lost in a story without interruption.
And then the local library came to my rescue.
They offered afternoon reading programs for toddlers—a simple idea, yet transformative for me. There was a play area nestled among shelves of bright picture books, tiny chairs scattered under the soft light, the gentle hum of parents and children turning pages together. It was no longer the silent, studious library of my childhood. It was warmer, louder, full of life.
I embraced it with all my heart.
Those afternoons became something precious. I could sit on the carpet beside my child, pointing at pictures, giving voices to characters, watching small fingers flip pages with fascination. I was no longer just a reader; I was a guide into stories. I found a different kind of joy—not in devouring chapters alone, but in witnessing wonder bloom in someone else’s eyes.
The library became our shared sanctuary. It allowed me to remain close to books while passing on the love that had once taken root in me as a child. It gave me a way to weave reading into this new season of life, not as an indulgence stolen from responsibility, but as something woven into motherhood itself.
Now, when I think of afternoons in the library, I don’t just picture myself tucked away with a novel. I see small shoes by the door, stacks of board books, sunlight across wooden tables. I see my child’s laughter echoing softly between shelves. I see continuity—a quiet thread connecting the girl who hid Jane Eyre behind a textbook to the mother reading aloud in the children’s corner.
Reading has changed shape in my life, but it has never left me. It has grown with me—first as escape, then as companionship, and now as legacy. And in those gentle library afternoons, surrounded by books and the soft rustle of turning pages, I feel both who I was and who I am, perfectly at home among stories once again.