Paperwallah. My perfect reader

“Who is your perfect reader?”

I’m at a book club reading, speaking on Boats on Land , awaiting the usual queries on autobiography, writing process, and literary inspirations. I’m not prepared for this, so I laugh, and hesitate, and say something about how I’d like my ideal reader to read one of my books and love it so much that she buys all the rest. The lady smiles and nods and graciously accepts my answer. Someone raises their hand and asks me about religious syncretism among the Khasis, and we move on. Yet the question stays with me.

Who is my perfect reader?

And how have I been writing for as long as I can remember without ever having thought about this. Also, considering I’ve been on the receiving end, at lit fests and interviews, of a plethora of questions bordering on the strange (“What pen do you use?” “Why are you writing about love between two men?” “Don’t you think people will find your novel offensive?” “Do you think eating meat makes one a better writer?”), how have I never been asked this before?

And do other writers have an inkling? Have they pondered over this too? Perhaps. I’d once told a poet friend that I played a YouTube video of her reading her poems while I soaked in a (hotel room) bathtub, glass of wine in hand, and she exclaimed delightedly that I was her ideal reader.

Mine too, I think, might involve a tub and a bottle of wine. And a towel so she doesn’t accidentally wet the pages.

My ideal reader is the one with her nose in a book on the metro, while others around her bury their faces into their phones. The one who pulls out something to read despite a crowded carriage, despite not finding a place to sit all the way to the end of her journey. My ideal reader reads in cafés. Nursing a cup of coffee. Rolling her own cigarettes. She finds small, quiet corners, and wherever she travels she looks for local independent coffee shops. The ones that spill out onto the pavement. The ones that overlook a bustling street. The ones set in old buildings.

My ideal reader reads eating oranges.

She reads under trees.

So the shadow of the leaves flicker across the page, and the winter sun warms her back, and she falls asleep. My ideal reader likes parks, where the world outside doesn’t distract from the one she holds in her hands. Unless, of course, it’s a friendly dog, or a squirrel, or local youngsters playing a football game.

My perfect reader reads in the mountains. Where there is silence and stillness. And the world is landlocked and hemmed in and closed off. And perhaps there’s a bonfire to look forward to in the evenings, and long morning walks that meander through pine forests. My ideal reader collects pine cones, which she takes back home. She reads when it rains. Listening to the drum of it on the tin roof. Somewhere, she will find a couch, a bed, a blanket, and curl up with a book.

My ideal reader travels alone and reads in restaurants and bars.

She needs no other companion because she has a book, and other people glance at her curiously, slightly befuddled, bemused by this solitary diner. My ideal reader will read by the sea. On a beach. Where the sand slips between the pages and sticks to the cover, wet and gritty. Where there is a danger of grilled fish stains and nimbu pani circles. While walking along a seafront, she will stop and sit on a low wall and read. And stop to glance and marvel at the endless openness of the sea.

My ideal reader reads while in the loo. While stuck in a cab in traffic, but not while the car is moving because that will make her nauseous. She reads on a plane, trying to distract herself from the turbulence, of which she is terribly afraid.

My ideal reader reads on lazy Sundays at home. On Saturday nights when she doesn’t feel compelled to head out just because it’s the weekend. My ideal reader buys more books than she’ll ever be able to finish. And she knows it and fears it. She runs out of space on shelves and the floor. She will make resolutions pertaining to books: only women writers this month, only translations this year, a book from every country in the world. My ideal reader keeps a “reading diary”. A list of books she’s read so she never forgets. She prefers books to movies, and grudgingly admits Revolutionary Road might be an exception. That the screen adaptation matched up to Richard Yates’s novel. My ideal reader lends books generously but expects them back or will otherwise begrudge you for life. She gifts books. At Christmas, birthdays, Diwali, for no reason at all. She buys a book for you because she thinks you will love it. My ideal reader marks her books in ink as her own, signing her name across the first page in fierce possessive love. My ideal reader could be you.

Janice Pariat is the author of The Nine-Chambered Heart, out in November; @janicepariat

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