Serendipity, Saunter and Faux paz

 The recent announcement about the Reader's Digest UK coming to an end has been gut wrenching. Ever since I remember Reader's Digest was the one constant each month. Every new month, for some afternoons, I would eagerly await the arrival of the postman, as he would bring the month's Reader's Digest. And the day it arrived, for the next few hours I would be devouring as much as I could so I was up to speed with the contents for any discussion that might happen.  The  articles, the adventure stories, the book section, the interesting columns - All in a day's work, humour in uniform, quotable quotes - all collectively opened new worlds to be explored. Not to mention amassing Word Power through the vocabulary quiz. Having read the magazine, the next task would be re-read some things that were interesting- sometimes it was an article about exercise, sometimes about an acting legend, sometimes about a sports personality or an artist, sometimes the wonderful anecdotes and ...

It was the early 2000s and away on the East Coast Road in Chennai, by the bay, there wasn't a library nearby to borrow magazines. We missed our regular quota of Reader's Digest, Chandamama, Champak, Outlook, The Week and other reads. New to the area, I went around asking everyone if they knew of a library nearby, where did they get their books from? I discovered that there was a librarian who visited homes and delivered books. You could keep them for a fortnight and then on his next visit, he would collect those back and leave new ones for you. He charged a nominal sum that we could easily afford to pay and was a very tiny fraction of what it would cost to buy the magazines. The first time we met Mama ( maternal Uncle - it is the usual form of addressing gentlemen much older than you) we realised that he cycled around delivering books and magazines. The cycle was a trusted big, black hero cycle and he carried the books in colourful bags made of thick plastic, that would hand fr...