"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."Don Vito Corleone
Few books linger upon one's memory like the first book one read. Reading here is not implied by the simple mental swallow of presented words but by an acceptance of the same. With this in mind, I would have to say that the first book that I ever read was The Godfather. I vividly recall myself sitting in a Bangalore airport seven to eight years back with nothing in my pockets and a flight away from home. Summer vacation was here and I was finally out of my boarding school. I was casually windowshopping at the airport bookshop (in those days I frowned upon reading because my main interests lay in watching girls and reading comics) when one of my seniors, George, saw me holding a copy of The Godfather. He asked me if I was going to buy it and I said I couldn't because I had nothing in my wallet. He gave me three-hundred and fifty rupees, without any hesitation or discomfort, and moved away. I wondered for a while whether I should spend the charitable sum on fast-food or the book. Then, thinking that it would be wrong to spend the money on anything other than what George intended it for would be an insult of sorts, I bought the book.
It was the best decision I have made till date.
(to be continued...)
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