Stupor

This always happens to me..try as I might, I cannot read a novel without immersing myself in it. I've grown-up with books as friends. But, only a few books engage me enough to completely loose myself in them, even if I read but a few pages before going to sleep or sit day and night with it till I thumb the last page.
That is why I have never believed in reading what the rest of the world is reading. I could never read Harry Potter or The Twilight series, could never finish a Chetan Bhagat novel or even attempt The LOTR series. They just failed to grip me. Its not that I didn't try to read them, I just couldn't go beyond a few pages.  Initially I classified these as bad literature.Now I have realised that its just me, because thousands of people read these books.
Over the years novels have given way to research manuscripts, factual references and a variety of other readable material. I go through a lot of books in a year.
A few friends requested me to try The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. I trust their reading habits well enough to understand that they like many books that I like. So I finally decided to pick it up and began reading it this Thursday.
The book has once again captured my imagination...maybe because I skipped a chance to go to the Sunder bans last year, or because the book writes about things skirting close to my research interest or maybe because the protagonist Piyali thinks like I do on my research trips....I don't know what it is but I am in a sunderban stupor. I researched furiously on the Morichjhanpi incident, I read atleast 6 research papers on the subject in a span of two days. I made assumptions and took sides, but the novel challenged everything to the point of frustration!
This is a fabulous piece of literature, simple yet lyrical. And I can't seem to put it down, nor can I forget the Morichjhanpi incident..........