The Reading List

by Sara Nisha Adams

For months after Naina’s death, Mukesh hadn’t been able to sleep in his own bed, because being in there alone felt like being in someone else’s home entirely.

Once a year had passed, and Mukesh Patel’s Time of Eternal Quiet had begun, that silent, lonely stage of grief, where everyone but you had moved on,

Mukesh wished now that he’d asked her what they were about, what she loved about them, why she’d felt the need to read the same ones again and again. He wished that he’d read them with her.

She noticed how this book was allowing her to step into two worlds – the world she was in right now, beside her mum, in her house, the air muggy from the heat of the day – and another world, the world of two children, Scout and her older brother Jem, who lived somewhere called Maycomb, a small town in Alabama, where they’d play outside, being foolish, being … children.

It was strange how, once childhood left, your parents became simply human, with fears and worries just like your own.

Those textbooks you read for school and stuff can teach you a fair amount, but novels teach you so much more!

After she asked her mother, in a moment of madness, whether the photo bothered her, Leilah had said: ‘No. It was a happy time, and I can’t regret happiness.’

‘Please try to remember that books aren’t always an escape; sometimes books teach us things. They show us the world, they don’t hide it.’