I started going to the library when I was six, insisting on taking home books about little boys like Sambo who was chased by the tigers and fairy tale girls like Thumbelina who slept in an impossibly small walnut shell. I still remember going with my mother to the library and triumphantly bearing the books home, filled with delicious anticipation at the promise of a world of magic, about to unfold. To me, books were not just bound and printed papers that built an entire universe of characters the moment I started reading the first page. They also had the most amazing scent. To smell a book, all I had to do was to open it in the middle and breathe deep—my nose burrowed deep in the partition of the pages. I could smell old ;paper, glue, thread and ink—all amalgamated into this heavenly miasma that I could not get enough of. They stimulated me in visual, tactile and olfactory ways.

Even today, when I am at a bookstore at the airport, I find myself surreptitiously opening a book I want to read and inserting my nose to take a deep breath. Just to make sure I get a sneak preview of the world I am going to read about.