Of Drews and Hardys

These final days I have spent at KGP have been an anticlimax actually. Initially I always used to crave for these days when I would have not the slightest worry in the world. And at last with job in hand, hardly any classes to attend and all the time to myself, I do wonder whether this is the picture-perfect paradise I hoped for.
'Coz I have got not the slightest clue as to what to do with vast expanse of voidness I find myself presently in. The normal hustle and bustle of KGP bothers me not and there's only so much time I can be glued to the comp ticking off movies from the much-hyped "IMDB Top 250" list. Not being much of a sports or soc-n-cult person either I decided to head homeward last week-end. (Home being just 5 hrs away from here actually helps!!!) Attended a family wedding, met some friends,all in all, it was a welcome respite from the usual humdrum that has beset me in recent days.
It was on my return journey that a mother and her teenaged children boarded the train with me from Rourkela. The family seemed pretty much similar in upbringing to mine and many other middle-class families throughout India. And within half-an-hour of the train departing, they brought out their story books and no wonder!!! ...
The sister held in her hand a Nancy Drew and the brother a paperback edition of the Hardy Boys. Both seemed to be completely engrossed in them. As I seemed to peep into the books, the initial few pages, the familiar phrases "eighteen-year old titian-haired Nancy", "seventeen year old blond Joe Hardy" and the like seemed to take me to on a trip down the memory lane some 8-10 years back. It was then that I was absolutely mad about this series in particular and devoured almost every edition I could find either in the school-library or the nearest book-store.
And I could not help but chuckle to myself. It's been so many years. You grow up with these books and then move on but these characters tend to remain exactly where you left them. Nancy still remains eighteen and Frank and Joe eighteen and seventeen respectively. In the meantime we tend to go to the better detective mysteries like Christie's Poirot or Doyle's irrepressible Sherlock Holmes.
On my return to KGP I did some fact-finding on my own on these two series. I was amazed to know that these series have been published from as early as the 1920s. So for nearly a century they have been providing entertainment to millions of teenagers worldwide and yet their popularity seems not to have dimmed a bit. Also as expected I found that the authors Carolyn Keene and Franklin Dixon were but pseudonyms but I didn't know that these were infact written by a host of writers under the same names.
Of course I am now way past my time reading those books. Probably if asked many years later which books were the most influential in my formative years I may respond with the oft-repeated Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Catcher in the Rye et al while these books along with those of the prolific Enid Blyton's remain in some corner of my home gathering dust or being devoured by a host of voracious termites!!!
We often tend to look past those years of life which made our transition from chilhood to adulthood. And yet it is those which are instrumental in making us what we tend to become in the years to come!!!