Ashenden

The yellowed pages of a book by Somerset Maugham have a unique place in my life. Few joys can be greater than revisiting the most enlightening blend of pragmatic and profound in Maugham's delightful language, set up through conversations that respect precision yet retain a bite. Among all authors who've made a different to my life, Somerset Maugham retains his position at the summit, to the extent that I've been saving him for a while now. He is to be revisited after a gap, encountered with a renewed excitement in order to be relished to full capacity.

I often think of his as a nearly perfect life. Imagine a doctor who practiced for several years, a spy who was sent to Russia to stop the Bolshevik revolution, and the most popular of novelists, dramatists and short-story writers to have retained his charm across decades. Though I've still not read his masterpiece 'Of Human Bondage' which I've been saving for the day when I really need him, I swear by 'Moon and Sixpence' as one of the finest books to have been written.

Thank you so much Raamesh Gowri Raghavan for the yellow pages of a second-hand Ashenden, Maugham's spy story collection. You took me back to the years of childlike discovery, the primal joy of reading that I had long since forgotten. Only you could have remembered those days, only you know who I was then. Perhaps Maugham should be read in second-handed books; after-all, he always claimed to be the best of authors sitting in the second-row..