Taking time off to write this — something that’s been discussed and understood by many a book-joy.

When the tough times get tougher and you watch immense suffering at close quarters and are unable to alleviate it except for silent support, a book comes in handy. And a paintbrush or two. Call it escapism. Call it learning from other people’s lives. Or just enjoying the beauty of wonderful prose.

Few books that have become my go-to for succor, albeit temporarily, are The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins), Middle March (George Eliot), and Man’s Eternal Quest (Swami Yogananda).

The first is a gem, pun intended. Brilliant, and hailed as the first detective novel in English fiction.

The second required some ploughing through and plunged me into the depths of illiteracy that I discovered - in myself, after assuming that I had a decent education so far!

Well, Benjamin McAvoy from the Hardcore Literature blogs provides some invaluable tips on how to read the tome, and also enjoy the process. (I’ve just begun by reading a chapter once a week — the subsequent week usually results in me going back to the same chapter, all in the pursuit of understanding the sentence structure that Elliott used.)

One sentence from Man’s Eternal Quest can make you ponder and want to apply it to your life, for a lifetime. For someone who is in the nether years, it speaks to me. It contains underlined passages from Mom (done many years ago when she was in her 40s) that are the exact same lines that I would have highlighted.

This is a book that comes to you at a particular time in life, and you can understand it deeply only when you are ready. It’s too close to the heart to describe it further.

Paraphrasing from a quote (Donna Tart) about a little boy standing against a tree and enjoying its sturdiness, its stolid presence, and the certainty it brings to his life that incidentally is filled with the opposite — Books are the pillows on which you can rest your head and sink into, like Narnia’s cupboards.