The summers of my childhood in tropical Asia were brutally hot and humid. I could still remember the day I grabbed a couple of ripe guavas from the kitchen to snack on. They were perfectly soft and fragrant, their yellow-green skins gleaming with an almost neon sheen against the bright summer sun filtering through the window. It was too hot to play outside under the blazing sun, and inside my grandmother’s house, boredom felt like its own kind of prison. I was ten years old, a boy with an insatiable hunger for stories but absolutely nothing left to devour. I had already read and reread every single magazine, book, and komiks I could lay my hands on until the pages were soft and frayed.
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In our small barangay (village), books were a luxury. Our public school didn’t have a library, let alone extra volumes to lend out. This was an era before the internet, before screens ruled our lives. Power lines had not yet reached our little barrio far from the town center, so when night fell, darkness was absolute.
Entertainment was a communal, intimate ritual. Every weekday evening from six to nine, we would huddle around the living room table. It was lit only by a single kerosene lamp, which cast a flickering orange glow across our expectant faces. In that warm, dancing light, we would listen intently to the crackling AM radio, transported by the serialized fantasy soap operas that played out in the dark. We knew there was a television station out there somewhere, but without electricity or money, a TV set was out of the question. My imagination had to build its own worlds.
On that dog day of summer, desperation drove me to explore my uncle’s room. My uncle, whom I call Papa Max, kept a modest cabinet that I usually ignored. It was packed mostly with dusty college textbooks, faded paperbacks, and a stack of old magazines. I began to browse the shelves, expecting nothing, until my fingers brushed against a worn paperback.
I pulled the thinnest, most unintimidating book I could find, settled onto the floor, and took a bite out of the guava. The fruit split open to reveal a vivid pink flesh, and its sweet, tropical aroma immediately bloomed and lingered in the warm air.
With the taste of guava on my tongue, I opened the book. It was about Greek mythology.
At first, the names flew off the page like strange incantations: Zeus, Athena, Minerva. They entertained me, but then the narrative shifted, and the trap snapped shut. I stumbled into the grand, sweeping epic of the Trojan War. I read of Odysseus, a keen and clever warrior with unmatched bravery, embarking on a treacherous sea voyage to wage war against Troy. More than the battles, it was his grueling journey home… the sheer peril, the heartbreaking loss, and the unyielding suffering he endured… that captured my soul.
The world around me faded. The humid air of the house vanished, replaced by the salty spray of the Aegean Sea and the roar of ancient battle cries.
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As I read, the ancient myths collided with my own bloodline. My grandmother, whose eyes were clouding over and nearly blind from advancing cataracts, used to sit with me and trace the past. In her gentle voice, she would tell me tales of my late grandfather. Long before I was born, he had briefly been a crew member of a commercial ship that sailed all over the archipelago.
Sitting on that dusty floor, the book resting on my lap, my mind blurred the lines between legend and reality. I didn’t just see Odysseus anymore; I saw my grandfather. I imagined him standing on a wooden deck, bracing against crashing waves and battling the stormy, unpredictable seas of our own country, mirroring the perilous journey of the Greek heroes. The distant past and my own family history became the same.
I devoured the entire book in three days. But when I finished, I didn’t put it away. I turned right back to the beginning, reading section after section, over and over again. My mind was craving to relive those moments. I felt the thrill of their victories and the agonies they endured trying to go home. That battered paperback didn’t just pass the time; it rewrote my DNA. It was the exact moment my lifelong passion for literature was born.
Decades later, I look at the world today, completely saturated with instant streaming, blockbuster movies, and endless digital entertainment options at a child’s fingertips. Sometimes, I watch the screens glow and wonder: in a world where everything is visualized for them, would a ten-year-old child still find the magic to pick up a book, sit by a flickering light, bite into a piece of fruit, and spend hours building a universe of their own?
Continue reading How Odysseus Sparked My Passion for Literature
