My Best Friend 4 Life & Love for Books

My cousin T says that Dogs are a man's best friend. . But i beg to differ. To me dogs are those ill mannered things that bark their lungs out under my bedroom window at midnight. So self annihilation is the most preferable choice for me than treating them as my best friends. However today is not my day for annihilation and so i'll write 'bout it some other day. But about best friends i think no one else can be as best a friend as a book. And i feel myself to be blessed enough that i had a special book and others as my best friend since my early childhood. The book "Sukumar Roy Samagra" with a shiny toffee red paperback cover with a sketch of a pussycat had always attracted me in those days. I heard from Ma in later years that i used to stare at her with my big puppy eyes whenever she tried to read me stories from the book wearing a discrete look on my face that everything she was reading was way up my reception antennas. Soon she bowed down to my wishes and kept the book in her possession for giving it to me in near future. This book was the first bangla classic that was gifted to me by my parents. After 4 - 5 yrs the round 2 of reading this book started. Then i was in class 4 or 5. I started enjoying the sketches in the book. But reading the book was still a no entry zone as i was not familiar with Bangla alphabets at that time. Though born in Bengali family, i had my initial schooling in various districts of Uttar Pradesh and was comfortable in Hindi. This was the time when Ma tried to teach me Bangla, but after attending school, doing homeworks and studying, learning Bangla interested me the least. So the book was kept aside for the second time. Days passed, months passed and thus passed 2 more years when i heard that my dad had been transfered to Raiganj in West Bengal, and worse that me and Ma were also to go to the new place. My parents were happy as they were returning to their home state but i was shocked. How was i going to speak fluently with my new classmates and how i'm going to study Bangla in place of Hindi were my prime concerns. Once again Ma started to teach me Bangla alphabets, only this time i have my cent percent concentration in learning the alphabets. The best tutor that my Ma is, i soon started reading smal paragraphs from old bengali magazines and newspapers. Then i had my fingers on the book for the third time. This time i started reading the book and enjoying it. This was one of the early times when i felt lucky that i could read Bangla. Since then i have treated "Sukumar Roy Samagra" as my best friend and have developed a special interest for its various characters. However the most favourite character of mine from this book is of course Pagla Dashu, a school boy. The book now, with its reddish pages reminds me of the years when i had just started to know this world. It is one of my prized possessions with so many years of emotions attached to it.
There it prove Your Honour that Books are much better friends than Dogs.
So do you guys have any particularly favourite book that you would like to share with me?
P.S. - After i went to Raiganj, i found my new classmates to be extremely understanding. Though i felt a bit of cultural difference in my new school, soon i became a part of it and had lots of fun the next 4 years.