I got reminded of this message [1] from an earlier conversation recently.
To quote Ramu from then (are you still reading silk, Ramu?)

<quote>
I read voluminously, but my most vivid reading experience was during a
summer vacation at my family's Kottayam (Kerala) rubber plantation,
surrounded by bucolic country cousins whom I couldn't talk to, and didn't
want to. The only thing to read in the house was a tattered volume of
Shakespeare. It had 'Twelfth Night', 'All's Well That Ends Well' and 'The
Taming Of The Shrew'. With illustrations. I was ten. I read that damned
book for all it was worth. Over those two miserable months, I wore it down
to a shadow. It was my only escape from a place I wanted to flee. I milked
it dry, made Shakespearan mega-movies in my head; can still spout entire
passages. Nothing that I've read since has been as rich and hallucinatory.
It wasn't the book so much as what my imagination desperately did with it
(I might have squeezed as much out of the Kottayam telephone directory).
That mildewed book supplied my entire vacation.
</quote>

I got reminded of this watching my daughter write during a few days spent
mostly offline, when she didn't have TV or the net to distract her.

Any stories the list can share about similar things happening during
enforced downtime?

Udhay

[1]
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/silk-list/conversations/messages/3455

-- 

((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

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