Tell Me Why

Before wikipedia became so popular and put them out of business, encyclopaedias were in every home - huge volumes of information available to us at our fingertips. They may seem primitive to us now, especially as they lack a search function - but I still remember the pleasure of going through the huge volume - the scent of the pages transporting me to another world.

We had the Tell Me Why series of books in our house - allegedly written by a Mr. Arkady Leokum - atleast the guy's name used to be on the cover page of the books. The books were named Tell Me Why, Still More Tell Me Why, Here's More Tell me Why and so on. Each book claimed to answer hundreds of questions - seems anachronistic in the age of Wikipedia with its multimillion pages of information.

For a young child like me who enjoyed the company of books more than people, Tell Me Why was a wondrous companion and I spent hours upon hours poring through the various sections in the books. Each book answered questions on various scientific and sociological disciplines including botany, paleontology, astronomy, physics, zoology, culture, literature, philiosophy among others.

Ever wondered "Why humans have hair?", "Who invented plastic?" or "Can fish hear?". Were you ever curious about "Who was the first astronaut?", "Why do cannibals eat people?" or "Why did the dinosaurs become extinct". All I had to do was open the books and search for it. Of course the lack of an equivalent of the search function meant I had to go through tons of other questions before I found my relevant query - but these other questions themselves intrigued me and thus hours were spent in their company.

Then i grew up, started to lose interest in books and gain more interest in the people around me. These books were lost in the back of my cupboard - a couple were probably sold off - unknown to me and passed out of my memory.
Recently as I was cleaning my bookshelf (probably after a decade :D) I found a couple of these books - yellowed and musty but still intact. And as i turned the pages, the years melted away magically.

I was a 8 year old kid again with my encyclopaedia, reading about - "Why does an opossum hang by its tail?" and "Why do dogs bury bones?"

Life is good.