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"What shall I give Mr. Otter for his birthday?" wondered Squirrel Junior.
"Why don't you lay him an egg?" asked Father Squirrel, smiling.
Junior did not deign to comment on that suggestion.

My child toppled over with laughter. You see, three pages before, Junior Squirrel had decided early one morning that he was going to lay an egg. For himself.
If the silly birds could do it all the time, what about him, huh?

My attempt today, is to lay some eggs. To make some converts from an increasingly technical world, to try and read things which have no connection with their line of work. This campaign I undertake in the name of all those enthusiastic fellow bibliophiles who consume anything from Tejpal's libidinous overdose of the alchemy of desire to a magical Mario Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat to the mesmerizing Isabel Allende's Eva Luna to Amar Chitra Katha and Noddy's head swelling too big for his hat.

Without being able to answer the sardonic question, "What is the use of reading all this drivel?" (My strongest repartee till now has been "Because it will wire more of your neurons together.")

Functional question - "What is the use of reading something, which does not produce results by translating itself into a technical skill? Why read a nursery rhyme when one can do mental maths?"

For a reason. Or many.

Now, listen to the Master¹ for the answer. Umberto Eco is a Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna.

(How can one man know so much, for Chris sake? Anything from Semiotics to Casablanca, Rosicrucians, Manzoni, Chinese Arithmetic, Architecture, of fakes and forgeries, to sketching intricate abbeys, translating obscure Latin texts to a commentary on violence and Sunday football. Analyzing literature with the same ease as that of deciphering the code of Babel. With such precision, with such penetrating intelligence. And writing best sellers in between. Umberto Eco's erudition² is something no self-respecting egg-layer should ever miss. It teaches one the art of humility. Of how much one does not know of, in this great and magnificent world.)

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1 "On Some Functions of Literature", Pg 1-15, Umberto Eco, "On Literature", translated from Italian by Martin McLaughlin, Vintage, 2006.
2 Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Travels in Hyper Reality, Serendipities, etc.

* Ministhy Dileep is working as an IAS officer in the UP Cadre. She recently published her first book, "Unequal Equations" (Pragya Prakashan Publishers,2006, New Delhi).