Last week, I landed on Rassundari Devi's 1876 autobiography, Amar Jiban (My Life), recounting her illicit attempts to learn to read. Representation pic/Thinkstock

As I dangled precariously from the edge of the tiny first-class compartment of a CST-bound fast train, surveying intermittent tree tops that offered relief from the sight of garbage-strewn sidelines, I realised that I believe in the existence of a bibliographical god. There's nothing novel about this epiphany. Many cultures have deities associated with literary or cultural scholarship, Saraswati being a case in point. But what I mean is, I started to wonder if there could be something pre-ordained about the act of reading, whether literary free-will was an illusion of sorts, or was only facilitated through some act of divine grace. Think about the last book you read. What led you to it? Was it a recommendation from a friend or something you stumbled upon in a bookstore? You see, it's different with books, because reading is an activity that's been under threat, thanks to all the many more convenient distractions in which you could be indulging, the activities Chetan Bhagat claims to be in competition with, like playing Candy Crush, or bingeing on series after series on Netflix.