Sharika Sharma is the Business Lead at Mangrove Collective. Her background is as diverse as her taste in books. She is associated with the Delhi Crafts Council over the past seven years.
While her primary role is business development and marketing, she also works with the craft sector to a synergy between furniture and interior design, and see how to incorporate and use the traditions in a contemporary design idiom. Excerpts:
Have your reading preferences changed?
My reading has always been diverse. Like with most youngsters, I transitioned from Enid Blytons and Famous Fives.
The Lord of the Rings conjured up a world of fantasy, Agatha Christie’s mysteries spoke of a dark world of intrigue and whodunits, Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird created an almost impossible ideal in my head of how to stand up for one’s beliefs. The books may have changed, the myriad worlds they allowed me to explore have not.
What do you like to read?
I grew up surrounded by books thanks to a father and brother who read voraciously and a mother who was always happy to take us to the bookshop.
I read multiple books at the same time. I read fiction with the occasional non-fiction thrown in and a few favourites that I always come back to.
I love mysteries and crime/forensic books when I need something fast-paced to read. Patricia Cromwell used to be a favourite. Vikram Seth’s writing makes me wish I could write both prose and poetry with as much depth.
What kind of writing puts you off?
Pretentious writing bores me and even though I can rarely leave a book unfinished, if a book induces frequent eye rolls, it is time to call it a day.
What about the written word is it that visual/audio mediums cannot fulfil?
Writing lets you paint your own picture. The words maybe someone else’s, but the visual in your head and the interpretation of the book is your own. All other mediums tell the story from the point of view of the director/producer.
Do you maintain a bookshelf or an e-library?
I have both. My Kindle is chock-full of books. I had to give away a number of physical books over the years purely from a space point of view. My father’s copy of the Collected Works of Shakespeare, my brother’s well-thumbed book of WB Yeats poetry, my first copy of The Catcher in the Rye that my daughter has read again and again.