Sherlock Holmes was perhaps one of the first non-school books I have ever read. My first books were goosebumps, nancy drew, hardy boys and then I graduated to Sherlock Holmes and LOTR.

I mostly read Sherlock in the summer, when I would have a lot of free time and would often be traveling to see my extended family in the hot and sunny rural India, where there would be no electricity and no TV. Indian summers make you dizzy, a person is not meant to be functional when the sun is scorching the earth underneath you. But the summers also meant that I had all the time in the world to read and play video games.

It must have been the heat and the stagnant air and the whirring of the fans that affected how I imagined the Sherlock Holmes home country to be like, England near the end of the 19th century; an old order coming to an end but which was not yet aware of its impending demise. I was fascinated by it, I just could not read enough about the strange places and the strange manner of speech, the mysteries and just the day to day of those two best buds in their deerstalker and top hats and their tobacco pipes and walking sticks. Of the scarcely populated vast estates, of the prairies and the meadows, the solemn train rides, the gloomy and bleak London streets, the snow fluttering past the windows.

It then comes as a great disappointment to me when I find myself reading Sherlock Holmes again and not being able to put myself in that state of awe and wonder. Of course, I know the stories and so the suspense is a bit diminished. But there is something more than that. I think I have lost the peace I once had. I am in my summer but summers no longer mean what they once used to mean. Summer is no longer a break from work but just a different kind of work. I no longer while away behind closed curtains tucked away in a cozy corner losing my sense of time as I lose myself in the mind palace of the Victorian sleuth.

But I was very happy and proud of myself for taking the time to read the entire Sherlock Holmes again. Even if I do not feel the way I used to once, it still fills me up with immense joy. I can only hope that now that I am aware of this peace and sense of stillness that is lacking from life, my future self with put in some effort to get it back and the next time I read I will once again be able to lose myself completely.