I love books. I really do. I think if everyone read a book a week, the world would be a far more peaceful place. Over the years, I have developed a bedtime routine that involves reading a few pages of whatever book is on my nightstand at the time (more recently whatever is on my Kindle at the moment), before I turn in for the night. When I was single, and living by myself, many nights I would suddenly wake up at 2 or 3 AM and discover that I fell asleep with the book on my face, and with the lights on. In the last year that I have been sharing a bedroom with a man who can’t sleep if the lights are on, I have learnt to make a few adjustments. The lights go off, the kindle goes on, and I duck under the covers so that the glow from the kindle doesn’t bother him.

I can read pretty much anywhere. In a moving car, in a park, at the beach, in a noisy coffee shop, in airplanes, at chaotic family events. To me, reading has always been a solitary activity. Something I do by myself, when I can retreat into myself and don’t need socialise or make small talk with anyone. So I found it intriguing when my friend Ameya (who recently outed herself as the 50 dates girl) who is visiting from India sent me a message with a link to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a Silent Reading Party.

A party where people come together, just like in any other party, but instead of idle chit chat, networking, exchanging of pleasantries and discussing the weather, no one talks to each other. Strangers stream into a room, their only companion a book, find a comfortable spot, order a drink or a snack (or not) and get on with the business of reading for the next 90 minutes. No one trying to make awkward small talk, no pressure to mingle. Just silence. Well, there is a piano player providing the ambient music. But otherwise, it’s you, your book, and a room full of strangers all reading their book.

I had to check this out! The husband was hugely amused by the idea, and many jokes were made at my expense. My cousin Kar said, “You want to drive for an hour to SF to just sit around and read? Why!”

Despite all the ribbing, I was determined to experience what was now being dubbed as ‘the lamest party ever’ in the family WhatsApp chat group.

So, on April 5, Ameya and I headed to San Francisco’s Rex Hotel (It did take an hour on the Caltrain from Mountain View). The party was to begin at 6 PM and we were there at 5.30 to find a line already forming outside the Library Bar of the hotel, which was the venue for the reading party. As soon as the doors opened at 5.45 PM, everyone rushed in to find their spot. The room was set up with little round tables and two chairs to each table. One side of the room had a sort of cushioned bench against the wall. We made a beeline for those and found a nice spot next to a pedestal, perfect for parking our drinks, and switched on our respective Kindles. The room was full within minutes and those who actually arrived on time at 6 PM could find no spots when they showed up.

Drink and snack menus pre-listed with table numbers were placed at each table (and pedestal) with a pen. If you wanted to order something, you just checked the item on the menu, and wait staff moving silently about the room just picked it up and went back in to get your order. You literally don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to!

The event was hosted by Oakland magazine publisher Dan Stone and Daniel Handler (known better as Lemony Snicket), who played the piano providing the mood music for the next 90 minutes. A dollar from every drink ordered was donated to the Tenderloin Community School Library. But if you didn’t want to order anything, that was ok too. No one was going to throwing you out if all you wanted was to read, and not eat or drink.

Surprisingly for tech-obsessed San Francisco, most people brought actual physical books with them. Ameya and I were the exception along with a handful of others. We spotted someone reading Shantaram. Another was reading Ernest Hemingway. Yet another person seemed to be reading poetry. I was not reading anything remotely as lofty. After watching Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi make Yoghurt Rice (the humble thayir sadam for us Tam Brahms) on the Ellen Show while promoting her memoir, I was intrigued. Just the previous day, I had downloaded Love, Loss and What We Ate:A Memoir. I had already started reading the book on the train journey into the city and I was hooked. It’s a beautifully written book that chronicles her life, her struggles and everything she learnt along the way in her journey from India to the US, to Europe and back to the US. And then there was Salman Rushdie, which was not even the most interesting part of the book.

The most interesting parts of the book to me were her descriptions of her grandfather’s home in Chennai in India where she spent the first few years of her life, and later came back to as a teenager for a few more years. So much about the household she describes reminded me of my own grandparents home in Chennai when I was growing up and visiting them for the long summer break from school. A house full of people coming and going, the door always open, my grandmother in the kitchen whipping up simple and delicious South Indian fare for the large brood always hanging around at mealtimes, my grandfather’s sweet tooth despite his diabetes…

From her struggles to assimilate as a young immigrant from India to her foray into modeling and TV in Europe, her tumultuous relationship with Rushdie, and everything that happens after that, she write with a certain grace, never once pointing fingers or blaming anyone for the choices she made.

Somehow, sitting there amid some 50 strangers all quietly reading, sipping a drink occasionally, reading this book felt just right.

At 7:30 Dan Stone came up on a small make-shift stage to thank everyone for coming to the first ever reading party in San Francisco. The idea has been borrowed from Seattle where they’ve been having these reading parties for some time now.

Who said reading was a dying art? Despite the book business going under, and independent bookstores struggling to stay open, it was telling to see that small room fill up so quickly and people being turned away at the door due to lack of space.

The silent reading party will now be a monthly affair in San Francisco. I don’t know yet if I will go to these on a regular basis. As my cousin pointed out, it is a bit of a drag to take the train for an hour into the city just to go read a book. I wanted to experience it to understand what it felt like. Sharing reading space with other book lovers, even if they are strangers in communal solitude, was somehow thoroughly satisfying.