20 minutes before the all-important bell rang for recess, our teacher ended the lesson. Not every one of us had reasons to smile or be happy. But I had. I had every reason to smile and be happy. In fact, I was so looking forward to the next 20 minutes.

Don’t get me wrong. I bore no grudges over the teacher, didn’t hate the topic he/she was teaching. My elation was because the next 20 minutes proved to be more enticing than the previous 40 minutes.

It was reading time! Yay!

There would be two plastic containers of books, taken from the small school library, seated on the floor at the front of the classroom, and all of us were supposed to go and find one book to read.

It was an initiative from the school to get students to build the habit of reading since young. Until today, I’m not sure if it is compulsory for all schools to do this. I only know my school had this programme, and I absolutely loved it!

Not many were jumping at this chance to read though. In fact, most of my classmates dreaded this 20 minutes. Nobody could speak, and a dead silence fell over all the classrooms in that level as every student read, grudgingly or excitedly.

At this time, packets of milk would be delivered to the classroom, and we had to collect our daily ration of either chocolate, strawberry, vanilla or banana beverage that was supposed to provide us good nutrition.

Many times I would save my packet of milk and bring it home. Whether I drank it when I was home, I really couldn’t remember now. Maybe I gave it to my sister, since milk is her favourite.

Though I would say no to milk, I usually won’t say no to books.

I would dash to the front, strange as it seemed now as I looked back and realised not many people were fighting with me anyway, and rummaged around the container for the book that I was reading half-way through the days before.

There were times when one other fellow would be reading the same book as me, and both of us would look at each other to see who should give way first. Luckily, there were more than enough books to go around, and when I had to sacrifice one novel, I could make it up by reading something else.

I guess it was probably this reason that I read quite a variety of books then. Some were by choice, some were by no choice of mine as there weren’t anything else available.

I even read books that I didn’t understand!

Did that programme work? Was it successful to build a reading habit and culture? I wasn’t sure. Because I knew I was already into reading, with or without the programme. But I knew that some friends of mine did slowly find that reading wasn’t such a pain in reality, and they actually completed a novel at the end of the programme. But to someone who would fall asleep after 10 sentences, it was an accomplishment to celebrate.

Well, one wasn’t enough, because we had to write a review of the book we had read.

For those who didn’t pull through at least one book, they had to beg and bribe fellow classmates to “help” them with the review. Yeah, there was an amount of “underground activity” going on then.

As for me, I had fun in comparing my review with another’s on the same book we’ve read. It was interesting to note how one book could produce different feelings about it and different perspectives.

Oh, how I missed those times.

Maybe I should start to incorporate a 20-minute silent reading time daily in my lives. Hey, that’s not a bad idea, really!