The Love of Real Books

There is a thing about books which makes me want to go back to those days when we didn't have a computer, only Doordarshan on TV and lots of books. When I was in school which wasn't exactly a long time ago in actual years but really ancient history in technology years, the only thing we used to do with a computer was either type in MS-Dos commands or play that car game that was a glitch in the Windows ’98. The rest of the time… we used to read – Real Books!

You know those things with either soft or hard bound covers, stitched down the middle at the back or stuck together with gum that hold real pages made out of paper and imprinted with ink? Those are called Books.

There develops a kind of emotional attachment to books that only a long-time reader can understand. Over time, it becomes difficult to spend free time without a book in the hand. It becomes impossible to take a coffee or loo break without continuing and finishing the chapter you began during breakfast. If the book is very good, it often becomes hard to even switch off the bedside lamp even though you know that you’re going to wake up so late that someone or the other is going to shout at you for it. You put on the lights in the middle of the night because you can’t sleep without reading those last two hundred pages which are seducing you from the table top. You cannot imagine a Sunday without a good book and coffee. Your vacation luggage consists of more books than the number of clothes you've packed. You take breaks from studying during exams by reading your novel and then forget all about the exams. You ultimately read so many books that there comes a time when you can hardly distinguish between what’s real and what’s not; it becomes Inception!

Some of us have this special place in our heart for real books. Now what with technology and all, it’s just easier to order e-books and they’re cheaper too it seems, but some of us just can’t manage to get the feel of a book while reading it on a steel-covered machine. We are that breed of readers who prefer pure-blooded books and I’m not against the Mudbloods or anything but reading in the harsh light without the warm glow of the lamp, holding hard steel instead of soft paper and feeling the scratches on metal instead of dog-eared pages don’t exactly appeal to us.

Well, I’m one of those who are orthodox in the ways of reading and I’m sure there are many others who prefer it this way.

Here are a few lines that just flew out at the end of the post:

The Way I like It

Ruffling pages, smelling sweet

From the age old dust of yore.

The musty scent of history

And weight of decades past;

Arouse In me a gentle lad

Who loves to lose it all,

To a few pages of print

Than to a machine of iron wrought.

How do you like your books; Real or Virtual? Do share your thoughts.

The Prodigal Reader...

Yours truly has been an avid reader for as long as he can remember.

Well, that’s what happens when one receives books for birthdays, books for Christmas, books for Diwali, books for Eid and more books in the vacations.  So basically, my people hadn't heard of video-games, movies, cricket bats and keyboards. No, books were the objects that I was surrounded with and every morning, I had to be dug out from under the books that had overflowed off my shelf and table, thereby coming to rest on my bed.

Apart from books that I received as gifts, I also got hand-me-downs from my older cousins. In fact, some of these books were so old that they had been passed down from previous generations. I also got bought books in book fairs and from salesmen and government office sales. I still remember the time when I entered a Crossword shop for the first time. Yes, exactly. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. That day, my cousin bought me my first set of English Classics. It was the day I decided to graduate in English Literature (and I did).

But lately, there seemed to be a disconnect from books, I know not why. Living way from my books and multiplication of workload had driven me far from being able to read anything worthwhile. It so happened that my wish list of books started growing much faster than I could obtain and read them. My ledger was showing red for the first time. Of course, I had books stored in my computer, a lot of them. I still do, but I just do not enjoy reading them in soft copies, whatever their merits. Till I get the feel of a book in my hands, smell the musty pages, straighten the dog-eared pages and use a book mark, I cannot bring myself to read anything. Is that weird? Is it?

Well, the point is that now I've come back home for my semester break, I've reclaimed the library card that my mother was putting to good use. I've also cleaned my book shelf and taken an inventory of all the books I have and want (by the way, I collect books).

Reunited with my books, I've even abandoned my laptop and television. And as I select the book I’m going to read today, I say, “Long time, no see.”

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Sir Conan Doyle’s Curly Fu & Peanut!

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Sherlock’ series has garnered great support and has probably amassed a huge fandom since it premiered. I think this has taken place quickly and more so than other English soaps because each season has just three episodes which leave the audience begging for more. Even more so is the great initiative to bring Doyle’s most beloved character into the present age and still maintain the same amount of respect for the author’s original work. But then, the BBC is expected to do something new and that is why it is where it stands today.

Photo Courtesy: Google Images.

Now this may seem a bit funky because I read it in a feature on BBC’s website itself but it claims that Sherlock has obtained widespread acclaim from Chinese viewers too. It seems that when the British Prime Minister visited China and opened an account on a local social networking site, most of the requests he received were for the third season of ‘Sherlock’ to be released as soon as possible. This may and can be true, but with so many international issues at stake, would the most number of requests a Prime Minister receives be concerning a show? (China, you never cease to amaze me).

Let me now explain the title to this post. It seems that Curly Fu and Peanut are the names given to the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson respectively by their fans there. Apparently, their names resemble the Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin, I don’t know which) names to some extent.

Another interesting part of that selfsame article was where it was mentioned that people there also read homosexuality in the show. They claim to make out that the show reinforces a strong tie that exists between the two central characters to such an extent that may even be homosexual in nature. Now I, in my three years of reading Doyle’s work as a reader and in another three as a student of English literature have never even imagined that such a relationship may be hinted at, what with Watson getting married and Sherlock having a secret crush on ‘The Woman’. Well, it may be so in the show and maybe I've never thought of it like that but I’m certainly going to watch the previous two seasons very closely, not only for this factor but also for others which may have escaped me before.

And to the director of this show, I say, “Good show, old chap!”

The State Of Books: #2 – The Rescue

In the prequel to this post, I related the state of my college library and my thoughts as well as feelings about the same. I also mentioned that I would go ahead and relate the rescue of the books that some of us students attempted for the love of books.

So, it was all carnage and utter destruction when I first saw the library being dismantled. My only regret is that I did not take photographs of what happened there. It would have been more horrifying for you to see it for yourselves because apparently, “Pictures talk louder than words.”

The four of us and a few irregulars started picking up books from the great pile in the middle of the library and started classifying them according to their genres. And it wasn't like we only took care of English literature, we tried to get together all that was still intact and that could be repaired and used. We started restacking the shelves for those who wanted to buy the books and we picked up some books to buy ourselves, amongst them volumes that we had desired for years. Well, finders – keepers, eh? After all, we were only human and we also needed a little motivation to work in that pile of dust, rust, termites and falling cement that we used to call a library.

We went down to the basements to work as often as we could, between classes and even in the lunch breaks. It was a kind of longing to see the books put back in a place which they deserved or see them sent to a place where they would be treasured. Many of my friends also came and helped out occasionally, more in hope of finding some text or the other, rather than to do anything about the mess. But that was also for the best, for the more people who came down there, the more they used to buy books and take away.

After a couple of days of sitting in lectures all dirty, smelling and itching all over I decided it would be a good idea to get a napkin and a change of clothes. So I did that! Now I could go down there in all my free time and get back to the lectures all clean and fresh, albeit sneezing from the amount of dust I’d inhaled in that basement. Sometimes I felt like an archaeologist discovering things from the dust, cleaning them, classifying them and trying to restore them for future generations. Kind of gave me a sense of pride in what our group was doing.

Well, after a week or so, we had managed to save quite a number of books but we had lost a majority of them and none of us were too happy about that as you can well imagine. Now, we had to do one last thing; we had to collect books that would be useful to the English department and haul them there. The department was setting up a couple of shelves for this purpose to our delight and so we got working on which books would make it to the department and which ones would be sold off. In the end we managed to get a trunk load of books to the department and there they stand a proud reminder of our endeavours on behalf of literature.

The State Of Books: #1 - The Desecration.

In the last year of my under-graduate studies, they decided to build a new library in my college and clear out the old one entirely. I mean – Entirely! And they decided to sell out everything to the students who wanted them, at very cheap rates. That’s the good part, but then they emptied all the shelves, hundreds of books onto the library floor in a heap of pages, literature and precious records of human writings!

How could anyone permit such a desecration?

How could the college management not have stopped this horror?

How could the librarian have stood by and watched this entire event take place before her very eyes?

These were the most pressing questions weighing heavy upon my heart as I stood at the entrance to the underground storage area with tears rolling down my cheeks and blood oozing from my lower lip where I’d bitten it to stop myself from screaming out aloud at this violation of the temple of Education. My heart was wrenched in two as I walked into the chamber in a daze of abject misery of the horror perpetrated within these halls. I saw torn books, books without covers, shredded volumes, torn pages, unbound covers, half-vanished collections and scribbled manuscripts lying around. It was a scene of carnage and reminded me of the battle of Zutphen. Just as Sir Philip Sidney, the torch of English literature in his age was killed that day, the works of countless other authors and poets were layed to waste in that library. I could even for a moment of despair compare it to the destruction of the library at Alexandria or the book burnings in Nazi Germany.

Some of the other literature students who’d come along with me were also shocked at the amount of destruction that could befall a library that was the pride of the college in its heyday. It was unimaginable how much destruction could take place when you come to think about it and I wonder if I had not witnessed the fall of literature, an event that took place only a few times in human history. This was indeed a day that will live in infamy and will always remain one of my most disturbing experiences in life. People who do not read or write or have much to do with literature may think that I’m over-reacting, but ask a true bookworm, they will tell you that my pain is as real as the pain at the death of a family member.

However, some of the other literature students and I managed to get few of the books to safety, but that story is for another time perhaps.