BOOKED FOR LIFE ( A feature from The Times of India)
That's the thing about books. They are not static objects that furnish your rooms and morosely collect dust on your shelves. They are little edicts of the un-Kodak moments in one's life. They can be more evocative than photo albums because what they evoke is not literal, nor digital and unequivocal. Rather, like a melody or a scent, they let you wander off into the space where the book was read, or bought, or gifted...or perhaphs stolen! One by one, they emerge. I sneeze. I get sentimental. I stop to read a page. It is about the scent of bitter almonds.
I have a few geeky fetishes about books. For one, I always pick up a book relevant to the place I am in and try to discover it through the writing. Where you read the book makes a great difference to the experience. I am convinced it was even more glorious reading Shalimar the Clown under a quilt in northern Himachal this summer, where the stunning aquiline-nosed village woman down the road could easily hae been Boonyi, Rushdie's hapless heroine. Reading it in Mumbai would not have been the same.
I have another fetish for books: How I organise them on my shelves. I refuse to follow a friend's advice that I should enclose them in a cabinet to protect them from dust. I find that akin to outting loose covers on a sofa - practical but unappealing. I want to be able to amble past a shelf on my way to bed, and be arrested in my tracks by a spine, and change my evening plans.
Then, I put aside a chosen few for a special shelf in my bedroom. These are the ones that I wato go back and have an affair with. They are redolent with scents, filled with melodies unheard. They are the ones whose writing I hope will travel to my pillow at night and overwhelm me with their beauty.
1 comment:
Your are Nice. And so is your site! Maybe you need some more pictures. Will return in the near future.
»
Post a Comment