BOOKWORMS

 

"Books are our best friend”, so goes the age old adage, but like all good things must come to an end, books are also on life support system these days. Books are synonymous to creativity, they give wings to our imagination and are handy, always available for inspiration or even just for jest. Alas the days of yore are no more, today shelves in the libraries stare at you emptily, as there are many amongst them who have retained their virginity, remain untouched by hand. Even the classics are languishing in the same state with nobody even making a superficial enquiry. Occasionally there are a few oldies who still trudge on and lovingly pick an odd one, handle it with utmost care and may even borrow it for a while. By and large quite a dismal scene, it appears as though it is time to finally write their epitaphs. If it was not for text books, probably by now the printed books would have become extinct like the dodos. Text books are also hanging on by a slender lifeline as laptops and tabs have sent shivers down their spine literally. The dictionary, encyclopaedia, atlas, thesaurus have already disappeared from the scene. 

Some oldies still can’t do without them though, some of us have gone ahead and got ourselves a kindle but still miss the smell and the feel of the books. Reading was the first “R” in the three “R”s that we all strived for and a prerequisite for the other two. When we learnt how to read, it was such a joy that we went about reading anything and everything including hoardings aloud to the chagrin of our parents. We progressed and got addicted to story books, comics, novels, fiction and the love affair with books continued; text books naturally were given a step motherly treatment as they would be picked up only as a last resort. We would visit libraries, pick up choicest books, sit there cursorily glance through the pages of classics as there were only finite number of books which we could borrow.  Books were exchanged with friends, they also served as carriers of love letters and bore testimony to many blossoming puppy love affairs. Most of us as kids kept our precious bird wings and flowers neatly closeted in the pages of our favourite books. We even had Mobile Libraries , some enterprising guy who would carry a box full of books and magazines and deliver them at your doorstep for a fee. During the summer vacation we would eagerly await his arrival. 

The more we read, the hunger and the appetite increased multifold, we were the classic bookworms, what an apt moniker, alas we are also on the verge of extinction. Sundays and holidays were spent glued to books, meals were delayed, tea would go cold as we were engrossed in the suspense eagerly turning the pages, waiting to solve the mystery. Some of us would turn the pages and cheat to check out but most of us would savour the edge of the seat thrill. In school we played book cricket, where we or our favourite cricketers would go on to score centuries or grab hat tricks galore.

 As we grew older, we started to buy books as these were a prized possession and worth displaying in the bookshelves. A healthy bookshelf was a mark of a well read and groomed person, one cursory glance and one could discern his/her tastes, philosophy, likes and even culture. There was poetry, drama, short stories, novels, epics, classics, thrillers, mystery and all the genres of written word were available and each one had their fan following. Poets were love lorn so were their fans, drama was the favourite of people who were attention seeking, short stories aficionados were short on patience and the novels and classics guys were typically philosophers and so on. 

Ironically there are more books available in the market today, purchasing power has multiplied and though we buy books but hardly read them even if we start, the attention  deficit syndrome has effected us all in such a way that we can’t finish them. Why am I writing this, even I am a culprit, haven’t been reading enough and as an author know the fate that awaits my books as well, but then we are incorrigibly optimist. There are still some minuscule minority who would still prefer the written word as the last word on the subject.