Dear self-proclaimed Matilda,
Sipping your scalding hot chocolate, gulping in the aroma of the tulips and sitting cross-legged under the shade of a tree, you let the rays of the sun spill over your book. This spillage isn’t the indelible stain of coffee on your coat; it’s the shimmering pearl necklace your paperback of joy wears. It makes your book aesthetically pleasing and it attracts your attention. Your book becomes the showstopper without actually doing anything. You feel tempted to hold it, feel it and once you flip that cover, you are sucked into a whirlpool of dreams, imaginations, ideas, values and fun. The more pages and words your fingertips traverse, the deeper you venture, eventually reaching a stage from where escape is impossible. You become a part of this mammoth phenomenon and miracle and now, it feels like home. Home is where your heart is, these books are where your heart is. There is no returning to the planet lined third in our solar system. You are staying in this entirely new, rhapsodic universe. It’s your desire; not a choice.
Let’s envision a situation B now. The setting remains the same, that is, the sun-spilled garden, but the type of reading material in your hands changes. A perfectly cut and designed electronic tablet or Kindle whose lifespan is restricted to a mere percentage on the top right hand corner, stares uglily and you stare back, straining your eyes till the blue light maims their delicate parts. You notice yourself not enjoying the experience of reading on such a device. Your hands miss their tangibility, your heart silently sobs for the joy and you long for the thrill.
At this moment, epiphany strikes like a galvanic streak of lightning. Physical books are an irreplaceable joy.
The newly-invented concept of eBooks has left me unearthing answers for the questions buried deep inside my brain. I am an archaeologist at the ancient site of buried physical books, trying to excavate them and restore them to their original resplendence. I feel all the book lovers belong to this archaeological community. And we are working very hard to achieve our goal.
In this dog-eat-dog world of rapidity, mechanisation and advancement, technology is something that endeavours to mould the world into an easy, digitised place. Technology, I believe, is just like a snake; it is able to slither into nearly all spheres of life, be it cooking, fitness, shopping and even reading. Just everything and anything you think of has some rooted connection to technology. It’s highly incredulous to believe how this evolution has taken place. We have turned from apes to troglodytes painting pictures of deities on walls and finally into software engineers and graphic designers creating line graphs and pie charts with a few clicks. However, yes, like a snake, technology is poisonous and its venom is highly dangerous. Now, it has spread in the world of reading and books in the form of eBooks. Slowly, it is leading to the submergence of physical books - a worst-case scenario for book collectors and lovers across the globe.
Since we are discussing technology, let’s take this topic forward and then link it to one of the endangered species. No, not the Royal Bengal Tiger or Indian Rhinoceros. I’m talking about physical books. You heard it right!
We’re the Avengers! Let’s travel back in time! No, not to retrieve the Infinity Stones; to retrieve our long-lost traditions and habits of a pure lifestyle. Did the Australopithecus or Homo habilis have smartphones? Did they relax on plush sofas, munch on Chips Ahoy and scroll through Instagram photos of Virat and Anushka's fat Indian wedding? Or did our grandparents, back in the nineteenth or twentieth century, paste their eyeballs onto phones? No. Why not? They engaged themselves in a wide variety of non-digital activities like cooking, gardening, painting, stitching and...say it aloud for that teenager gathering her lips in a pout for her latest Facebook post! And...READING PHYSICAL BOOKS.
Parents, being parents, give in to their child’s chivvies and lend them phones. Now, the child is no longer a child. After creating accounts on all social media platforms, he sets the ball rolling. He is so addicted to Iron Man’s fan page, his friends’ Instagram stories and mindless memes on Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala look that he forgets something very important. Time management.
He is willing to devote his time to someone else’s life but he seems to be unaware that his prime priority is he himself. This child needs to learn productivity. He needs to find ways to spend his time constructively and work towards building his future instead of doing something that will take him nowhere in the long run.
This brings me to the main point of this article, which is simple and straightforward - READING PHYSICAL BOOKS. I never nagged my parents for a phone because I never needed one. Even today, I share a phone with my sister in fact. In my life, there are no traces of social media and that’s possibly why I seem pretty unknowledgeable in front of my friends when they discuss Snapchat filters or tagging people in posts. But to be honest, I have never felt ashamed of that because I do not require to know that. For me, my sources of knowledge and entertainment are specifically physical books. Even in airports, train stations or malls, the first thought that pops into my head is of a bookstore. My mother thinks I have a delirious obsession with just being in there. There are plenty of reasons for that. The collective scent of the different books, sitting on their thrones, the feel of their spines and fresh pages, the alignment of the words, the colourful images and the cornucopia of genres make my lips curve into a smile. I feel a very different connection with my ‘human’ friends.
Let me highlight the real issue now. Compare the presence of a clothes or electronics store with that of a bookstore or a library. One will find rows and rows of clothes outlets. The first is a shoe store, second is a boutique, third is a casual summer clothes store and the chain is endless. What about the latter? Only one library. Only one bookstore. The above comparison is the true story of the Lokhandwala Market in Mumbai. If books are equally important as clothes and gadgets, why this disparity in store distributions? Growing up as a bibliophile, I was never exposed to a library, not because my parents took me to one, but because we never found one. In India, a nation blinded by its love for Bollywood, cricket and politics, libraries are a rare gem. If found, it’s the next Mohenjo-daro.
Look at the guilty pleasures of being a part of the book universe. There are many. When facing a bookmark famine, we surreptitiously dog-ear that page. We do not hesitate to carry them with us everywhere we go, even if it’s the restroom. There seem to be no walls in our houses because we do not mind the formidable bookshelves hiding them. It doesn’t matter if we’re broke. Books are all we need.
Max Joseph, a YouTuber, said in one of his videos:
“Bookstores are art galleries, with stories attached,”
- a heartwarming truth. They’re happiness and paradise. They’re lovely presents for all ages, wrapped in one big box of a bookstore, a library. The power of a physical book can wire brains to think differently and gain a whole new perspective in life. They will guide children on their path to reformation and success.
Like pandas, they’re endangered. Like pandas, they need to be protected. Like pandas, we do not want to see them getting wiped off our planet.
We lose ourselves in books and we find ourselves there too.
Out there, we have a number of scientific facts in favour of the printed word, however, these are my personal musings that speak. This isn’t a polemic against eBooks and the digital space. This is my unconditional love for the printed papers holding stories galore, bundled together to make me the book advocate I am today.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am running late and I need to go to the bookstore. My bookshelves are desperate for a new friend! What about yours?
Yours effusively,
The Literary Artisan 💖
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