The last bell of the fair has rung. Just as an artist packs up alone in a hotel room after a show, preparing to head home, the books lined up in the stall carry the same fatigue. Despite repeatedly asking the tour manager, the hotel room and train seat couldn’t be changed; had they been, the journey and performance would have gone smoother. In that silent disappointment, the new books cast a slightly teary glance his way, though the publisher didn’t notice. He walked away. Moments, sales calculations, sips of water, and royalties—all of it behind him now, and even he doesn’t know when he’ll encounter them again.
Books don’t have a Shah Rukh Khan. If they did, maybe, like Om Shanti Om for the actors, they too would realize that a good reader eventually finds the book. And if they don’t, it’s understood that there’s still another edition to come, my friend. So they want to choose their readers, just as a soul chooses its own womb. Readers read them, but books read nothing. They don’t go to any school. There’s no training for becoming an ideal book. Even a tiger sometimes ends up in a circus, but books have no such fate. No Bhagavad Gita exists for books. Thus, patience, stability—they know none of it. Without an MBA degree, they don’t understand the market. Like restless souls, they too choose the wrong anchors, haunted by opposing habits and left to gather dust. Eventually, some unfeeling library, like a morgue, swallows them whole.
One day in college, entering such a library shattered my ego to pieces. There was no dust in that library; under LED lights, the spines of the books were clearly visible. Later, I counted—a family of roughly a thousand books. The owner bought books, but never read them. And I, having found just one book among those thousand, comforted myself for years by thinking of myself as its professor. Back then, I hadn’t yet understood the true essence of a library, the difference between Kashi and Kalighat. A book might take its own time to understand this too. Like the Skanda Purana, it might find its worth only after a thousand years. And if, by chance, a good reader ever comes along? Then who can hold it back! If you know the meaning of the word “tantrum,” or if you’ve ever worked in the studios of Tollygunge, there’s no need for further explanation. Just as a rustic spirit bewilders your path, muddling your mind, its incantations hum continuously in your head all day, as you reach into your pockets to buy something for others. As a matchmaker, it’s no less than a ritualist itself. But for the young, uninitiated books at the fair, this journey is just beginning. Full of dreams, emotions, attachments—and value. For now, it still considers its cover to be its life, celebrating the turning of pages as if each day is a new birthday.
