Books are our perennial companions. Unlike humans, they never ditch us. They form perfect bed-mates. One need not be a bibliophile in order to enjoy a good book. Now-a-days, when reading as a habit, is taking a backseat, lending libraries are outing down their shutters once and for all. Even book shops are calling it a day, thanks to online purchases via Amazon, the portal to solve any problem under the glaring sun.
Recently, the Gandhi Peace Prize was awarded to the oldest press operating in our land. The Gita Press, established as early as 1923, prints and distributes the Hindu religious text. But a furore erupted as soon as the announcement was made. As the press was accused of spreading Sanatan Dharma, the award – some said – was politically motivated. Politics and books have had a long history. Karl Marx’s Das Kapital is still the Bible for the fledgling mass of Communists around the globe. Love for and of books, can manifest itself in diverse manners. I had always dreamt about building up a personal library full of books, which I can access at will and at random. Gone are the days of giving requisition slips and waiting for books to arrive at the National Library and the British Council.
June 19 was celebrated as the National Reading Day across the country. Book discussions, book readings, and interestingly-varied competitions around the habit of reading, were held – both on the print as well as the digital media. I cannot prevent myself from blaming these platforms for the ebbing of our reading habits. Smartphones have opened up the world in the cusp of one’s palm. Children no longer read Tagore’s lines –
“Where the mind is without fear
And the head is held high.”
Instead, WhatsApp and the ever-popular social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, have captured the reading hours of children. Parents are helpless. Outdoor activities have all but taken a backseat. Digital media has put a brake on die-hard old habits and has accelerated the technological carburettor.
Things hadn’t been this way even two decades ago. The hoof beats of the media could be heard from a distance. No one believed that it’d eventually gobble up a large part of our lives! E-Readers were a long way off. Reading books meant paperbacks, or better still, a visit to a bookstore. Gifting someone a book with a personalized message, meant that the recipient was someone close to the giver’s heart. On my own birthdays, it was mandatory for my parents to gift me with a good book. My mother inculcated the reading bug inside me at a very young age. So much so that the thirst to read more… and more… grew with the advancement of years. We weren’t very rich. So the amount of books that could be purchased at a given time, was limited. Right from my school days, libraries became the place where I found myself sitting – later on lazy afternoons – surrounded, happily, with favourite books.
Hence, soon libraries grew to be a haunt which I frequented regularly. While studying English Literature at college, we were required to do a lot of reference work. In the last decade of the past century, Wikipedia and Google search engines were a distant thunder. Libraries were the best places for students like us, to further our reading. In the classroom, our professors gave out cyclostyled sheets which had the names of books for further reading. These books would help us understand our study materials - texts – more and also the researchers who have worked on the life and works of the writers whom we were studying. For example, when we were studying Romantic Poetry – the poems of Keats, Shelley etc – we were encouraged to read Maurice Bowra’s The Romantic Imagination. The very first line of the first chapter goes like this :
“If we wish to distinguish a single characteristic which differentiates the English Romantics from the poets of the eighteenth century, it is to be found in the importance which they attached to the imagination and in the special view which they held of it.”
Books enrich us. Books also belittle us.
The knowledge that the habit of reading provides us with, is unparalleled. But like everything else, this habit also has a flip side to it. Lending libraries usually lent books to readers and members for an allotted time frame. Memories of time spent in libraries are like going through an old family album. Sepia- tinted… browned… If any member kept the book for a longer period of time then he or she was required to pay a certain amount of money as fines. But what happens if the member decides not to return the library book at all?
The person should be called a book thief, shouldn’t that be the case? If that’s the case, then I should be called a culprit. My mind travels scores of years back. I was studying in St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta. The College library is very famous for its repertoire of books and the people manning the place are very helpful to students. But there were times when a student requisitioned for a book, and the book, in all probability, was already lent. Then we had to resort to the other lending libraries of the city. Among the ones here, the British Council Library on Shakespeare Sarani – it’s now relocated to Camac Street at the L & T Chambers – and the Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture’s library at Golpark in south Calcutta, were the places which I frequented. Even after my College and University days, I had continued my membership at the BCL because it’s vast repertoire of classic novels as well as those of post-modernist literature remains of world renown.
It so happened that I had borrowed a volume of T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems from the Ramkrishna Mission Library at Golpark. I liked reading Eliot’s poetry so much that, deliberately or otherwise, I completely overlooked the fact that the book had to be returned. Libraries in those days, had the postal addresses of all their members in their logbooks. In their records, we were under constant supervision and vigilant eyes. The Head Preacher of the Institute or the Maharaj arrived at our residence one day in the early morning hours! We, me and my parents, were still enjoying our cups of tea at that time. I will never forget the red blood-shot eyes of my father. We were all speechless and I – the culprit – didn’t have the courage to acknowledge my guilt.
But the surprising fact is that the yogi did not take back the book with him. The mentioned book – Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot is still there, in my bookshelf till today, resting among a host of other books.
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 - 4 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor – all rolled into that one persona. Considered as one of the major poets of the twentieth century, T.S. Eliot is considered to be a central figure in English -language Modernist poetry. Through his experiments in language and writing style as well as in verse structure, he reinvigorated English poetry. His magnum opus The Waste Land (1922), which won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, has these opening lines in the very first poem, The Burial of the Dead:
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”
Incidentally, The Waste Land ends with the three words: Shantih! Shantih! Shantih! From our own scriptural texts. If borrowing a book, and keeping it beyond its allotted time, is called ‘thieving’, then I can veritably be called a book thief. But thieving of books, is a crime of a sublime variety.
I had heard a very funny account from my own father’s lips. One day, one of his friends had arrived at his doorstep (those were his bachelor days), on an early morning (yes, again!) and had gone straight to the place where the in-house books were shelved.
“I have recently lost some books. I’ve come to see whether they can be found here.”
The person, quite obliviously, had informed my father, who, in his turn, had stared at his own friend with an aghast expression. Idiosyncrasies make us unique. If all of us were equal, then life would’ve been so very boring. It is this uniqueness in living, that makes us dream big. We might have been automatons. But we are not. It is our intellect that sets us apart. Wars have been fought not so much with weapons as with clashing intellects.
We, the ones with a rich past, learn about these through, yes, books. So we have come to where we’d begun in the first place. The circuitous journey of human living is also, yes, unique.