B is for books. Books have always been and still are my best companion. What’s better than those ivory pages into which you can bury your nose and inhale the sweetest smell on earth? Who can you have more confidence on to never judge you? Who else’s only motto in life is to enlighten you? They give me the flight, I can flutter my wings over the entire world without having to actually take my legs there. They teach me nothing is impossible, they show me new sides of what I have already known. They prepare me before I am about to face the unknown. They give me knowledge to perceive people better. Really, how can one even list down the qualities of books? It’s already proving to be the most futile attempt ever. I was very little, barely five, when Ma introduced me to reading. I was enrolled as the youngest member of our local library which was also amongst the bests in the city. Her purpose must have been to keep me engaged, to keep me from feeling lonely while she and papa were away working. I guess effect was as she desired but more than she had hoped for. The library attracted me like a moth to the fire. Rows upon rows of books, old books with their sweet dusty smells, books that I had to use ladders to reach, those golden letters on their spines and those black ones on the old yellowing pages inside seemed to have bewitched me, for, I was always at the library when I was not at school. So many books to read, so many new things to learn, how could I waste a single moment? Then there was the book fair. Once a year, every year. Thousands of makeshift book stalls adorned the green ground, books from around the world, unlike those leather bound ones from the library, they were colourful. Faces of people, drawings of beautiful places or animals adorned their crisp covers, their pages smelled new and they told different stories of different people around the world. It still happens, the book fair. Still thousands of people visit every day to buy books, making the air stuffed with dust that rises from their shoes. I will again one day too, visit the book fair and inhale the dusty air smelling of sweat, to experience the best thing that can happen to the world, books of course, in the best possible way. Till that time I am content to have Barnes and Nobles, Amazon and the Half Price Book Shops at my disposal. Along with the other complications of adulthood, came the critical eye. In my childhood I read everything I could without really judging them, it was the information that I sought. But now when I read a book I critique it mentally, internally. Yet I try to keep the open mindedness of my childhood self when I read something new. I try to learn from those, to perceive the world in yet another color. Books have been my world since I have learnt to read, and though reading books is the most under-appreciated and unacknowledged pleasure that humans can have, I have no scruples in admitting that it’s the greatest I have ever known. Love
This post is part of ABC Wednesday's weekly prompt. This week's prompt is the alphabet B.
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Riot of Random
