A single shelf takes up most of the
eastern wall in my room. There was a time when it was tightly packed,
radiated something of a military aura. Books standing erect,
practicing self-discipline. Now there are gaps, like a wicked grin on
an aging man's face. Whatever remains of the books now recline on one
another; some tilt towards the left, others towards the right. All
intoxicated beasts. A few of the thinner volumes crowd surf atop
their friends.
There is a vulgarity about the way the
books look at me. A haunted house? No, they don't speak the language
of death. Abandonment is the word that most comes to mind. A spillage
of half-attempts have made their home in different parts of my 12x14
room. Wobbly towers of different heights decorate what can be called
a very messy room. I'm not much of a reader, you see. Just a hoarder.
My self-constructed idea of organised
chaos tells me the very tall pile of books next to the shelf are the
ones I'd like to read the most. Yoga books, books on poetry –
Tagore and Rumi, some Thich Nhat Hanh, a Totto-chan. A smaller pile,
hidden beneath a debris of paper, bills, and envelopes, has a Kurt
Vonnegut and the diaries of Kafka. And since much of what Vonnegut
writes is surreally autobiographical, why not call this the Column of
Biographies? The five books on my table, sleeping under a tiny
version of The Little Prince, are mostly books on Buddhism and
buddhist practices. That's my spiritual reading pile. It's a really
neat pile. Doesn't get touched much. At the foot of the bed is my
collection of young adult fiction. The latest addition to my
burgeoning city of unread books.
One pile – a random assortment that's
taken a significant portion on the top of the shelf – is not my
doing at all. It is the work of who can perhaps be called the only
real reader in our home. There was a time when the contents of that
pile would rise steadily. On a daily basis grandfather would pull out
a book from the shelf and stack its predecessor atop the pile, making
it rise higher. At one point, it became so tall I had to shove half
the books back in the shelves below. But remnants of his reading
still remain. India After Gandhi. Beat Diabetes Naturally.
The BFG.
I continue to be baffled at the
obsessive manner with which grandfather would gobble up every single
book that came his way. It must have served some kind of need, but
I've never met anyone be so dispassionate towards something they
invested so much time doing. There is nothing to be said of his
sensibilities looking at his indiscriminate encounters with the
written word.
I've had weeping fits, sleepless
nights, frantic dreams, nightmares, revelations, multiple
conversations with friends, often a crazy impulse to write, reply,
return the favour to the writer, while reading just some of the same
books. But not him. Books had to be read and that was that. He never
talked about them afterwards. There were no favourites. Favourite
genre. Favourite author. Favourite book. He consumed them with the
same steady deliberation with which he would take his diabetes pills.
It was the same with the newspaper, the latest edition of the
Engineering Association's journal, electronics manuals.
There are only a handful of instances
when he has stated that he has not liked a book. From them I can
gather that he is not a fan of the Morrisons, the Gordimers
(“I don't understand how this woman won a Nobel prize in
literature,” - his response upon reading Something Out There.)
or the Murakamis of the literary world. Having read a handful of
Murakami myself, I can understand his unease with the author. Pages
of meandering storytelling that cheats the reader of any tangible
conclusion. If I were to pinpoint, that is perhaps the only thing
that binds our literary interests. A confusion over what to feel
towards this writer called Murakami.
That's little. Maybe I'm trying to hold
on to it as a way to subconsciously bond over grandfather beyond
familial ties? Being family, by default, means living in the same
household with the minimum of intimacies. Faces approached at face
value. There is neither occasion nor interest in exploring other
possibilities. Families don't sit and reflect on how they relate to
each other. I always felt like there must be another side to him
though. A side blindspotted by the things I am expected to
understand, appreciate about him. Did Murakami help me see him as a
person, like myself, independent of the myriad of roles he had to
play? It was little, but it was something.
Things have changed now. On the table
in the living room lies Gao Xingjiang's Soul Mountain. It's a
slightly tattered copy I bought at a secondhand bookstore in Thamel a
few years ago. Of course, I haven't read it. That's not what I do
with books. I'm a buyer, a hoarder. Not a reader of books.
An airmail envelop, folded in half,
serves as a bookmark for the 500 page-long novel. It's been slipped
somewhere within the first 100 pages. It's been there for a while.
Looks like grandfather isn't going to finish this one.
Elsewhere on the same table lies the
real cause of grandfather's divorce with books. In its glossy
rectangular casing, the laptop may be touted as modern man's greatest
inventions. To me it's nothing more than an electronic contraption
that houses all the demons known to destroy humankind. That wretched
pandora's box. Modern man's greatest affliction.
It all started with innocent visits to
setopati.com. Reading was what he was hungering for, after all. And
then Google Chrome gave him access to the world's largest collection
of videos. All it took was one click of that seductive red button,
one pursuit in the direction of that unwavering white triangle, and
he'd fallen into an abyss.
At first, evidence of his visits to
YouTube would echo through the whole house. Following the devious
breadcrumb trail YouTube laid out with its recommended videos,
grandfather went through his share of whacky homespun videos. There
was a time when, to my horror, he stumbled upon 'Top 10 Sexy Female
Aliens'. It didn't bother him in the least. But I got him a pair of
my old earphones. He could keep his YouTube exploits to himself.
To his delight, he soon found Hindi
films. Then Tamil films, Telegu films, all dubbed in Hindi. Then
Maithili and Bhojpure films. As with books, quality has never been a
concern. Quantity is the priority. Which means he'll watch almost
anything. It started with one screening a day. Then two. Now he
watches up to three movies a day.
Has the internet and its evils ensnared
grandfather? Sometimes, when the internet connection is slow or
disrupted, grandfather becomes a bit of a bumbling fool, pleading me
to help him connect to his YouTube account. There is a childlike
restlessness to his demeanor. Newfound cravings have changed him.
On the one-seater next to him sits
grandmother, effusing a self-discipline wholly missing in the old
man. All day, while grandfather dips in and out of a sea of user
uploaded videos, grandmother, hearing aid tucked into one ear, makes
an art out of listening to silence.
There was one point when she could not
stop saying, “Kati hernu hunchha. Aja lai pugi halyo ni.” By now
she's stopped complaining. Resigned perhaps to the fact that she's
lost her husband to a machine.
As people age, they lose themselves to
physical ailments or dementia or senility. My grandfather's fate is
of his own choosing. Sleepy siamese serpents slither across his belly
and plug themselves into his ears, doing the devil's work. Slowly but
steadily, they pluck away at grandfather's consciousness.
More than once I've seen him dose off
whilst plugged in. A hand still holding the chin up, eyes resolutely
shut. Sitting upright but unconscious. Like something picked from the
garden and placed in our living room. My grandfather. A degenerating
vegetable.
Recently I found a copy of Train to
Pakistan that I'd hidden in a drawer from long ago. It was brand
new when I bought and hid it. Unopened as it was, the book still
looked compact. But the pages had begun to yellow. Abandonment. The
fate of all my books. Not only had this one been abandoned, it had
been imprisoned as well, in solitary confinement no less, to please
my whims.
I'd been protecting the book from my
incredible book eating grandfather. I was greedy about devouring a
book in its newness. Its crisp, virgin pages, I'd wanted for myself.
Deep down though, I should have known I wasn't going to read it.
Ever. I've never been much of a reader. Just a hoarder.
Now Train to Pakistan lies
within grandfather's reach, on a shelf in the dining room. But that
copy is never going to be read, is it?
Maybe this would have been the one book
he would have loved. Maybe this one he'd have held up to me and said,
“Nanu, this is a great book. Do you have any more books by this
writer?”
These days, I'm afraid of entering
bookstores. The sweet smell of new books call to me. My hands itch
to buy and hoard. Lifelong habits die hard. But I resist. There was a
time when the comfort of knowing grandfather would certainly get his
hands on my books would propel me to place one more book on store
counters.
Now I resist. There's no saying for
sure the books I buy will get read anymore.
(From Read Magazine, Sept 2014)
