That is exactly what happened to me, this morning, when for no apparent reason, I was caught staring at my bookshelf. I slid the glass pane, and thought to myself, “where’s the book that talks about the “cultural politics of sexuality”, I am in a frame of mind to go back to that essay”.
Before long, I was running my hand along each book on the shelf.
No, my books are never neglected – not for long. I feel them ever so once in while. I run my hands, flipping through the journey that the book has made, through geographies, thus chalking my life too.
It is NOSTALGIA.
There are treasures that come out of every book, some stirring moment of the past – each book in my bookshelf chronicles a time, place, event, and moment of when and why a book was picked. There are traces of a life gone by. A moment that could not be captured for more than a breath.
It is strange. If I need to see how far I have traveled, I need to slide open my bookshelf.
I flip through Germane Greer’s The Female Eunuch (just below my signature, the date states: 08.04.99), I am immediately transported to my university days. I recollect borrowing this book from my university professor, reading it cover to cover – then started the microscopic examination of my life, my history, and my identity.
I come to the section that has a collection on M.K Gandhi. In this collection, is Gandhi A Memoir by William L Shirer.
This book, I tell everyone (almost evangelizing) is a must to read, before you die.
I loose my self for the moment. I flip through this book, going immediately to a passage that I have read a zillion times before. The court scene that played out in Ahmadabad on March 1922 before C.N. Broomsfield (District and Sessions Judge) and Sir, J.T Strangman, the Advocate General. The charges the Advocate General argues are of preaching disaffection, bringing or attempting to bring hatred or contempt, or exciting, or attempting to excite disaffection towards His Majesty’s government, established by law in British India. Gandhi pleads guilty of all charges.
However, what draws me most to this passage is that C.N Broomsfield moved by Gandhi’s words, though acting on behalf of the state, sentences M.K Gandhi to six years of ‘simple’ imprisonment.
A strange co-incidence, this. I recall, I was supposed to teach a passage from Gandhi a Memoir that was part of the syllabus of the Major English students. The collage was closed for October vacation, and the lecturers were to help the librarians take an inventory of the books in the library. On a hot October afternoon, standing on a stool, going through hundreds of un-touched old, dusty, grimy books, I accidentally fell upon this masterpiece.
I recollect how I enthused each of my students to reading and appreciating this book and understanding a history that is becoming bleak in our “popular” culture. That said, I wanted to have a personal copy of this book, and realized that it was last “re-published” in 1983, and now was out of print.
My brother came to my rescue and shipped it for me all the way from United Kingdom on Wednesday January 12, 2004.
I realize there is a lot of dusting left. I pick up the books of Elie Wiesel – Night and Dawn. These books chronicle the darkness that surrounded the brutality of the holocaust and the terrors in concentration camps (Auschwitz and Buchenwald). Visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington DC on 27 March 2007 was the closest I could come to realizing that there is more to be done in this world, to redeem ourselves of the sins of hatred that we bear towards our won.
Interestingly, I leave bookmarks in each book. Some bookmarks are gifts from loved one. One bookmark states: “Under the FRIENDSHIP tree, two may take shade and SOLVE the world’s problems” – with love S.
And, then I find this beautiful bookmark, that I picked up from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, when I had gone to view the “Americans in Paris, 1860-1900”. The bookmark is the painting of John Singer Sargent, Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) 1883-84. Oil on Canvas. This stayed hidden in one of the books that I picked up from the Harvard Book shop, at the Kendal Station, in Cambridge.
I realize through the dusting od books, flashback of memories keeps playing back and forth. Friends have come and gone. I have lost precious books. They never came back. So did the people who took them. You loose a book. You loose a friend.
I have soiled my hands. Arranging and re-arranging books takes a hell lot of time. I find treasures in each book. You never know what piece of truth is slipped and hidden away in these books. Rightly, so, I find this beautiful and funny card, that must have arrived the day I was reading William Styron – Darkness Visible – A Memoir Of Madness (Picked up at the MIT Bookstore July 2006, Cambridge). It’s a card that Shine has sent me on my Birthday (20 May 2008). It says:
Hello DAHHHLiNG
On Your
BiRTHDAY
I propose
tHat We make a PacT
to Let each otHer Know
iF oNe of uS eveR
becomes aN
ECCENTRiC
BiTCH
Shine signs, “With nothing but love”
Dusting book selves…
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