Pleas from an unopened book

If books could talk, and audible doesn't count

Unknown to others, I was present in a warehouse, specifically bin P112-4A; besides a kitchen knife and a pack of skipping rope. People with carts passed by me. Picking items from nearby shelves, scanning them with their remote like devices. I still remember the beeps of those devices like it was just yesterday. I had no time for calm or respite at that place, be it day or night. It looked like there was always some emergency, someone desperately in need of a pack of gum that the people hurriedly went to pick.

Unknown to me, you were lying on your bed. Your face was illuminated by the dull light from your mobile device. Your Twitter feed, distinctly visible in your pupil against the dark backdrop of the room, as a siren from a distant ambulance, pierces through the silence of the night. The sound breaks your doom-scrolling, if for a fleeting moment. You have a second of reckoning and decide to do something productive. What first comes to your mind is to sleep early so that you could wake up at a decent time but you know these thoughts are like gurneys, no one wants them unless it is an absolute necessity.

You see a new book review and decide to make a dent in your reading list for 2021. Your Goodreads to-read list is growing at a faster rate than the sea-level. You browse for half an hour for the perfect book, look up the New York Times review of books, see the top Amazon bestsellers but there is always that one pesky reviewer who gives the book a one-star, and it makes you think that it is not worth your time. Then you remember, you have many unread books from the last time you went to the bookstore and from the times even before. You find those dusty books, scan the barcodes, add them to your Goodreads library and go back to reading the reviews. After some time you realize that you bought these books at a different point in your life and now they don’t interest you.

You definitely don’t want to read classics now, you are not in school to be forced to do so. Also, they are at too slow a pace for this fast modern life where the notification for rain comes even before the first droplet drops. What about fiction then? You used to enjoy it as a child; the fast-paced whodunnit series ranging from pre-teen detectives to octogenarian sleuths. Or the occasional fantasy novel in whose imaginary world you could escape, Nah you're too old for that. You think non-fiction is a better use of your time, but can you trust the writers? At last you find one book recommended by the “Algorithm” and go into a deep dive trying to find out details about the author. The book’s topic seems engaging, it has blurbs from the top experts in the field but you find that the author’s Twitter feed and it's filled with politics you don’t agree with. No issues, the search goes on for the next one.

It’s well past two, and even the surging melatonin cannot stop you from this quest to find a good book. You finally find a review of a book by your favourite New York Times book reviewer. You try to find the e-book first or the audiobook, but then you are hit by a revolutionary idea. Why not buy the paperback, it would be fun to sift through the pages again. You go on the ‘river’ site and order a copy and go back to sleep, happy after accomplishing a herculean task.

Unbeknownst to you, my intermittent slumber is interrupted by a beep, a scan, someone has finally picked me up and put me in a cart. Is this how orphan kids feel who are finally adopted? I began my ride on a conveyor which I mistook for a roller coaster and was then packed in a cardboard box. And thus began my long journey to an unknown place. I had imagined this experience for so long but the helplessness of not knowing where I was going even though it was written just outside so close to me. There is a metaphor here somewhere which I would have quoted had I been a Murakami. Finally, my wait was over and I was delivered to your home and sat in a corner waiting to be opened.

You went about your day and thought the package that is delivered was the single estate coffee beans you had ordered and were a bit disappointed to see me. Understandable I thought, people will appreciate me after reading…they must have been taught to not judge a book by its cover. You took out the free bookmark and placed it in one of your journals. Even then I had hope., maybe you were a voracious reader who didn’t need bookmarks.

I sat at your table for a week, while you browsed through your feed or watched a series. I was impressed by your ability to finish a season in a single sitting and hoped you would do the same with me. I saw one day you were browsing the book recommendations based on my purchase and saw a couple of friends I recognized. You picked me up, read the sleeve and the index, wrote your name on me, in a bigger font than the author’s name and then put me back. I didn’t peg you to have a tsundoku¹ problem but, alas weeks turned into months and now I occupied a dusty bookshelf in your closet. Seeing many books covered in webs but their spine hardly broken made me realize my fate. One of the old fellows greeted me “Nice to meet you Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal.”

Oh, what I would give now to be in my bin P112-4A along with a knife and a skipping rope.

1. Tsundoku: Japanese term for the art of buying books and never reading them.