One day a school teacher asked a present
day student “tell me the name of your favorite book” and the student replied
“Facebook”. Everyone present there laughed on loud (lol), I am not clear
whether they laughed on the way the student replied or on the boring concept of
books.
I am not going to put-forth the history of
books as it can be easily accessed with the help of “Guru-Google” and even a
fifth class student can enlist the contemporary importance of books like:
“books are our best friends”, “they help us to enhance our vocabulary”, “books
help us learn about other cultures and ways of life”, “if you can read you can
learn anything”, etc. etc.
The demise of the books has long been
predicted. Television was forecast to rip us forcefully away from the novel and
computers was forecast to divert us from the encyclopedias and then comes the
social media which is supposed to take us away from the diaries but somehow the
written word survived – thanks to the cost and sluggish speed of internet and
the harmful rays coming out from the television and the computer sets.
After having so many gadgets and apps we
are still paralyzed without that small, flat, rigid squares of paper i.e.
books, and the reasons are as different as the diversity in nature. It is quite
enigmatic to learn that while some of us do not even take the pain to look at
those books decorated in the shelf for years, others consider books to be the
most important thing on earth. Now the question arises “why do we have different
levels of affection for books?” A simple answer again favors the concept of
diversity in nature. However, one satisfactory outcome of this discourse is
that everyone is somewhat related with the charisma of a book and that is the
reason behind its survival in this hi-tech scenario.
To me a book is not only a non-living
object but a body which contains the emotions of the writer having soul in the
form of texts. A writer becomes so emotionally attached with his book that it
can be explained with the following excerpt from a famous writer – “My sole
literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the
desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into
meditation, contemplating my novel.”
It
takes both time and blood to write a book and it is not that much easy as
sometimes percepts us. On a humorous note it has been said “the waste-basket is
a writer’s best friend” and it reflects how much work is done before concluding
a statement to be the part of a book.
You see! One more thing has been discovered
from the above excerpt that “a writer can be a good reader and vice-verse”.
Should I scream with “Eureka”?
Nope! I know that you already knew that but it was a way to point this
everlasting concept of a good reader/writer and if you still don’t like any
book then I do have one more proverb for you “if there is a book you really
want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”.
Now, come to the main concept why we love
books! And it can be explained with the philosophy of love that why we love
anything? Some of the common answers to this poser may be as: we love something
when we start attaching that thing with our personal lives; we love something
when we feel relaxed and composed in its presence, we love something when we
get the unexpected from it, we love something when that thing gives us so many
things and in lieu demands nothing, we love something when it wipes our
loneliness, we love something when it accompanies us when everybody denies our
company, and so on…..
There are many
more reasons to have love with the books: how time passes when we are reading
together. How books calm us all down, and let us take a break from our active,
fast-paced life. Reading
is full of adventure. Anything is possible when you read a good book. You can
fight the British with Laxmi Bai, sail the Atlantic Ocean
with Christopher Columbus, and accompany Mahatma Gandhi on the Salt-March.
Books transport us from Here to There …the place we have never been, or
the place that only exists when you open a book.
