WHY WE LOVE BOOKS!

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.