The streets are alive with
the sounds of the evening rush hour. One by one a trail of sickly yellow lamps
come aglow in the smattering of tiny little shops packed tightly against each
other. A thin wire dangles at the entrance of each of these shops holding
various knick knacks from milk containers to baby dresses in bright garish
colors.
Somewhere, in the middle of
the busy street, the traffic has come to a grinding halt.
The cause of the commotion
slowly comes to light when the onlookers spot a stray bullock plonked right in
the middle of the road. A stream of angry honking can be heard till the last
stretch of the road as one by one the vehicles line up stranded behind the
bullock.
It’s a strange parody as
one notices the interesting conflict of emotions that takes place on the busy
street. As the intensity of the honking increases with tempers flaring, the
bullock seems even more undeterred with the pandemonium caused around him. He
raises his head with a somewhat defiant air and continues to chomp at the last
blade of the dead grass at an increasingly slow pace.
But the bullock is not the
main protagonist in this story. He is just a minor distraction. Amidst the
swarm of daily commuters and the smell of evening dinners getting cooked there
is this young girl Silla walking past slum infested areas pursuing her search
for a shop, famous for stacking up secondhand books.
It has to be somewhere
close she mutters to herself as she stares down at the address for the
umpteenth time, jotted hastily on a scrawny piece of paper before leaving from
home.
If not for her love for
books she would have easily given the pint sized shop a complete miss by
walking past it. However, a prickling doubt at the back of her head daunting
her loudly of having left something of grave importance behind, makes her
retract her steps and she turns around .Voila! A rickety little shop
miraculously springs into view half concealed behind a milk booth. Quite
incongruous in it’s appearance the shop could easily manage to deceive anyone
looking out for it.
A rusted tin board hangs at
it’s entrance displaying the name “Amiri Bookwallah” The faint lettering is
tarnished with oil paint stains, and there are huge holes spiking out from in
between the broken letters.
The owner, a thin frail
fellow with a receding hairline is seated outside on a wobbly little stool. His
one ear is pinned to a transistor. On seeing Silla’s doe like eyes peering
hungrily at the insides of the shop, he gets up and gently leads her in.
Once inside, Silla is in a
state of enchantment. There is something magical about the entire place. From
floor to ceiling books in every shape and size dominate the space. Some are
bound by thick worn out leather, while the frayed edges from others happen to
dangle loosely. There are also the risk takers who are quite daredevil in their
approach as they threaten to tumble, dangerously plopped one on top of the
other by doing a perfect balancing act.
All around her, the books
stare at her gawkily; misfit in their appearance but comfortably settled in
their respective dens.
Her eyes fall on a popular
classic “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She picks it up, taking
utmost care of not disturbing the other set of books lined up in a haphazard manner.
It’s a hardbound with a faint trace of dust collected at the corners. As she
leafs through the pages a sharp scent captivates her senses. She holds the book
close, breathing in the smell of old pages. In its dishevelled state it feels
like a treasure in Silla’s hand.
There is a stirring of
senses taking place within her like a slow awakening. Standing there in the
middle of the shop, she looks around at her surroundings. A table fan in the
corner is whirring at slow speed, there are dried flaky bits of paint tearing
away from the ceiling, and the ground below where her feet are planted, the red
earth stands exposed by the giving away of the linoleum tiles.
But for Silla she is
drenched in an absolute state of excitement of finally coming alive, surrounded
by so many books
It must have been days, the
owner recollects with a smile on his face, since a young reader had last
visited his shop. A sigh slowly escapes his lips on realising how today’s
generation find themselves to be part of high rise malls, discovering books
with gleaming covers stacked in book stores. They would be perched on wrought
iron table stools flipping thru the glossy pages.
Wistfully, he reminisces of
those golden times, when his tiny setup would be flocked by youngsters standing
atop plastic stools and raising their little arms high waiting to grab the Enid
Blytons and the Nancy Drews. Laden with an armful of books, their faces flushed
with excitement they would make their way out chattering nineteen to a dozen
about the land of adventures and mysteries they were soon going to unravel by
pouring themselves into those books.
The bookseller never gets
to know her name as Silla walks out dreamy-eyed from his shop. He sends a
little prayer, glancing at the sky upwards hoping that she too finds magic, in
reading the pages that had lost their sheen, the pages that still carried a
whiff of musty old scents from the olden times, the pages that had turned
yellow and would crackle and tremble at her touch.
The evening sunlight had slowly
lifted up, casting a honey stained glow on the skyline. Somewhere, the bullock
too had woken up from his evening reverie, unhurriedly making his way amongst
the throng of people.
Peace reigned once again.
