When it comes to books, Sadanand and I are on the same page. Both love books fresh from the printing press, inviting us to take them to the olfactory vicinity of our noses.
Due to reasons attributable to physical infirmity, I could not visit the recent Chennai Book Fair. Sadanand, who dropped in one night recently, looked woebegone. He came without his loaded big shopper bag crammed with the current year’s purchase. Our favourite pastime would be to admire the blurb on the jacket, frontispiece illustration, and more importantly inhale the individualistic fragrance, a reader’s time-honoured sensual delight. No Kindle can offer that. We used to examine our catch (rather cache), like two ladies appraising saris they fished from the maha samudra in T Nagar or Mylapore with monumental patience (of the shop assistants, that is! )
Sadanand said, “This time around, my wife, Resident Controller of beetles, moth, silverfish and other bugs that infiltrate into the book shelves in my library, had put her foot down and ruled no more new books, repeat, no more new books, period. This means I should not go in for the new editions/reprints of books to replace the old editions sporting dog ears, serving as bookmarks. Since my memory is on the downside and a bookmark may not be available when and where it is required, I dog ear a page, an aberration in the character of a book lover. It will be tempting when I see the arrival of a reprint of such books; I go for them so that my shelf has a line up of brand new copies with gleaming spines. She condescended, with a proviso that the old copies no longer should be in any line-up and must be shown the gate.”
Sadanand scratched his unshaved cheeks, as if readying himself to hop into the next topic, which was the disposal of such books having historical value. “The very thought of parting with them depressed me. But before long, I hit upon a plan. I located the lending libraries in Chennai at Mylapore, T Nagar, Adyar and Triplicane. After reflecting over it, I felt the residents in the first three by and large will belong to the upper echelons with no fund constraints, when the book bug bites them. Not so in the case of Triplicane, where such people may be fewer in number. I donate the books to a famous lending library there.”
Sadanand looked up to me for my reaction. “Yes, a noble thought, Sada, though running counter to Shakespeare’s dictum, ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be!’”
J S RAGHAVAN
Email: jsraghavan@yahoo.com