Relishing on Relics

The only way I could ward off my frustrations was by making a long expedition into streets where books are sold. There aren’t many of that kind in the city yet one is sure to find a suitable midnight darling depending upon your age, experience, and most importantly your “mood”, which prefers one writer to the other in different hours of the same day!

The city is not bred with rich literary tastes and the few shops which sell books turn out to be too modest in their collection, even depressing at times. But that is when you’ve a fetish to buy new books only and an intense disrelish for anything used and soiled by too many hands. The city gets absolutely seductive when you are on a hunt for books; old and yellowed with time. There’s some kind of a silly romantic pleasure that walks along with you in these streets and makes you stop at every nondescript shop nay, cabin and forces you to look for books of your interest amidst that eye-relishing heap of volumes.

It is highly likely that you might end up getting your hands on an odd volume of old English authors, or editions that have been long out of print, or anthologies of the finest collected poems, essays and memoirs.

I remember the last summer when I was high on Hardy and how an anxious visit to these streets to find more of him ended in something like a treasure hunt. I was literally hopping from one end of the street to the other as everyone had some other shop to refer to where almost all the English authors are likely to co-exist. Today, I’ve almost all of Hardy’s on my book shelf; a prized possession of meticulous English, which cost me less than a hundred bucks.

But somewhere down the line buying books on the net replaced every other modes of shopping and my visits to these streets became less and less frequent. Much seems to have changed now. Some of the big old shops are still there but the cabins have been removed and they now lie scattered in obscure places of the area. In one word the streets look neat and clean and organized, and the hunt becomes tiring and toiling, but its fun anyway.

Whiling away an evening in these streets, leafing through odd old volumes, I realized how much of priceless and rare antiquity lies unclaimed and neglected in these dingy looking cabins. If only people were novel enough to appreciate antiquity…

Whiffs of evening dust now began to settle on the books and a call from mom reminded me that I had to pick her up from her office. I was about to return with my prized find of The Metaphysical Poets by Helen Gardner, when all of a sudden I remembered that it was the 23rd of April, a date which is held to be sacred by all lovers of English literature.

It couldn’t have occurred to me at a better place, I thought! Shakespeare lay in an extravagant abundance in front of me…


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