What’s A Heartbreak?
From a bibliophile’s perspective.
You are out to buy a newly released book.
That book is fresh out of a printing press and adorned in the “Newest Arrivals” section. That book which exudes a fresh smell, a captivating sillage that is sure to titillate the olfactory sense of any bibliophile and make them follow that scent subconsciously.
You check the section. You find the one you were looking for. You smile. You say “YES” in your mind. You pick it up and then part the book in the middle and let the fragrance give you a serotonin boost. You also try to rub some of that smell on your dress/shirt sneakily while being careful of the prying eyes of the owner of the store. You skim the blurb on the back cover. Then you ruffle the pages of the book to check for any “blots” in that crisp sheaf of newly printed papers. Even a misaligned cut in one page of the book calls for a heartless rejection.
Satisfied with your probe, the book now finds a new home in your clean, dust-free, childproof space on your shelf after you caress it for a few minutes. It occupies an isolated decorated place from its brethren or placed atop the body of its older kin on the same shelf. You promise to come back for it when “Time” permits. For people with “Tsundoku” personalities, it’s never.
As days roll by, you finally get to keep your promise but you find what:
Your new book is misplaced. Your brows furrow and you search frantically until you find it squeezed between two tomes of encyclopedias. Ouch! You quickly pull it out from its peril. You dust it. A seed of anger has already started to spread its roots in your mind.
The book now deflated inwards has a faint musty smell. You are repulsed both by the smell and the reason for the smell. You swear at that mysterious perpetrator of the crime subconsciously. Then your eyes meet the periphery of the book and notice that some of the pages are dog-eared. Your eyes twitch, your ears flush red, your nostrils flare and your mouth mumbles an expletive. You then proceed to smooth the pages with your palms and lo, what you find . . .
RED UNDERLINES!!!
You flip through the other pages furiously and spot some more of that graver sin committed in most of the pages. You let out a long sigh and plonk your body into a chair as if resigning yourself to the vagaries of life. It is at this exact moment when your anger transitions into dejection and you realise your new book has reached a point of no salvation and you experience a stinging pain in your heart.
You didn’t even get to cherish it firsthand and someone else not only traced their fingers through the freshly dabbed words in each page but also managed to morph its beauty with indelible ink. Just like star-crossed lovers, your timings didn’t match. The first emotions evoked by the scribbled phrases of the new book now reside in the mind of another and not in its owner. Serendipity turned sour, you want to turn the tides of the events desperately. But panacea lies only in acceptance and stepping forward.
And thus you have no other choice but to surrender the book in the hands of time to yellow like sunshine.
©Rumi
