Chapter 1: Two Lives
“918 … 920 … 923. Ah, there it is.”
823.923 MIS R6J8 was the only Dewey Decimal that I had cared to memorise.
Actually, it was the only Dewey Decimal that refused to leave me. These alphanumerics were the secret passcode to unlocking a flood of closeted memories and unfulfilled ambitions. I had avoided seeing them for a long time now. But, I was here again, the characters staring me again in my face.
I vaguely remembered 823 meant that the book had been classified as “English Fiction”. As to what the rest of it meant, I had long forgotten. Whatever the meaning, 823.923 MIS R6J8 it was. My first. My only.
I ran my fingers over the spine of the book. It always felt nice to touch one’s younger self, the spine still proud and strong.
Thankfully, the dust of the decades does no substantial harm to the hardback, a generosity that it does not extend to the person who is etched on that hardback.
Before slipping the book out of the rack, I waited, my hands still on the spine. It felt like a moment to be reckoned with, a moment that warranted more gradual an ascension to climax.
I took a step back and surveyed my neighbours. I wanted to see the company I shared here. It seemed like an old photograph of a group of friends standing next to each other, smiling their teeth out to be captured in a mood that befitted the occasion.
To my left stood Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, while I could feel Vikram Seth’s left arm over my shoulder — his Two Lives lay perched horizontally over my hardback. His A Suitable Boy stood right next me, touching sensuously The Luminaries of Eleanor Catton.
This unusual quartet never came together in one frame ever, of course . But there was a time I did brush shoulders with at least two of them. Eleanor was too young back then, probably still in her school shoes, but Salman and Vikram had shared the table with me a couple of times.
This photograph was nice that way — I would want one such on my living room wall. It would make my daughter happy. She loves Salman and Eleanor. She has been asking me to call them over for a dinner. She does not realise that I do not hold such sway any longer.
She does not realise that this company would not have me with them.
The photograph started to blur a little. Disobeying droplets of morning dew had started settling on the glassy panes of my cataract eyes.
I flicked the dewdrops out and pulled a straying strand of hair off my face. I extended my hand out to pull out the hardback. Nostalgia could be fatal — no point going gradual on that ascension.
I had to remove Two Lives first, lest it should fall when the perch from under it is yanked out.
Wait. Something was off about this. This book did not belong here. It was not fiction. It could not have been an 823. What was it doing here, acting on its own accord, extending itself over me this way?
I brought the book closer to the thick glasses that still let me read. Yes. It was a 921, a “Biography”. Someone must have taken pity on Seth and brought his two children together. But why only these two? Why not the others?
And without those answers, I was not sure as to what warranted this overseas trip of the Biography to visit his brother in English Fiction.
I looked at the foreigner a bit more closely now. The tip of what looked like a triangularly folded paper peeked out from between its pages. I lifted the weight of the pages to release from under them their captive.
It was a paperplane. The regular sort — the one you fold along the longer edge of the paper.
And on the tail fins of the paperplane were two inscriptions — “From S.M” and “To M.S”.
I knew I had no business looking into a page that was not directed to me. But I was a writer too. And such is the voyeurism of writers that they need to know the contents of every leaf that was ever inked on.
In fact, the voyeurism grows on us writers as we grow out of action — the guilty seek in someone else’s words the thrill of unconstrained expression of their own emotions.
The lettering was shaky. Clearly, the writer had either been inebriated or had depended too heavily on the keyboard for her other messages.
You know how I know it is a girl, even before I have read the text? It’s because of the handwriting.
Don’t ask me how I made that jump. A lifetime of correcting classroom essays of “tweenagers” seems to have given me the paranormal ability to differentiate one kind of writing from another. And probably the only buckets I never mix up are the gendered ones. So I know.
A part of me wanted to stop myself from reading it — it was not ethical. It was clearly private and clearly my initials were neither S.M. nor M.S.
However, another part of me had already glanced over the words below. This other part had noticed words like “magic”, “messages”, “sister”, “frank”.
I gave in to the temptation.
I wasn’t hurting anyone anyway.
It has been a long time, hasn’t it? I know we both have moved on, but I wanted to meet you one last time. You introduced me to the magic of paper-planes: how they could fold in to guard any message you wanted to send and open up, only for me, so I can read it. You showed me how the tailcode of one plane could lead to the runway it belonged to in the limitless airports of the public library.
You would love to know that most of the planes that took off from the runway of your desk have safely landed on the runway of mine. They are there, safely parked in the hangar of books that you once gifted me, as this one is in the book I am sure you will come back to read.
Yes, sometimes my sister would just hijack your planes before I could chance upon them. But she is a nice girl. She kept things to herself. Perhaps, that is why our planes opened to her beckoning even when she was not the one you were sending those messages to. At least not these ones. These ones were for me and me alone. But I don’t mind her reading them. I don’t like secrets between the two of us. So, I try telling her everything I can, even though I know she withholds a lot from me.
I also know that the messages she got from you were delivered by origami cranes. Those cranes were beautiful, so I never disturbed them. I let them sit smugly in their nest of discarded papers, waiting for her to bring them to me. Don’t worry, she never did. I don’t know what you two talked about, and to be very frank, I am not even sure if she read those cranes herself. She always seemed more interested in our planes. You should have chosen better, you know. I am the one who loves birds and she the one who likes to travel. But then again, you were always this way.
I am leaving this note here in this book, because I know you will come back to this one day. One day you will open this book again and meet me. I want nothing more than that. I have nothing to say and nothing to talk about. I just want to meet you again, and if this is the only way we can meet, I am fine with it.
I read and reread the whole letter a couple of times.
It wasn’t a piece of inspired writing, but it had that raw emotionality to it. It had a pull to it, a pull I could not place, but a strong one nonetheless. In her resignation, she seemed to exert a magnetism that belied her intentions.
Here I was trying to meet my younger self from long ago. Trying to figure out if I had turned out right in the end. And here she was trying to meet someone she knew once when she was younger.
There was something hauntingly romantic about our pursuits, something that brought us together in that moment.
I almost thought I would know her the second I saw her. Yes, such was the moment and such was the romantic hopefulness that it inspired.
Perhaps that is why, in that moment, I had this deep guttural urge to sit down with her for a coffee and chat away the whole night. I wanted to call her up and ask her to the library cafe.
I turned the page around, to check if she left anything that would help me find her — any address, any phone number, any email identity.
The only words other than the title and the text were the watermarked “C.K. Publishers and Printers” and the paperplane’s tail code, “921.2 M6B3″, obviously referencing the book it was kept in.
Even in my disappointment, I could not help but appreciate the imagination of the guy who came up with this.
Sigh.
Of course, it was pointless anyway.
Each of these little birds are anyway tweeting away into the infinite blabber-sphere of indiscreet conversation. Nothing is private anymore: no one needs the telephone directory to find out where someone is, no one needs to call the municipal corporation to check with their records to figure out if someone is still in their old residence.
M.S. would, of course, know how to get in touch with S.M. if he wanted. It was so foolish of me to even think of being able to figure out who she was and then convince her for a coffee with me.
I looked at the page again. I wanted to keep it with me forever, but I fought that urge. I folded it back into a plane and opened Two Lives to keep it where it belonged.
With one final caress over the piece of paper, I closed the book shut and kept it back on the rack — again horizontally over a couple of other books, as there was no other space that this could go into.
Anyway, it did not belong here. The tragedy of unbelongingness plagues us all. It plagues this book too — a 921.1 M3B4 amidst a crowd of 823s.
Hold on.
“921.1 M3B4”
Nine two one point one. Not point two.
I yanked the book back again, pulled the paperplane out, fumbled with it till I could calm my shaking hands to read the number on the tail: 921.2 M6B3.
921.2 M6B3.
Ah ha!
921.2 M6B3 and not 921.1 M3B4.
Obviously!
Why would anyone write the number of the book in which the plane was kept? How would one find the book in the first place if that were so?
I hobbled along as fast my knees would allow me to the nearest computer. The Librarian whispered venomously at me to keep my voice down. I was apparently laughing out too loud. But, her whispers did not matter. My laughter did not matter. All that mattered was 921.2 M6B3.
921.2 M6B3 Haha.
The computer told me where to go: Bertrand Russell: the spirit of solitude.
Treasure Aisle is a new original fiction series. In this story spanning two literary decades, the books in a public library will guide a retired one-hit-wonder-writer on an impulsive quest for finding a reason to love again.
The next chapter is already out. You can read it now.
