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Chapter 8: The Kind who Dog-ears

“Sorry, can you repeat that again? I lost you this time too.”

This was the third instance I was asking her to read it from the top. I had lasted a little longer this time, but before she could reach what I expected to be the halfway point, I drifted away again.

She did not take it from the top, though. She folded the paper along its creases and tucked it back into the book it had come out of.

“Is it bothering you so much?”

“Yes.”

She stacked all the book one on top of the other in a rather neat pile and rested her chin on the topmost. On another day, I would have found this very endearing, but today it was simply frustrating to see her waste away the time like this.

“What do you propose we do?” she asked. And in the manner she asked, she seemed to say that nothing could really be done now, so why bother?

“See…this is what is bothering me: your absolute nonchalance. Like nothing has happened. Do you understand the gravity of this? We lose one book and the trail is cold. We are done, we stop there and don’t move forward. There is nothing we can do.”

She only blinked. Twice, that too.

“You don’t get it! This is urgent. We have to find the book.”

She moved her chin and rested her face cheek-first on the books now.

“I understand the problem. But do you have a solution? That is why I am asking what you are proposing we should do.”

“We can go talk to librarian, trace down who has issued the book, ask them for the paperplane…”

“And you think I haven’t tried that already?”

“What? When did you talk to the librarian?”

“I didn’t have to. The librarian doesn’t personally oversee the check outs, does she? You have a membership card?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then you know you can use it on one of these kiosks to check out a book for yourself without once stepping anywhere close to the librarian’s desk?”

“Yeah…”

“And do you know what else is true of membership cards here? Privacy. Even the librarian can’t access your details without taking permission from the local authorities who run this place.”

“Then we should ask her to do that.”

“Yeah, why not? The guys at the corporation office will only take about two weeks time to read your request and take another week to send you a letter saying it isn’t a crime to issue a book.”

“So, you’re saying this is a lost cause? That we have completely lost the trail?”

“No, you dumbo. That’s what I am trying to tell you. In the worst case, we email your friend and get the copies. It isn’t like we lost the originals or something. It isn’t like we are the first explorers of an uncharted territory. This territory is oh-so-well charted. We are simply in the Disney Land simulated version of it. So, don’t panic like this.”

“To you this is so simple, right? You have it all figured out! Didn’t you read the fu….didn’t you read the email? Peepex doesn’t want me to talk to him till I have read it all. There’s no way that person is going to give me copies.”

“He told you and you are going to just take his word?”

“I don’t even know who this person is. You somehow seem to think it’s a ‘he’. You somehow think that ‘he’ will reply to my email just like that? You don’t get this at all!”

“God, when I told you to take a leaf out of the girl’s book, I wanted you to have her faith. Not her way of blaming someone else to deal with her own shit.”

“What? Come again. What? You think I am blaming you because I am trying to deal with my shit?”

“You were the one who didn’t turn up on time. Not that I blame you for it. But you definitely seem to. As for me, I am really not bothered so much. I am not that kind.”

She made no pretence of her uncaring disposition towards everything. She still rested her cheek on the stack of books, while she said all this. Only her eyes seemed to look at me with some degree of seriousness. The rest of her body was ‘really not bothered so much.’

“What kind are you, then?”

“Hunh?”

“You said you are not that kind. So, what kind are you then? We have been doing this little role-play for quite some time now. All this while you haven’t even shown the simple courtesy of telling me your name or anything else about you.”

“Yes, I haven’t told you my name, but I haven’t asked yours either. So, that score is settled. As to anything else, have I not spoken through my actions?”

“Your actions? Yeah, right. And what exactly are they saying?”

“The kind of woman I am.”

“And what is that?”

“The kind who dog-ears books and doesn’t care if people judge her for that.”

“What the f…What are you saying, girl?”

“What I am saying, boy, is that I am the kind who… Ah fuck it. I will just let them tell you what kind I am.”

She got up from her stack pillow and opened her computer. She looked at me with her amused smile for the brief moment that the laptop took to wake up.

“Who are they, now?”

“They are Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin. They wrote this book called The Novel Cure, which is like an A-Z of literary remedies to everyday maladies. You should read it. Maybe you will find the cure to your stuckupness.”

“Where did this come from? Why are you opening up the computer? Is there a point to any of this?”

“Will you just keep quiet for a moment? Let me find what I am trying to show you. Yeah, here it is. Knock yourself out. I have zoomed it all up for you.”

She turned the laptop to face me. On the screen was what seemed like a highlighted portion of an ebook.

“Some people won’t dog-ear the pages. Others won’t place the book facedown, pages splayed. Some won’t dare make a mark in the margin. Get over it. Books exist to impart their worlds to you, not to be beautiful objects to save for some other day. We implore you to fold, crack, and scribble on your books whenever the desire takes you. Underline the good bits, exclaim “YES!” and “NO!” in the margins. Invite others to inscribe and date the frontispiece. Draw pictures, jot down phone numbers and Web addresses, make journal entries, draft letters to friends or world leaders. Scribble down ideas for a novel of your own, sketch bridges you want to build, dresses you want to design. Stick postcards and pressed flowers between the pages.

When next you open the book, you’ll be able to find the bits that made you think, laugh, and cry the first time around. And you’ll remember that you picked up that coffee stain in the cafe where you also picked up that handsome waiter. Favorite books should be naked, faded, torn, their pages spilling out. Love them like a friend, or at least a favorite toy. Let them wrinkle and age along with you.”

“And your point is?”

“You are impossible, you know that? My point is simple. Don’t be so stuck up. Live a bit. And if you need me to break it down further, here is what I am telling you. Were I in your shoes, I would still send this Peepex person an email. I wouldn’t care if he asked me to do whatever and whenever. I would still just send the fucking email. He can choose not to reply. That’s his prerogative. But I am not going to sit here and assume that already. He clearly wants you to talk to him. Why else would he go through all this trouble of setting up the treasure hunt for you. He could have just upped and gone away. You know what? I think I am going to send him an email myself. No point waiting for you. He anyways doesn’t like your long emails. What was it again? paperplaneexplorer@gmail.com?”

“Yes.”

“And one more thing. I am also the kind you can say ‘fuck’ in front of. You don’t have to choke and die every time you are about to say it out loud.”

I let her type out whatever she wanted to write. Of all the ‘points’ she made, one was very clear to me: there’s no reasoning with her. She was ‘the kind’ who would say the bull in the china shop was ‘living a bit’.

“There, done!”

“What did you write?”

“That you are done with reading everything and want to meet here tomorrow to look at the originals.”

“You lied?”

“Technically, you did.”

“What?”

“You should really learn to close windows after you check your mail.”

Treasure Aisle will be on a hiatus for a week. The next chapter will be out on Monday, 6th March, at 10 AM.