On borrowing books

So Medusa has been worrying about this for quite some time now. She reads books, downloads most of them and reads them on the kindle, and then buys some, and buys mostly fiction off the pavement on College Street. But also subscribes to a bookbox that delivers one book of fiction and some overpriced ' bookish goodies' (dramatic rolling of the eye) to her house, every month. So it is not that Medusa doesn't read fiction. But she doesn't borrow them any longer--and the people she knows, do not seem to be doing that either.

But does that mean that poeple do not read books any more? The only social that medusa continues to be a part of. i.e. social media--seems to be filled with people who read. There are people who post images of book covers on Instagram and call themselves bookstagrammers. This breed of people live 

and more importantly read, in impossibly beautiful locations, in balconies, under a canopy of trees and often on a wooden table with its grains buffed to perfection. At least that is what their bookstagrams attest. Oh, and they also have beautiful feet and hands. These books are almost always new, and purchased off the internet. 

And then there are those who diligently write reviews on Goodreads and then those who 'keep track of their reading on a #bujo'. This last one, really really got Medusa going, she had to google what is a BUJO, and came up with the answer, that it is a bullet journal. Try and imagine this for a bit, reader, to have a bullet journal with the acronym BUJO that is used to, you guessed it right, write bullet points about the books of fiction one has read. There are youtube tutorials about what kind of BUJO to select and which pen yields the best results. So there...

Now, at this ripe old age it does no longer suit medusa to start to get nostalgic. But she nevertheless ended up remembering one of her favourite short stories and therefore also the site of active desire, from childhood. In a collection of Bengali short stories, which by then was already significantly dated, Medusa read a story by Ashapurna devi. There was a young girl in that story, perhaps the same age as Medusa herself, who really liked to read. She had read all the books that she had, her family and all her friends and relatives had, and had managed to read through the school library. (Medusa, barring couple of months after the book fair, was forever in this situation.) So one day, when this girl saw that a new bunch of people were shifting to the house across the road, her excitement knew no bounds--because there was an entire truckload of bookshelves, filled with books! She tried hard to make friends with the girl who lived in that house, but she was completely uninterested in the books, and very afraid of the uncle who read them, no one else was allowed to touch them, and they were never to be lent. 

Our young protagonist however managed to rescue this serious uncle when he slipped on a banana peel, in the process ruining her brand new notebook, and the uncle took her home to give her a new notebook instead. In front of those  dreamt-for bookcases, our protagonist was speechless, she tried to devour the books with her eyes--causing the uncle to be amused and then also offer to lend her some. She promised to take good care of them, and well, you can imagine the rest. There was a bit of a twist, as to how the banana peel came to be where it was...but readers, are desperate creatures. 

At that age, so was Medusa. She used to gift books to all her friends on their birthdays, even though they hinted that they would like something else, then she would read them before the birthday arrived, or borrow them the next day, she went to her relatives' houses and dug out books from behind objets d'art, proposed to the library teacher at school that library period should be held twice a week, and in general pestered her family for as many books as they would buy. She also believed that she would grow up to be a librarian, thus enabling her to do two of her favourite things: read, and make lists. So, this story with the spirited protagonist, had everything young Medusa could ever ask for: a place where books could be borrowed from. 

But all these people. all these avid readers sharing photos of the covers of the books that have shaped them, keeping journals and blogs on their 'reading' (to note, none of these people seem to be reading for work though), bookstagramming and Goodreading (here, two new verbs, or maybe just one), they seem to be buying all the books they read. Where are those borrowers and the lenders that Medusa used to pine for, and that mythical stories are made of? Like the senior at college who never returned Medusa's The Outsider or that trans-city friend whose Cadfeal books brought Medusa into the habit of reading historical murders? Or that volume of the Capital that someone borrowed and returned, and then it was returned to the original owner three years later? 

The reading community of social media seems to be run on what everything else is run on--an economy of consumption. Perhaps borrowed, dogeared yellowed books read in the semi darkness of one's miserable life do not make as many interesting photos as brand new ones read in coffee shops do. But, to borrow a book, or to lend one to someone, makes possible actual interaction, you get to meet someone else who has read the same book, or is planning to do so. Think of the possibilities, and the socialities that borrowing and lending will bring back. 

Think, and lend.