The feel-good factor. Most of us have that something that makes us feel good all the time. No matter what state of mind we are in, how tired or how busy we might be, its presence is enough to make us forget everything else. Chocolates, food, wine, books, stamps, babies, cars, butterflies, nature, people, places, silence, service, prayer—the list is endless.
Libraries, book stores, book piles, books, a book—that’s my thing. I simply love books and anything that has to do with the printed word. Libraries are like a candy store for me, my heart beats faster, I lose hand-eye coordination, I break out into peals of laughter and don’t know where to start from. My eyes glisten up like a Christmas tree, and my fingers itch to touch and run through the aisles and aisles of books. I turn into what all greedy people turn into when they face temptation—drooling monsters. Once I calm down and find something to read, I am enclosed in a capsule of warm and fuzzy feeling of being home. This is where I want to be, to live here and die contentedly, surrounded by row after row, stack after stack of books.
My college is a 140-year-old institution founded by the Jesuit priests, and it’s no surprise that it has a library that literally melts my heart. Actually, the college has two libraries—the reference library and the lending library. I was familiar with both. I knew where every book of my interest was, and one could find me sitting crossed leg on the floor of the lending library surrounded by a stack of books. In the reference library I would sit in the section where they had these restricted books—so called because they were original and old copies of books that couldn’t be taken out. Imagine how excited I felt to be in the exalted company of ancient books.
The smell of old mouldy books (except of course the ones with industrial glue) and the crispy crackling sound of new books, are as appealing as the smell of first rain on scorched dry earth. The minute I hold a book that I want to read, I am transformed into this other person who can’t be bothered with trivial things like food and drink, day or night, work and rest. I immerse myself into it wholly and give it my undivided attention.
I find myself renewed at libraries. I go stark, raving mind when I find a new library or a book store. I go wild with euphoria—the feeling I get is indescribable, almost like a cross between a running around like a kid in Disneyland and a bubbling brook that wants to break free and dive headlong into the vast ocean. The silence of the place, the gentle rustling of pages, the scribble of notes being made, it’s like dying and finding heaven. Like James Crossley once said, “It is impossible to enter a large library... without feeling an inward sensation of reverence, and without catching some sparks of noble emulation, from the mass of mind which is scattered around you.”
My personal collection of books I something I go through once every year, and every time I pile them up and rearrange them, I get a feeling of uncontained joy, happiness and peace. Each book has a story to tell and a few of them are markers of personal milestones. I now get what the dispossessed and philosophical Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest felt when he said, “My library was dukedom large enough.” My collection is beyond and above anything a property of sentimental attachment and my very own small universe of knowledge.
