Why do we need good bookstores in the 21^st century?

Books are something that a reader can relate to directly. Books are like metamorphosis of the soul. It nurtures the reader’s mind with grace and poise diligently. When we talk about books, we also think of a place where we might want to go and read them. That is where bookstores come in. They provide the reader the opportunity to read books according to their own tastes and choices, giving them an flexible opportunity to get lost in the words of the pages, in the corridors of the shop.

Many argue a lack of bookstores is a real trouble for accessing good books in their neighborhoods. America is really well known for their availability in libraries, where borrowing and lending of books is an ancient custom. But for our own country, we see an apathy of books or bookstores. Our education system, or the whole economy around books, does not allow us to get access to books that are rare or not easily available in the online book markets. This is probably a problem of sorts, where we realize that books, being an essential medium of studies and our day to day living lack the medium to reach out to ourselves easily.

We might want to introduce books from public bookstores, where books may be abundant and easy to access. There should be multiple language books. Journals, periodicals, brochures and travel journals should encompass these bookstores. We should learn to carefully choose books from bookstores instead of rushing in to buy them online. Buying books from bookstores gives the store owners the courage and strength to bring us close to our favourite books. Our literary tastes should get refined with bookstores instead of browsing online and getting online suggestions.

The question of bookstores is not only a utilitarian aspect, it requires academic attentions too. Bookstores create space for community building and encourage different people from different age groups to share their ideas in a cross-cultural and multi-linguistic space. Also, some basic aspect, like a good book, require a good book tender, someone who will know where a good book comes from.  Imagine the scene of Notting Hill, where Hugh Grant makes Julia Roberts aware of the books and their whereabouts. So a bookstore empowers the people who are in charge of the bookstore as well.

Imagine the book fairs that are organized annually all over the world. Without them, bookstores might have lost all the exposures that were needed to run a bookstore.

Going back to Notting Hill, the film ends on a promising note, where we see Julia Roberts being an expectant mother is sleeping at the lap of Hugh Grant, while Grant is holding up a book. The scene is probably a reminder of the politics of books, especially to Julia Roberts who is newly married and wills to spend the rest of her life in England to a comparatively less successful man, who is a bookshop owner. This brings us to focus on the positives of bookstore, though in a fictional form, but we acknowledge the huge role that it plays in the lives of these two characters.

It is also important to remember that if we go back to history; it was bookstores that dominated our reading cultures. While online books are not something not a matter of unimportance, we find the real flavors of books in bookstores and not through online one click shopping.

A bookstore is organized, giving us a sense of how books are kept. Practical knowledge is too many inside a bookstore. Even a bookstore which sells books that are cheap or paperbacks that are pirated or 2^nd hand, can give us great knowledge of writers and readers; especially who comes by and what books they read. Also, street side bookstore owners are saviors on a bad day in your office. They will make sure you find the right book, when you will find it is difficult to purchase it elsewhere. You can make even friends with them if you have the courage and sensibilities to appreciate what they are doing.

  

She/her

In some winter mornings, I think of mother
Mother, when in some winter mornings she thought about us
Our worlds merged together to give rise to something that
Made sense only now, when books and windows vanished
And what left was the oevure of her.
The bedsheets and biscuits talked
While we listened to them, thinking they
Must be talking in some foreign toungues 
Only to realize, that we the inheritor of this world
Are listening to the other worlds of hopes and dreams
Of endurance and efforts
Of goals and gauntlet.
Of Ma's words.

We are meaningful only when she wishes
With her words for a day that is yet to come 
And stay forever.

Flux

 Flux

The world was in a flux

You see if you charge something

In electrostatic force

The resultant is flux

Some charges make it go high

While others decrease the charge

We call the situation "flux"

It is about everything, and everyone 

Who is in flux

He or she cannot determine how much

Or how little they are worth 

So someone measures it.

Our lives have given to many so called

Trepidations of past and present 

That we cannot decide whether we are constantly increasing in volume and meaning.

Or decreasing.

So, we measure by ourselves.

Our own flux.

Our own stupidity and glorious efforts 

To figure out some unsolved mysteries of the universe

Through us.

Our constant coming in and going outs.

And our despondant nights and daffodilic mornings.

Our unrests and and transitions.

When all is over 

We look back and tell ourselves-

And our lives are not over yet.

We are still in flux.

Before Darkness Engulfs us

 Before Darkness Engulfs us

I want to tell you something

Before darkness engulfs us.

Darkness is not fat, not a room full of people.

Darkness is hope.

Darkenss is a fantasy that we have carried since we were born.

Darkness is a thought that recides in your mind, and mine.

Darkness is not a syndrome 

It is a way we encounter our worlds.

Hence, darkness bewilders us with its psychotic melancholy

Darkness has some struggle as well.

It cannot be shared, not dreamt of.

Darkness has a pervading presence.

It is not a creation of anyone.

It is just there.

Now you might ask

Why don't we walk towards light?

Why don't we simply abandon darkness

And think of only bright sunshine.

The answer is this-

Darkness is ephemeral

Darkness has a jagged monotony 

Which we cannot conquer.

Hence, it is there

With you and me.

And we cannot help but fall in love darkness.

Checkmated: Markozy Variation

 

You checkmate your opponent in a chess game. You think you have conquered by virtue of sheer magnificance. If only you doscover that the game has been won by sheer luck. This is the fate of the story.

Evan one day played a chessmatch with his neighbour. He thought he was winning, till the last moment.

How could that have happened? Evan wondered. He must have miscalculated his moves. A genious he is. It is disappointing that Evan has played the wrong moves in crucial time. Evan pondered on the reasons he played so terribly. But seldom you find reason in rhyme. The match was too hot to handle for Evan. Evan thus concurs, he is a terrible chess player.

Untill, someone else joins him in the game. His name was Billy. Billy had never played with Evan before. The game rose much anticipation for both. The nerve settled, the match began. Evan played his first move. D3. A move so simple that Evan thought will not surprise anyone. But Billy was clever too. He played Black to D7. This match will go on for few minutes, folks..

Let us first consider some aspect of Markozy game. Markozy is a name of a chess player who lived in the mountain of Astragad. A biblical place. He played with the gods. None of them were good chess players. So, he bit them eveyday. The gods were really pissed off at this. They sent to Markozy in Jail. Markozy died a terrible death in Jail. 

Since then, we know that the variation that Evan and Billy are playing currently is Markozy Variation.

Billy is a strugging chess player. He suffers time to time with acute chessphobia. He has previously suffered Stroke playing chess. Billy is also a song writer. He composes his songs to play them in chessplayers' funeral. But Evan doesn't know this. Evan playes chess to satisfy his grit. Not to listen to Chess player's funeral music. Evan has thus survived so far with Chess matches without committing too much error. Evan has always excelled in the chess matches that made him feel distant. They say, he is Evan the terrible. It's a joke. A pretty bad one though. Evan has always played chess with some and left others. Evan cannot choose everybody. But Billy this time. Billy has created turmoil in Evan's chessboard. Mr. Markozy is talking to Billy in his ears. Evan could not played any better to finally win in a chess match which Billy himself has surrendered. Evan has won finally. But at the cost of Billy. Billy will remember this. His chess skills will improve. But He will not play Evan again. He has promised to himself. 

But what about Markozy? Let us focus on Mr. Markozy before we leave this chess match. Was Mr. Markozy ever aware that in a chess match you win in the end by defeating your opponent by a single move? That variation cannot be called a Markozy variation. It must be some other variation of which we are not aware of. Mr. Markozy thus concurs that Evan and Billy has cheated. 

I'm tired

For how long i don't know, but i'm pathetically tired of probably everything around me. Days are miserably flat, partly because of my lack of interest from 'meaningful' activities, but mostly that's what days are supposed to be felt like.

1. I'm tired of the ism's that i come to know from intelligentsia of my college and their ways of understanding and analyzing others' and my lives.

2. I'm tired of studies of any form which tries to make me 'understand' history, literature, society, politics, jazz music, Marxian school of thought and contemporary Latin American films. It's not that I'm failing to understand or I find them boring to be studied at, my only point here is that I'm tired of studying them through professor's lectures, books, graphic guides, wikipedia or by any other possible means. At times, I find no meaningful reason to go through this university structure in order to understand my place, my home, my root, my love, my dreams, my angst, my responsibilities and my debacle.

3. I'm tired of the guitar cases that i get to see in my college premises. They look dull and their masters look like monstrous robots.

4. I'm tired of my dad's template-like conversations (which is too scarce that I will probably be able to count the number of words i would speak to him on a given day before i end my daily affair with some not so sound sleep) with me. He provides me choices for dinner's menu and recently there are exactly 4 choices; chola'r daal, paneer'er torkari, ba'ndhakopi or ghugni along with rooti. to top this, our Mashi being the undisputed worst cook of this world helps me turn this tiredness into a habit.

5. I'm tired of seeing everyone around me doing the same old thing again and again. Antu is hungry for a woman since the time I've known him and that roughly equals to 4 years. The lovebirds keep arranging rendezvous in Agarpara railway platform at night without missing out a single day. I'm tired of listening to people abusing each other in local trains, I'm tired of my classmates' dumbness, I'm tired of my growing dependence over cigarettes.

6. I'm tired of my inability to sit in one particular place while I'm not engaged with any matter which compels me to stand still, lie flat on a bed, crook for nature's call or recline in a chair, bench or a ledge.

7.

Errant truth and other words- Part 1

I feel an extreme urge to write something, for quite a few days, and u can change those days with ‘centuries’.. as recently I’m finding myself in a fix to measure time. Time has become like a stagnant pool with meteoric changes around it. Is it an oxymoron by the way? Anyway, I’m planning to write this piece impulsively. Now, it’s a difficult thing to do, atleast for me, for words are falling short nowadays. Yes, I’m losing words. They are not making much sense. I have a point here. I think when u don’t have words, don’t use them. Cause, they are costly. Hence one should use it with utmost wisdom. And recently I’ve heard this line of Pinter where he says, “Words are used to keep thoughts at bay.” But still I feel like I’m due of a write up. So my strategy is probably to keep it impulsive, so that whatever contradictory phrases come in my mind, I’ll put it over here through symbols.

So, enough of premises. Let’s get back to work. When you want to write something, or even say something, you need have a story or least, a theme. But I confess over here, I don’t have any stories left to share. Nor do I have a theme to catch your attention, as earlier I’ve said it’s a stagnant pool. Nothing happens, really nothing happens at all. Still, you find that the order of the day is ’CHANGE’. Confusing, isn’t it? No, I’m not trying to synthesize a theme over here. Am simply trying to satisfy my need of writing something. But as Muddy Waters says, “I can’t be satisfied”. So like all my previous unfocused attempts, this too will fail miserably.

People give an impression that I like my Dimma summon negative energy. Point taken. But, here is a reverse theory too. People also give me an impression that they are unnecessary positive too. That means they are trying to subvert truth. But who the hell am I to claim that unlike other mortal souls, I’m the chosen one to carry the banner of naked truth? No, naked is too phony to be used over here. What is truth? Let’s ponder over it for a while. Is it something beyond every single comprehensible word? Or am I trying to project the vague concept of god here (may be, the subconscious have a better understanding of the motive)? Anyway, I think truth is twofold, subjective and objective. When I accuse you subverting my (or should I say, our?) truth, what I’m actually hinting at that, you are mutilating our objective reality. And while doing so, you attempt an overall perversion of my subjective reality. Now it is interesting to note that, I have shifted from the realm of truth to the realm of reality. Are they same? I guess not, but they come close and in occasion they posses contrasting essence. Think of it, you will be able to get what I’m trying to say. As you can see, I don’t want to ruin my thought with inapt words. Reality depends on perspective, truth doesn’t. May be this is a way to demarcate the two apparently same words. But here is a catch. When you give me the ‘excuse’, “Reality depends on perspective”, you are actually alienating an individual from his commune. In fact you are trying to say, “Look, Mister! It’s your mess, you should clean up.” That means your commune’s belief is challenged, hence someone is shown the door. Now see what this someone does. He is an individual first. But he is brought up in a society. Sometimes, he likes it, mostly he doesn’t. But the important factor here is, SOMETIMES he likes it. Now the question revolves around the issue, “Who is going to sacrifice the more, an individual or his commune?” This in turn raises several innumerable questions which will take this write up to a more wayward direction. (to be continued)