The Book’s Lament

Isn’t it funny,

How once upon a time

I was the one thing you couldn’t live without?

Every day and every night,

I stayed with you.

Isn’t it funny,

How you saved every single penny

To get that beautiful copy of me you saw in the bookstore,

Dreaming of the day when finally

I would belong to you.

Isn’t it funny,

How instantly I became

The object of your joy, your favourite pastime activity

As you marked your choice lines

With colours dear to you.

But if you would ask me,

What is funny and what is not

Through laughing tears I’d say,

None of them are.

And why not?

What is so wrong with it?

After all, I am just a book

To be read and tossed into the nook.

But that is exactly where

Lies the secret of my despair,

For nine days’ wonder and nine lives’ neglect

Is the fate of all my kind.

And as I looked from your favourite shelf,

New books engulfed your entire self.

And suddenly, that joy of reading me

Existed no more.

So now this is where I lie

In a corner far from your wasted eye

That once loved to see the light

Reflect upon my glistening title.

Far from the nose that loved the smell

Of the new book when it is opened

And the feel of a new cover in your hands.

Because I am old now, too old to be read.

Those colored lines have since faded

And that note you wrote with pencil

Has become a black blotch upon my yellow pages.

And my cover is creased and crinkled all over.

And in my gloom I realized

That I have really become the title that on my cover screams;

That I have finally become wise,

As wise as the words within me

And maybe after centuries, one day

When on an auction table I shall lay,

I would remember you for forgetting me

Because your scions would sell that antique to someone

Who would happily read me for all eternity.

Written by Aditi Tarafdar

Edited by Shailaja Yasmine Das

Illustrated by Sreetama Mondal