Tossing and turning in bed, hearing time move on, second by long second, I often try to make lists, hoping that the effort of organising will exhaust me, bore me to a slow slumber. But sometimes, I pick the wrong topics: the places where I have had the best coffees, the movies that defined my idea of love, the clothes I used to have forever but one day disappeared, the number of times they relaid the road to the house I grew up in. These lists kick off an enjoyable reminiscing that drives sleep further away. The most stunningly failed list, however, has been one I've never completed: the list of lost books.
It frustrates me, the (lack of) memory of a book I was stupid, careless, or angry enough to lose. Where must my first, maroon hardbound copy of Heart of Darkness be? Swimming underneath the used book towers at Darya Ganj when I absently put it down to free a hand and fish out the G book in the Sue Grafton series?
(Oooh, what was a 'Gumshoe'!) Untraceable: the Margaret Atwood collection from Eloor library I read way past the due date, and then kept, justifying that they who charged obscenely from even students did not deserve it to be returned, given away by my spring cleaning father along with his Robin Cook paperbacks to his "friend's son". That might be where it went, unless it walked back to the Commercial Street library when my back was turned, infuriated at my disrespect and betrayal.
There is guilt too, guilt and reruns of scenes that are vivid and cruel like nightmares. Of my Alice Munro flying away, from Copenhagen to Dubai, sharing the seat pocket with the safety instructions, as I run like a fugitive on the slippery floors of the airport and beg the amused flight attendant to stop the flight. "I have to get my book back!" I screech. For most of that defeated walk back, I hate Copenhagen and transit stops with a certainty I rarely feel for anything.
Another time, a passenger may have found a more willing book in the seat pocket. A previously half-finished book, misplaced in a house move, searched for and purchased at the airport, read rapidly in the 2.5 hrs from Delhi to Bangalore and left behind accidentally on purpose. With a desired ridding starkly opposite to the seawind-coaxed calm and oneness with the world I experienced leaving the Yeats poetry collection in a Gokarna hotel room, the page folded at The Second Coming, a pencil arrow still drawn at the line "Things fall apart".
The greatest insomnia comes from the frustration of books unreturned. The $1 review copy of Curfewed Night that my husband bought at The Strand in New York, its fourth page saying 'A map of Kashmir will be added here' (or words to that effect) and its author picture a white frame with no portrait: the borrower of this, I cannot recall despite several baseless accusations flung around. The Disgrace that crushed hope and joy from my being for months on end, the fat brick of Suitable Boy that restored it. Snitched physically from my life, they resurface in nightly lists, conjured up with ghostly lives-- some with coffee stains and yellowing and lustful reading, some with dust and cold possession. Their lives remain attached to mine in my most sleepless moments. Perhaps they will leave me alone if I introduced them to my lost umbrellas.
It frustrates me, the (lack of) memory of a book I was stupid, careless, or angry enough to lose. Where must my first, maroon hardbound copy of Heart of Darkness be? Swimming underneath the used book towers at Darya Ganj when I absently put it down to free a hand and fish out the G book in the Sue Grafton series?
(Oooh, what was a 'Gumshoe'!) Untraceable: the Margaret Atwood collection from Eloor library I read way past the due date, and then kept, justifying that they who charged obscenely from even students did not deserve it to be returned, given away by my spring cleaning father along with his Robin Cook paperbacks to his "friend's son". That might be where it went, unless it walked back to the Commercial Street library when my back was turned, infuriated at my disrespect and betrayal.
There is guilt too, guilt and reruns of scenes that are vivid and cruel like nightmares. Of my Alice Munro flying away, from Copenhagen to Dubai, sharing the seat pocket with the safety instructions, as I run like a fugitive on the slippery floors of the airport and beg the amused flight attendant to stop the flight. "I have to get my book back!" I screech. For most of that defeated walk back, I hate Copenhagen and transit stops with a certainty I rarely feel for anything.
Another time, a passenger may have found a more willing book in the seat pocket. A previously half-finished book, misplaced in a house move, searched for and purchased at the airport, read rapidly in the 2.5 hrs from Delhi to Bangalore and left behind accidentally on purpose. With a desired ridding starkly opposite to the seawind-coaxed calm and oneness with the world I experienced leaving the Yeats poetry collection in a Gokarna hotel room, the page folded at The Second Coming, a pencil arrow still drawn at the line "Things fall apart".
The greatest insomnia comes from the frustration of books unreturned. The $1 review copy of Curfewed Night that my husband bought at The Strand in New York, its fourth page saying 'A map of Kashmir will be added here' (or words to that effect) and its author picture a white frame with no portrait: the borrower of this, I cannot recall despite several baseless accusations flung around. The Disgrace that crushed hope and joy from my being for months on end, the fat brick of Suitable Boy that restored it. Snitched physically from my life, they resurface in nightly lists, conjured up with ghostly lives-- some with coffee stains and yellowing and lustful reading, some with dust and cold possession. Their lives remain attached to mine in my most sleepless moments. Perhaps they will leave me alone if I introduced them to my lost umbrellas.
