To Tsundoku or not to Tsundoku
As an avid reader and a minimalist in the process, there is a constant struggle of whether I should buy a book or borrow a book. Every time I pass by a bookshop, a tiny baby voice in my head asks, “Is that it? Are you gonna ignore me now?” I convince, no console myself that I need to read the long pile of books first before buying a new one. Sometimes I win, sometimes the baby voice does. I would have been a typical bookworm (aka book collector) like everyone else until certain life encounters made me question the whole act of collecting books. But let me make an attempt to answer the major question first, which is, “Why do we have the need to buy books?”
Personally, I don’t have a distinct reason but there seems to be a hidden capitalist in us that encourages us to hoard anything we love. The additional influence of peer pressure and the envy of looking at other’s library (no matter how small it is) pushed me to build my own. Not to forget, my own subconscious fear of impermanence haunts me from letting go of the books. It could be one or all of the above.
As a child I never owned books. My aunt ran a circulating library and being related to a librarian comes with its own privilege. Every month, certain books would first be read by me and my sister before making its way into the shelves. At first, the purpose of reading these books was merely an act of joy and pleasure when you are surrounded by orthodox parents who restrict the outdoor shenanigans of childhood. As time passed by, the thirst for travelling without moving an inch, as Jhumpa Lahiri said, was hard to quench. The books continued to pour in and every year, the books got bigger and bigger.
I owned a handful of books which were in exchange of the book coupons received as a prize in school or were bought by my father in trains to silence my whimpering.
It was the beginning of my undergraduate years that I started building my own library. As a student of Literature, I had to buy several books. Thus begins the journey of visiting all kinds of bookshops. Since then, I have made several calls to get hold of am out-of-print book, stood several hours in front of the Xerox shops to get photocopies of an almost extinct text and paid half the price of a treasure that was considered as trash before.
The habit of reading books was never visible in my family. However, reading newspapers and devotional books was a ritual in the house. The men in the house read newspapers and encouraged us to solve the puzzles or spot the six differences. My mother seldom read magazines, only if it was interesting. My grandfather, grandmother, father and mother: all of them had tiny or medium sized books of shlokas or devotional stories that would be read again and again and again for years to come. This idea of reading the same book again and again did not sit well with me. I had to escape from the monotony of this and I couldn’t have been more thankful for the library. School libraries were also there, but I was intimidated by the rigidity of the library to return the book within the stipulated time and the insecurity of watching fellow classmates read much mature books while I delved into the simple comics and blytonesque books. My home was my safe and non-judgmental space, but it wasn’t so always, especially when sickness due to old age prevailed followed by deaths.
When you start working, the job gives you a sense of power and privilege to buy more than necessary. It is sometimes funny how the wants becomes the needs and the needs are just taken for granted. It becomes hard to even imagine how you once survived on less than basic.
I was visiting my cousins in Chennai, when one of my cousins took me to Moor market (very interesting name, though) where I purchased several books for a throwaway price. My mother witnessed this boisterous act and started complaining to all my relatives. Another cousin of mine questioned the need to purchase books. He looked at it as a poor form of investment. His ideal investment would be library membership and real estate (not to mention the library membership prices are sky high, just like our real estate). I did not have an answer for it.
Post this incident, one of my colleagues asked me if I wanted some books for free. I am too naïve to never question whenever the words ‘books’ and ‘free’ are used in the same sentence. She asked me to come to her uncle’s house to collect the books and ensured that I carry a big bag for all the books. I wondered how big. I carried two big bags that day. On reaching the place, I saw a vintage house of the Jayanagar with beige coloured door and the yellow square door numbers. I entered the house and my colleague took me to a room with three bookshelves brimming with books. If you remember, the Cadbury Gems ad where a person takes one gem out and the giant gem statue collapses. That’s exactly how the books were stacked. The entire room smelled of paradise. As we started looking at every book, my colleague started telling me about the story of her uncle. He was an English professor of thirty years in a popular college in Basavanagudi. He passed away recently and all these books remained unclaimed, even by his own students.
It was in that moment that I realized that in a few decades, this was going to be me. I am going to die and my books would be orphaned. While some maybe adopted, the others will be forced to enter the cruel shelters of old paper mart. Perhaps, a book would ask for a second chance at life, but would it be starved to death of not being read again?
This incident struck me like a dagger and made me question the whole concept of buying more books. Also, with constant changes in the surrounding only intensified my need for permanence, resulting in me hoarding more books. It was and is still hard for me to let go of some books, for the memories I have with them. These books have helped me cope with death, heartbreak, failure, and transported me into the whole new magical world when I couldn’t face the reality. maybe, it was my own difficulty in letting go of things that no longer served.
The Japanese call it ‘Tsundoku’ and it is a phenomenon. It means to acquire books and add it to ‘to-be-read’ pile. The bigger the pile, the bigger the tsundoku.
When I learnt about minimalism, I was forced to go through all the different kinds of piles I had created: read, reading, half-way read, almost there, to-be-read, for memories’ sake. I couldn’t muster the courage to give away all the books and only gave away multiple copies of the same books.
Truth be told, death never scares me but when I think of death and my books together, a chill runs down my spine and my book’s spine.
