Obscure Sorrows: Vellichor

This has been lying in my drafts for months now. Finally chose to put it up!

Vellichor*: The strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

One of the perks of buying an “old, handed-down” book! Nothing in these last several days made me feel this light at heart as this single flaky flower did! What is this flower? When did it land here? How did it land here? Did someone place it here on purpose, or did it inadvertently find its way? May be while sitting under the tree where it blooms? What used to be its fragrance? Its colour? What thoughts does it carry? And whose? Did it mean something to someone? If so, what? Does it hold any emotions? If yes, how intense? Could they still translate? Whoever placed it here, whatever did they mean by placing a flower amidst the pages of a True Crime book? Was it kept there to remind the reader, that even in the darkest of times, there is still hope? And how many hands did it have to pass, so on this day, at this hour, it could make a cynic romanticize?

My friend C had posted the above paragraph sometime during the lockdown. I found myself agreeing with her throughout, and saved her post because I thought it was beautiful. My tryst with handed-down books began quite early in life. Every summer, during the annual vacation, I would ask my parents to buy me books. I had all the time in the world to read back then, so I would finish at least a book everyday, if not two or three. My parents, alarmed by the rate at which I consumed books, bounded my buying ability with a budget. I could buy however many books I wanted, as long as it fell into that budget. My first thought was: How can I maximize the number of books I get? That's how I found my way to a dingy, dusty, overfilled "second-hand" bookstore in Malleswaram. I was simultaneously amazed and appalled by how little used books cost. Amazed, obviously, because I could buy that much more to read. Appalled because, how could a book be valued so less, when the words in it were so priceless?

This bookstore was a tiny shop, crammed from floor to ceiling with books. The passageways between shelves had barely enough room for one person to walk, and the second person had to squeeze past the first to cross. The shelves were categorized very vaguely, and the owner had no idea if he stocked a particular author or title. The store had one creaky fan, and it could get very suffocating at the back. The higher shelves were hard to reach, and lower shelves required one to kneel on the ground. Sometimes, an entire stack of books would come tumbling down, sending up plumes of dust, causing any person nearby to have a fit of sneezing. As weird as this probably sounds, this bookstore was my favorite childhood haunt. I loved spending time in this shop, and you would find me here at least once a month on a Sunday, hunting for more books to buy. My father, who usually accompanied me on such visits, would get bored within five minutes of pacing the store, and leave for a walk. He would come back hours later, and find me still engrossed in this tiny space. What did I love so much about this place? His quizzical look often conveyed his question.

It was like a treasure hunt, Reader. You could not go to this place having a list of books to buy and then buy them. It was the other way round. Some books would find their way to you on that day, and choose you to read them and be their owner. On bad days, after hours of hunting, I would find nothing that caught my eye. I would search high and low, lifting up entire stacks in front to see if the back row that no one bothered to check housed any interesting books. Other times, I would find rare gems that I could never anticipate finding. On very rare occasions, I would find several great books, and want to buy all of them. After a lot of mental arithmetic and concluding that they wouldn't fit into my budget, I would reluctantly put back a couple of them. I would be so heartbroken about leaving them behind that I would put them back in the lowest shelf, at the very back of the shelf, hoping to find them there on my next visit. I reasoned that if someone ventured all the way down and all the way back to find this book, then they probably deserved to have it.

For years, I had tried to find a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Then, one day, I actually saw a copy on a shelf, this thin orange covered book. I could not believe my eyes. I carefully pulled it out from the stack, and it was in grave disrepair. The stitching that held the pages together was coming apart, the paper was disintegrating, and it felt fragile to the touch. I asked the store owner for its price, and after looking at it, he quoted a paltry sum--something like 20 rupees. I bought it without a second thought. It is one of the cheapest books I have gotten, but it is one that I cherish and value greatly. I have read it at least half a dozen times in my childhood, and it has survived for over fifteen years, still in that tattered state. Similarly, as an ACD worshiper, my collection remained at 59 of the 60 stories. I could never find The Valley of Fear. I'd hope every time I visited this store that I'd get lucky. I never did find it though, and my grandfather finally put me out of my misery by gifting me a copy.

Then came the pleasure of actually reading these old, worn books. At times, I would find notes in the margins, dedications in the front pages, a stray bookmark or a flower left behind, and my imagination would wander off like my friend's. Reading these books felt like a communion that transcended time and life itself: I was reading the same words that someone had read years ago, and we shared the bond of this book.

I frequented this old bookstore for years, Reader. After a few years, the budget constraint went away. But the Landmarks and Sapnas with their pristine books did not have the same allure for me. The books there were too new, devoid of the "soul" that these old books had. I chose the used bookstores over the new and delighted in my serendipitous finds. A few more years passed, and I ran out of shelf space. I sighed and bought a kindle, downloaded hundreds of books onto it and started reading. I am in favor of technology, I swear. But I miss the fragrance of old books, the feeling of turning a page, the excitement of shopping in a haphazard bookstore. A kindle and a virtual bookstore are convenient, sure--you can buy exactly what you want with one click. But what I crave for is vellichor, and that I can only find in a tiny space crammed with books waiting for me to find them. :)

*Credits for the word vellichor and its definition rest with the original author.