“Between covers,
     pages of experience ...
     ... Book !”
- Self 
 
 
 Prose  

THIS is what book -- a book, the book -- is ! This may be described as a universally realised and uncompromisingly simple definition of the book -- pages of human experience between covers ! Of course, intelligent people have spent a lot of their energies in describing what they feel the book is. No matter the content of a book, it is, without doubt, a cumulation of human experience -- essay, poetry, thesis, fiction, memoir, dialogue, monologue, analysis, inquiry, interpretation ... !

 

Reading a book means understanding that particular human experience -- and draw conclusion of how human mind has reacted or responded to life’s vagaries and victories and trials and tribulations and trepidations, and, of course, triumphs and coronations and cremations ... ! The human society has recorded in the book each of these human experiences. The book, thus, is the larger human story in part. What a wonderful experience it always is to pick up a book and read ! In no time, it draws you into its embrace. From then on, you only tag along as the pages unfold, rolling out chapters and characters and episodes and epiphanies and sinking and rising of hope ... !

 

As you read on, you become witness to how humans emote, how they glow and grow and how they succumb to life’s villainous twists and turns ... ! Each book is a complete experience by itself -- bring you face to face with one part of the larger human story -- unfolding for immemorial ages, through different authors and poets and thinkers and recorders of human travel through time. As pages unfold, as you read on and on, each book becomes an independent vertical of human expression and experience.

 

At times, you are simply amazed at what the book brings to you. In a cosy chair by the book-shelf in the fading Sunday evening light, you strain your eyes to read the lines of the book in the lap -- terribly lazy as you feel to rise to light the lamp (which is only a couple of feet away), the book assumes a surreal character. Its lines are getting less and less visible in the dimming evening. Yet, the book keeps your imagination engaged. With the book still in your lap, you just stare at its pages (that seem to talk to you in darkening silence). This is the power of the book. It opens a dialogue with you. And the dialogue goes on even when you have kept the book away -- for the time being. Or, some books keep talking to you even after you have finished reading those. True, the language often enchants. But what is more engrossing is the human experience the pages unfold -- between covers ! n