Why Do Books Tell Us?

I don't love to read books. I live to read books. It always surprises me to see people who have never read a book apart from academia. It always struck my head what life is like to them? Imagine living a life without ever realizing what life is about. What would be the hands like if they have never been placed upon the page of a romantic love story.

These used to be my thoughts. Then, one day I was waiting for my bus at the bus stop. Bus was late and I started reading my book. Believe me, it was the best way to ignore the real world. What was not perfect though was the sudden observation. I stopped reading and started observing the my vicinity as it is very hard to escape the realities. I observed a vendor who had nothing to do with books. But yet books were benefiting him. He was selling some eatables wrapped in the torn pages of a book. He did not need to read those books. Why on the earth he would read books? He did not live to read books, he lived to feed the mouths. It does not mean that he doesn't read. He reads the hungry faces of his kids. He reads non-fiction. He reads reality.

After awhile, my bus came and I embarked it. But I still wonder. Aren't we all readers? Do books only mean the text written in the pages by people centuries before our time. We have to understand the books and also the life. We have to take pauses while reading and also while living. Sometimes, we get bothered by new words while reading and same happens in life when something new starts horrifying us. Books relate to us though. All the hustle for life can be found in any biography. Then what is the agenda? Do we need more readers or do we need to reduce the readers? If books only mean the scripts, we may need more readers. But if books are anything more than that we definitely need to reduce the number of readers..... After all, we can't just live all our lives reading. Sometimes we have to act.

We, students, are very avid about reading the books. There is no harm in it. But I believe books are useless unless we don't start relating. If we are not that vendor who need to tear the pages of books so that he can earn some money, then that means that we are the lucky folks. We need to relate and act as well otherwise the whole passion of reading the books is useless. The smile and happiness that every book lover gets when he/she buys a new book is unparalleled. But we should not keep that joy just to ourselves. This is the message we get from almost majority of the books. Not everybody around us is endowed. Even some of the most prominent writers in the history of literature were not that privileged.

Books must not be the best way to ignore the world around us. Rather, they should be the key to fathom and rectify the hearts and souls of those who live with and around us. Books do not tell us to ignore the reality rather they are the tale keepers of what happens in our lives. They warn us of life like Caesar was warned off the Ides of March. They need to be read and the need to be related in the most positive spirit. This is what Books tell us. They tell us what we are ignoring. They tell us what we should do.

Thoughts from void.