Most of us like to believe that we were brought up right. We had good parental role models who set a practical example and we had plenty of ‘book knowledge’ — and we therefore think we learnt to be loving and giving.
But, if we look within ourselves honestly, we find many counts on which we are guilty.
In our family, giving generously never extended itself to that very thing from which we learnt most of life’s lessons: Our books. We would feed just about everyone who wandered in, we would dip into our purses for hand-outs when required, we would not indulge in mean-spirited gossip, but there was no way we were going to be large-hearted and open-handed with books — and this is largely because of what we imbibed at home.
Our parents loved to read, but with three children to rear on one salary, they could not afford to splurge on books. Mother preserved with care the books she received as gifts from her favourite sister, who obviously knew what would please Mother most and bought the latest bestsellers for her. Father, a book buff too, indulged himself when no one was paying attention to the household budget, and quietly acquired books of his line of interest.
Thus, between the two of them, they eventually filled a very large trunk with reading material. However, apart from the eternal classics, many of the travel and exploration books Father had acquired had become ‘dated’. So much more ground had been covered and so many discoveries had been made in the time since those books were written that most outsiders felt that there was no justification for continuing to hold on to them.
Of course, he — and we — balked at their suggestion. We spouted homilies about every book teaching us something, but actually, for us, there were no real reasons for clinging on. In fact, reason never entered into it. They were books. And we kept them. Simple.
That accounted for one generation’s acquisitions. What about ours?
Despite all the many things we realise that we do not have in common with the spouses we chose, somehow they share our love for books. Thus, our home had His and Hers collections (starting from our first picture books and piling up from there), and in time, we added the collections of our respective parents that no one had been able to discard.
When our children’s generation appeared on the scene, there was plenty for them to read and they took to reading easily and naturally. But, like us, they were not satisfied with what they had. They wanted more. And we — and they — proceeded to get it and store it in our home, with two other generations’ collections. From time to time, we would think about whittling the ‘library’ down, but then our thoughts would go to the anticipated fourth generation ... why deprive the unborn of almost a century’s worth of books ...?
Then we heard about a ‘book exchange’ programme at a community centre and we thought we ought to learn from people who were willing to off-load their books in exchange for others instead of just hoarding them as we did. It seemed a good idea to exchange our books with these readers who would value them and besides, we could get samples of what other people were reading to keep us ‘in synch’ with the times.
So, level-headedly, reasonably, with all sentiment cast aside, we went to pick out what to discard from our bookshelves. But each time we picked up something, we put it back. We could not do it.
And that’s when we realised that all our ‘book learning’ going back several generations had not taught us how to give away our books.
Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.
