by Anupama Krishnakumar
What if bookmarks had stories to tell, too? This is probably one tale they may share. Anupama Krishnakumar pens a short story.
Today, like so many other days in the recent past, I feel like dying. I wish someone would just come over, pull me out and shred me to bits and deposit the fragmented me into that dustbin that sits right next to this bookshelf I am living in right now. Transient though this feeling of bitterness is, it still is a recurring emotion that comes back to haunt me every day.
What’s the cause for this resentment, you ask? ‘You are after all a bookmark!’ is what you are possibly thinking.
Well, for those of you who ask, do you know bookmarks have stories, too? Like the stories that dwell within the pages that we stand marking, for a dear, enthusiastic reader.
My owner, a bright young girl, b(r)ought me into her world when she was perhaps eleven. I was lying in an inconspicuous corner of a famous bookshop in the city. I remember that evening when she dramatically pointed in my direction, shook her head firmly, and told her father with her mouth drawn into a thin line, ‘I want that one ONLY.’ I wonder what it was about me that fascinated her. It was probably the prints on my body or my fine, silken tassels that I flaunt with gentle pride.
Whatever it was, I knew she took a deep liking for me. Over months, living with her, I realised she had an eclectic selection of books, some even advanced for her age. I saw too, that she had other bookmarks in her little home library that her parents had set up for her. She spent every minute of her free time reading and I would be there, lying next to her, occupying place of pride, much to the envy of the other bookmarks in her possession. I would wait with bated breath, as she would pick me after a long session of reading, and place me between pages of her ‘current read’, assigning me the task I was destined to fulfil – to mark the point of pause.
She, I figured out, hated to be disturbed when reading. Any interruption when she was engrossed in a book threw her off balance. When her mother called her for dinner, or when her brother popped his head into her room and screamed to grab her attention, or when the phone rang quite unnecessarily or simply when it was time to put away a book because her eyes were burning to remind her that it was time to hit the bed. From the degree of firmness in the grip of her fingers when she picked me up, I would make out the extent of restlessness in her.
Every time I was placed back, the shift from the real world into that of words would be quite unsettling. But I took it as part of my job. Often times, as I sat firmly between the pages of a book, the words on the page would whisper their stories to me. Guffawing monsters, inspiring children, men and women of inconceivable shades of grey, acts of sacrilege, piety, vengeance, mercy, swirling worlds of mystery, love, loss and hope…endings that gave a thrill, endings that disappointed, endings that made me tear up…I went through them all, as a faithful companion committed to a reader who treated me with respect, care and admiration, flaunting me in front of her friends and family with great pride.
Each time she completed a book, I would keep a mental count. The fact is that I accompanied her on her journey through nearly two hundred books over a period of six years. One night, she happened to keep me between the pages of Katherine Arden’s ‘The Bear and the Nightingale’; and as I waited for days together for her to pick me out again and begin reading, she never did. All that I remember is after what seemed like an endless wait, a pair of strange hands picked me up along with the book from her reading couch and put me into a wooden bookshelf with a glass door – in one of those rows behind, from where I couldn’t catch even a fleeting glimpse of the outside world. And this was five years ago.
I often imagine my owner as Vasya, the young girl from the book we last read together. Vasya is fierce, unapologetic and full of spirit. I still do not know what happens to Vasya because we never finished the book. And I do not know what has happened to my owner, either. As I sit inside this bookshelf (and this book), I wonder about the girl who brought me into her world eleven years ago and disappeared just like that. Why did she abandon the book (and me)? Did she go away somewhere? Will she return and pick me up again? Or will she never return? Did she find another bookmark that caught her fancy? I am all ears, trying to piece together whatever information I can from the whispers that come faintly through the glass door of this shelf. I try to dismiss the rumours fellow bookmarks throw my way. Sometimes, this ignorance fills me with faint hope, that one day, things would probably be back to the way they were.
Once, a year ago, a rough hand almost shoved me out of my place while it rearranged the position of the book I was in. I gasped at the sudden rush of air when I came out of the shelf along with the book for a few fleeting seconds before being dumped inside. ‘Jump off, jump off,’ screamed one of my bookmark friends… ‘it’s now or never,’ she called out, like some do-or-die warning. But I refused to find a release. I stay put inside the book.
Why on earth did you do that, you ask? Because, my friend, it’s a question of commitment. I had a page to mark. So I stood. And, I still do.
Anupama Krishnakumar is an engineer-turned-journalist. She co-edits Spark and is also the author of two books, ‘Fragments of the Whole’, a flash fiction collection and ‘Ways Around Grief & Other Stories’, a short-story collection. Her website is www.anupamakrishnakumar.com.
