There are few exceptional people who finish what they start. Most of us get lost on the way, like never finishing a book. We simply toss it in a corner, promising to get back soon and then forget about it!

We know books are going nowhere.

Thankfully, books do not protest. No matter what you do with them, they don’t ask “When will you find time for me?”.

The other day, I was the last person in a huge library when I thought I heard a soft voice whispering, “Look at me!”

I was so immersed in my work that there was hardly any time for me to be startled.

“Look at me!” this time the tone was soft but a chorus, descending from everywhere.

I raised my head instinctively and saw all the books in the shelves come live. They were coming out of locked shelves one by one and floating in the air as if on some invisible hands.

“Look at me, I am so beautiful because so many people put in so much time and effort to give me this form. I have so much to share with you because I contain the scholarship and sacrifice of my author,” I heard a book say.

“And look at you! You think of me as your property which entitles you to do with me as you please,” another one put in.

“How sad, that you have locked me in these shelves. Nobody has the time to wipe the dust and keep us clean, or to even flip through some pages once in a blue moon. Will I ever find the reader for whom I was written?” a big blue book asked sadly.

It was as if all the books were now out of the shelves and giving an expression to the voices with their movements. Their covers looked so alive, and the colours so bright, the text on them illuminating.

I watched this parade of books with eye-popping amusement, guilty of how unfair and irresponsible I had been in buying books but not giving them a fair read, not even caring from them.

Every book is worth more than the piece of paper it is written on. Its readers collectively define its worth.

Published in Dawn, Young World March 4th, 2017