What a weird book it was! You recently finished a copy of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, and you keep thinking about what a strangely written piece of fiction it was. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever read before, so unconventional in its style. Making the reader the main character of the book, it seemed like such an absurd thing. It felt absurd to you, and yet here you are. A week after finishing the book, it’s still on your mind. And now somehonw you find yourself on the road, standing in front of the library. You want something new, perhaps something to take your mind off that strange book.
At least you entered the library in the hope of finding something. You visited the newly launched corner, but nothing struck your mind. And as you stood there, gazing into the new section, you suddenly felt as though something was calling you, summoning you.
When you turned around, you saw it: a book. A very old book, lying in a dusty corner like something forgotten like an old person no longer needed in a youthful society.
You walked toward it. The book was in a section clearly abandoned, almost hidden from sight. You picked it up. It was, indeed, a discarded book.
When you opened it, a leaf of the library record fell out a library issue slip. It read that one anna would be charged if the book was kept beyond the return date. You found that so fascinating. The book was quite a time traveler traveling from the time of Annas to Rupyas. From the time of witnessing a country going through colonialism to a rapidly developing state.
The dates stamped on the issue leaf read 1945, 1946, 1956, 1964, 1969 a time when even your parents were not born...
You decided to go through the book, perhaps to become a part of its long journey. But as you were flipping through the pages, something fell at your feet. You quickly reached down and picked it up.
It was a crumpled piece of old, yellow paper. Something was written on it, in blotting ink, inky, smudged, aged. "The story concludes where you stop looking further"
You read it twice. You could not understand what the person who may have written the message was intending to say. It seemed very weird to you. How can a story end where you stop looking further? Every story has a conclusion in your mind, or so you thought. As you flipped the page further, you were astonished to find that the book had no further words written on the pages. All the pages were blank. You thought it might be a printing glitch. And you decided to keep that paper in your pocket. You then placed the book back where you had grabbed it from and decided to wrap up your day and return to your abode, as it seems you found something else to keep your mind occupied with for now.
That night, back in your room, after throwing your shoes here and there and plopping down on your bed, you retrieved that message again—perhaps in the hope of finding something more than just those words. But to your dismay, you found nothing. It was, once again, the same sentence staring back at you, "The story concludes where you stop looking further"
The whole night, you kept twisting and turning and the sentence twisted and turned with you, inside your mind. By morning, you couldn’t resist it any longer. You decided to visit the library again, just to see that book once more. And now here you are, standing before it again. The same book. The same corner. As if it had been waiting.
You touched the book this time, a little hesitant. You opened it in the hopes of finding something more, but once again, the same blank pages stared back at you.
You decided to borrow it, this time.At the library, the librarian scanned it, finding it Strange. How that book was not in the system. You found it odd, but you reasoned that it was probably because the book was so old. The librarian didn’t press the matter further. She simply handed you the book, and you left.
Back home, you opened it again. But this time, you noticed something you had prolly missed earlier in the morning , the issue leaf. Just above the list of dates, faintly scribbled in pencil, you read:
“Reader after reader, the book doesn’t write itself. You write it.”
And suddenly everything started making sense to you, maybe the blank pages was not a printing mistake, maybe it was deliberate..maybe because story is not about the final chapter it keeps going on as long as you you keep looking further, as long as you keep discovering what's hidden beneath the surface.
And now you realize that maybe those pages were not blank the book was not half empty maby it were waiting for to be filled.
By you.
React
