Ocean of Spines

Trying to conjure a sliver of the past, and remember to whom a story belonged

- Prashanth Srivatsa

Anand lowers the carton boxes from the loft. They find space on the crowded floor, littered with books and diaries pulled from the shelf. The spare bedroom, once housing his grandfather, now decays in the dust-gobbed appearance of a public records office. There is no place to walk, but Anand clears a spot to sit with his legs folded, like a towering ship in an ocean of binding and parchment.

Sushmita throws him a grim look from the doorway.

“Are you going to make coffee today or what?"

“Not today."

It is a ritual he has forsaken in order to sail the ocean. Every morning, it is he who prepares coffee for the family. Not a gracious act, but it is a tradition that has turned into an instinct. To the point where even the filter disobeys the touch of another.

For the next four hours, he rifles through the books. At first, it is a passionate and nostalgic dive into his past. He chuckles at the middle-grade fantasies he’d devoured as an adolescent; smells the spines of the old classics his grandfather had handed him down in an act of inheritance. Some books he is surprised to find, like crumpled hundred-rupee notes in old pant pockets. But soon, the task assumes the shape of labour. He slows down with stories he does not fully recall. The characters are silhouettes and shadows, their names like billboards on a highway he’d driven through a long time ago. He reads entire pages before he can confidently mutter, this is not the one.

At lunch, it is not Sushmita who announces her presence at the door, but Amma. His stomach grumbles.

“We need to go to Shankar’s in the evening," she says at the table. Sushmita quietly gets up after her first bite, and returns from the kitchen with the jar of salt. She sprinkles a pinch on the sambar and gives it a stir. Amma does not pronounce her guilt. “Provided I find what I’m looking for," says Anand.