#bibliosmithy

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗡 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗘𝗡 I never imagined my life as an epic. And LOTR wasn't even one of my favorite books. Yet, it's odd the way things turn out, what you're intended for & what is meant for you. At 30 I pivoted my life to leap into the unknown. Like Bilbo & Frodo, I hadn't seen adventuring in my future but life had other plans. 3years later I found myself battered in body & mind. My wounds inflicted by an engagement ring that I realised too late was a trap. I returned the ring but I couldn't send back the poison he injected into my life. There was a beloved book, a gift from a reader that my ex damaged. Like me, that book is a permanant reminder that survival comes with scars & forgiveness does not mean reset. There was a copy pf LOTR, an anniversary gift that causes an avalanche of pain. How could someone who loved me not know that I had a collector's edition? A metaphor for an ugly ring & overinflated proposal that made a sham relationship. Inscription in his crude handwriting (whispering of an unevolved mind). But words of intimacy & affection. How to reconcile extremes of devastation & emotion caused by one person? I couldn't tear the page or scratch out the words. Even at my lowest, I will not be the monster that mutilates a book. Maybe I was afraid of the rage I'd unleash. I couldn't discard the book. There was a raw slice of my soul in it. So I hid it at the back of my bookshelf while I picked out the shrapnel of abuse. I got a tattoo of a paper plane to cover up scars as a daily reminder to hold the pain, fold the page & let go. I took to stage, letting just a sliver of pain show in "A love letter from someone who doesn't love you anymore. A page from a book that was a gift from someone you don't want to remember." Last month, I took it out. My hands trembled as I opened the pages. The memories came flooding back. I had to mask the ugly inscription page. I took out my paintbox. When I finished, I was spent in colour & tears. The inscription isn't visible anymore. Only I know it is there. It doesn't bleed anymore. I made art, not pain. I put it in discard pile. It's time to return to the kingdom of me. #BiblioSmithy https://www.instagram.com/p/CNkU3R6JjJo/?igshid=psmki7l575uc

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𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕿𝖜𝖔 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖘 Remember the collectors'set I received in 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕱𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖕 𝕺𝖋 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖘? I got to 19 without completing it. Final year, I was regretfully back in a course I'd tried to escape, squirming in a world that never stopped feeling foreign. Old associations die harder than habits so I didn't have friends. I returned to the original social circle, books. I had Prof.A, feared for his acid tongue, eccentric teaching & derision of anyone that didn't worship calculus.  He was the reason I was back in the course. As exams drew near, we plunged into journal work, racing to record the year's labours in oversized books. I snuck a look. A was asleep in his chair. My classmates were busy in silent pursuits. I slipped out TheTwoTowers. It fit easily into my journal. I felt the burning eye of A before I saw it. He awakened, looked right at me, walked over & pulled out the book. Returning to his desk, he fell back asleep. It was over in seconds. The bell rang & A thundered out of the door. The class sighed in relief. Not me. Shrugging off my classmates calling it a narrow escape, I followed him. He still had my book. I found him in the library. He had already forgotten me. Glaring, he barked "Yes?" I pointed to The Twin Towers. He stared as if noticing it for the first time. "Who gave you this?" My father, I stammered,for waiting for the inevitable horror to descend. Instead, he said "What did you think of it?" And when I didn't answer, "What else do you read?" Alarmed that each unanswered question would get him angrier, I began speaking. Words fell from my mouth about hobbits, rings, dragons, trolls. When I ran out of breath, he said the most unimaginable thing ever. "My dear child, I didn't think you had the mind to appreciate Tolkien. You must come talk to me when you finish the book. Have you read Kahlil Gibran's sublime poetry?" Prof.A.belonged to the fellowship of readers! I shook my head. I'd never heard the word 'sublime' spoken before. When I saw Prof.A again, he didn't remember me. But he once said, "We don't make friends; we only recognise them." It's true of readers too. #BiblioSmithy https://www.instagram.com/p/CMxOGJkpvvy/?igshid=9ufdf9ydf1l4

MISSING MARSHA At the start of lockdown, I found food fiction, a subgenre of travel, culture, history, anthropology, women's fiction, romance, cookery & so many diverse categories. Between pages, I traversed cuisines & cultures, finding characters I fell for, situations that laced my lockdown life with fortitude & hope. It's been the second golden era of my reading (the first being when I was 17, in personal turmoil of family, studies, health & abuse and I devoured my college library). In these, I drifted towards Persia, fueled by Wikipedia deep-dives, armed with Google Images of food, etymology sites to trace Persian-Hindi connections. The book that started it for me was Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran. On @reddit (another pandemic content discovery), I found a news article announcing the death of Marsha Mehran. I couldn't sleep that night. I cannot account for this unfathomable grief I feel. I never met her. I only found her books (three, one of which was published posthumously) after she passed. She isn't part of my cultural milieu like a Bollywood star. Why then do I cry? I process grief from an emotional distance. Like my other feelings. It is safer to fall in love with, to break up with, to be soothed by, assaulted, renewed, disappointed, shattered, supported and taught between pages. One can shed tears alone without fear of retribution or accusations of weakness. A book does not judge. Nor a long dead author who never knew me. Marsha Mehran's death is still a mystery. She died a recluse, at the age of 36. Her life spanned dramatic journeys across tumultuous events like political revolutions, divorce, brushes with gangster fronts. She touched Iran, Argentina, USA, Australia and finally Iran where it appears she found love, inspiration & death. Resolution? I don't know. Would hoping she went peacefully be respectful of the dramatic life she led? It feels trite to say I love her. The most I can do, is to bear witness. What better way to honour a writer? Marsha, your existence was felt. What you shared with the world, with your words is received with gratitude. You were read. #theideasmithy #BiblioSmithy 🎶: I'VE NEVER BEEN THERE-Yann Tiersen https://www.instagram.com/p/CEyTYEnpoTF/?igshid=xzer9c765zq

READER Everyone else withers away into corpses, but a writer leaves behind a corpus. Reading is an act of timeless love. JK Rowling twists my 💜, George RR Martin salts the wounds. I bleed willingly. I cried for Tonks, I cried for Ygritte. I can't forgive Jon Snow. It's hard to forgive someone you loved. Better to love a fictional character. Jupiter Jones, Sherlock Holmes & Spider Jerusalem. What flesh & blood man can compete? Give me a paper figure that says I hate it here & makes it sound like I love you.  Read because you must inhale before you can exhale. Hot breaths, nice words. Breathe with the greed of newborn baby. Let yourself be held in the embrace of pages, scream your hunger between sheets. A book will feed you. Heroes, goddesses, monsters & spaceships to munch. Asimov, Blyton & Dalrhymple serve you. Read alone. You could fall in love on the first page. Do you want an audience? I fell for a book once with a man who broke my heart. Now Naiyyrah Waheed lives in my bedroom like an unwanted pregnancy. Each turn of phrase ends with his delighted I-see-too. I don’t want to share with one who walked away. Better to lose a person than a book. Why should my 💓 be the price I pay for words? All is fair in love & reading. Read because books are comfort & commiseration. Someone somewhere has seen your soul & documented in words. The right book is a lifelong teacher. Your flight instructor is an Afghani kite runner or a little prince. Treasures await at the end of monstrous tomes & dangerous subplots, behind twisted rhymes & seductive titles. Your soulmate is not a person, it's a book. It’s not necrophilia when you’re making love to long dead writers. Read what you hate. Do you know the colour, smell, texture of your hatred? Is it the sickly, benzene of Twilight series? The metallic tang of Murakami’s arsenic? Or a gravelly coughing fit of Tolstoy? If bile & venom be your feast, let Chuck Palahniuk be your chef. Read because it lets you travel without moving a step & visit every continent without a visa. Every bookshop, every library, every place on the planet, that reveres words will feel like home. 🎶: SO WHAT-Miles Davis #BiblioSmithy #SareeStyle https://www.instagram.com/p/CDaz1qRp8fq/?igshid=yo5olmun6eb0

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WHIRLING DERVISH Reading Elif Shafak makes me feel like I'm frequenting a world that is not mine and it makes me miss my real place. It makes me look at people and situations I've dismissed, with fresh light. And it makes me wonder why I'm chasing the ones I am. I feel listened to, between the stories of an unwed mother, a talentless poet, a tattooed nihilist, a Sufi mystic and a bored housewife. These are the people I have been, will be, the selves I am. While life goes on endlessly barrelling forward, I skid, screeching brakes, pause, stop, slow down to correct that thought and say, no it does not go on endlessly. It stops. It crashes. It fades. I pick out a description of a smoky cafe with a pretentious name, a meeting with an authority figure interrupted by a wandering dervish. And I choose it over the conversation about price points at the neighbouring table of the coffeeshop I'm at. I carry it with me as I navigate booking a cab on an app, ordering dessert on another, swiping my train card. At least the last feels closer to the world I have in my head than the other things my eyes and ears feed me. There is love outside the paan-spattered Bollywood posters and wannabe posers I pass. There is joy beyond the neon lights and darkness past the black humour being traded for attention at open mics. Can I still seek God where religion interferes with architecture, where faith determines politics? I must. How else can I breathe? Even as my words dance around the easily angered, the quick to violence, I realise this churning, this silent yearning, this is after all, my whirling. I look away from my book. The image takes a few seconds to fade away. The mood, long after. The whirling, I hope never. Then I remember, nothing is endless. 📸: @hairstories11 🎶: BULLA KI JAANA MAIN KAUN - Rabbi Shergill #theideasmithy #bibliosmithy #dervish #whirlingdervish #elifshafak #thebastardofistanbul #thefortyrulesoflove #books #bookreader #booksofinstagram #booklover #booklovers #bibliophiles #bibliophile #sufi #sufism #spirituality #spiritualjourney #spiritualawakening #spirit https://www.instagram.com/p/B45ZZUAp-oz/?igshid=t6va1wgjus8i