My college is situated in this beautiful area called Matunga in Mumbai. What is so beautiful, you ask? Well to start off, it has the most aesthetic buildings with old paintings and huge trees in every street. Even when the sun shows no mercy and the temperature is so high that you can feel yourself melting, the trees do not let the sun even touch you. (I'm from India, the maximum in India is at least 39°C, you do the conversion into Fahrenheit)
Secondly, literally every other street has a used bookstore. I cannot describe my love for used books. Every book has the author's story to tell, but every used book has its own story. The vintage cover, written note to a loved one, highlighted sentences and dog eared pages make me wonder about the previous owner and what they thought about the book. These bookstores are my happy place and these used books reassure that this is someone else's happy place too. This makes me feel seen.
So many questions pop up in my head when I see a used book. Who owned this book? What did they think about it? Why did they highlight this sentence? What were they going through when they read this? Have they read this book so many times that they have these words etched in their soul forever? Have they shared this book with their loved one? Was there a tragedy and they had to part ways with this book?
So many questions and yet I know I will never know the answers and that is the exciting part about used books. It is a mystery I know I cannot solve but it is too tempting for me to not pick it up.
I have not been to my college for almost a year now and I really miss those days when I used to go to these book stores after a bad day a college with my friends. I really hope I can go back to these shops one day, and I know for sure I will be amazed at how these books have more to tell me than any person I know.
On that note, feel free to send me used books, I'll be more than grateful (lol).
