Leatherbound & Glossy: A Shelfside Dialogue

The Hindu

29-04-2025

The library was hushed, wrapped in the stillness of midnight. Dust motes danced in moonlight filtering through the stained-glass windows, casting kaleidoscopic shadows on the tall oak shelves. Amid this sacred silence, where whispers of centuries echoed between bindings and pages, something extraordinary stirred.
Two books lay side by side on the 'Staff Picks' display—an accident, perhaps, or a whim of the librarian. One wore a worn leather jacket with faded gold embossing on its spine. The other gleamed with a glossy, colourful cover and a proud sticker that read New York Times Bestseller—22 Weeks in a Row.
The Classic shifted slightly, its spine creaking.
'So,' it said with a voice as deep as mahogany, 'how long have you been here?'
The Bestseller responded brightly, voice crackling like fresh print, 'Three weeks! It's been wild. People can't stop picking me up. Just yesterday, someone spilled coffee on me while crying during chapter twelve.'
The Classic chuckled softly. 'Crying in chapter twelve already? That's impressive.'
'Thanks! Emotional resonance, you know?' The Bestseller leaned closer, whispering like a conspirator. 'You should see how quickly I'm flying off shelves. Third reprint already. They say I've touched lives. Changed them.'
The Classic paused, thoughtful. 'And in a few months?'
The Bestseller hesitated. 'Well, I'll be in paperback by then. More affordable, more accessible. Mass market. Maybe a movie deal.'
'Ah yes,' the Classic said. 'The bright blaze.'
There was no malice in the Classic's tone—only memory. Age had given it a certain softness, like the patina on antique wood.
'What about you?' the Bestseller asked. 'You don't even have a dust jacket. People barely touch you.'
The Classic smiled. 'No one touches me quickly, but many return. I've been here for over a century. I've heard revolutions unfold in whispered debates by the fireplace, seen lovers carve initials into the tables while quoting my lines. I was once banned. Then mandatory reading. I've been blamed for rebellion, praised for enlightenment.'
The Bestseller blinked. 'You were banned?'
'Yes,' the Classic replied. 'For ideas considered too dangerous, too liberating. Once, a man smuggled me across a border stitched into the lining of his coat. He taught young girls to read with me in secret. They whispered my words like spells.'
'Wow,' said the Bestseller, humbled.
'There's a story,' the Classic continued, voice falling into a rhythm like a grandfather's tale, 'about a soldier during the war. He found a tattered copy of me in the rubble of a library. The cover was gone. The first few chapters, too. But he read what remained every night under candlelight, amidst the echoes of gunfire. He said I gave him something to live for. He sent me back home with his daughter when the war was over. She still visits. Sometimes she brings flowers.'
The Bestseller was quiet for a moment.
'I suppose I don't have stories like that,' it said softly. 'Yet.'
'Time writes them,' the Classic said. 'Not all books are meant to become echoes. Some are sparks.'
'Sparks?'
'Quick to light. Beautiful. Brief. But necessary to ignite something greater. Perhaps you are one of those.'
The Bestseller considered that. 'But what if I fade? What if I become irrelevant?'
'You will,' the Classic said gently. 'Everything does. Even I. There were decades I lay untouched. A relic. Then someone picked me up again, and suddenly I was alive. Not as I was, but reborn in meaning. Sometimes obscurity is not the end. It's the soil from which a second life begins.'
The Bestseller sighed. 'That's comforting. And terrifying.'
The silence stretched between them, not awkward, but companionable. A clock somewhere chimed two.
'Do you ever miss it?' the Bestseller asked. 'The crowds, the attention?'
'I remember it,' the Classic said. 'I once caused riots in a small European town. Readers argued whether my protagonist was a hero or a villain. One man refused to speak to his brother over a difference in interpretation. That sort of passion is rare. But I do not miss it. I cherish it.'
The Bestseller laughed. 'I had a hashtag trend last week.'
The Classic raised an eyebrow. 'Is that a new kind of literary review?'
The Bestseller grinned. 'Sort of. It's like a digital echo. Faster, louder. But it fades just as fast. I envy your staying power.'
'And I,' said the Classic, 'envy your spark. I remember what it felt like to be new. To be discovered.'
They sat in silence again, listening to the hum of moonlight.
'Tell me something,' the Bestseller said, voice hushed. 'What makes a book a classic?'
The Classic didn't answer immediately. When it did, its voice was like the rustle of old pages. 'Endurance. Relevance. The ability to be reborn in every age. A classic isn't loved for being old. It is old because it has been loved long.'
'Do you think I could be one?'
'Perhaps,' the Classic said. 'You have heart. Voice. Urgency. But only time can decide. And readers. They are the true judges. A book becomes a classic not when it is written, but when it is remembered.'
Outside, dawn touched the edge of the sky with the softest brush of gold. Footsteps echoed down the corridor—perhaps the librarian returning, or the early birds arriving with steaming mugs and quiet minds.
'I suppose this is goodbye,' the Bestseller said. 'I'm likely to be checked out again.'
'Then go well,' the Classic replied. 'Be read. Be wept over. Be shared. That is what we were made for.'
The Bestseller lingered a moment longer. 'Thank you. For the stories. For the wisdom.'
'And thank you,' said the Classic. 'For reminding me what it feels like to be new.'
Moments later, a young woman walked into the library, her eyes scanning the shelf. Her hand paused, then reached not for the glossy cover—but for the worn leather one beside it. She turned it over, smiled, and carried it to a reading nook by the window.
As the sun rose, the Bestseller watched from its place on the desk, stunned into silence.
The Classic, meanwhile, rested in new hands.
And so, the cycle continued—of fire and ember, spark and legacy.
A conversation not just between two books, but between moments and memory, between noise and nuance.
Between now and forever….
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