The Joy of Reading Books.
It was a very cute little village. It had just two streets
and a third one that abruptly ended in a riverbank. Each street had around a
dozen houses. One can call the first street as the high street of the village.
This street had a coffee shop, an apothecary, a hotel that served Indian food
and a lovely little bookshop.
The bookshop was in an old building of Victorian era. It was
a one storeyed building that was complicated and asymmetrical in shape. Its ceiling
was high with large pillars supporting it on all four sides. The main entrance
into the bookshop was thru a tall door with glass panes. The shop was more than
100 years old. The third generation of the owners was now looking after it. It
was more of a children’s bookshop. The front porch had three steps that led to
the front door. There were two French windows one on each side of the door. Both
were used for display. One had all the new arrivals and the other was used to
display toys, drawing books, painting canvass, paints, and brushes of different
kinds,
The first customers for that day where a grandmother with
her granddaughter. Grandmother was around 60 years and the granddaughter a
teenager. It was the granddaughter’s birthday. Grandma wished to give her a
book as a birthday gift. They had come to the book shop for the granddaughter
to select one of her favourite author’s book.
She was searching for books from her favourite author Sir PG
Wodehouse. She loved reading his books, her favourite character was PSmith. She
was briefly narrating to her grandmother a synopsis of the novel ‘Leave it to
PSmith’. She was searching in the fiction book rows for titles of Wodehouse
which she has not yet read. Most of the books on the shelf were the ones that
she had already read. There at the end of one row she located a book that she
had not read. It was ‘Blandings Castle’. She pulled out the book from the rack
and began to read the synopsis and reviews on the back cover of the book. She
could not resist from laughing. She came back to her grandma with a victory
smile on her face and happy to have found another of Wodehouse’s book. Both
proceeded to the till, where the owner was sitting answering a phone call. Grandmother
paid the price and they came out of the shop.
Now Grandmother wished to give a treat to her granddaughter.
The coffee shop on the other side of the road was welcoming them. Both
carefully crossed the street and went into the coffee shop. It was not crowded.
There were a couple of college students working on their computers. The coffee
shop provided free WiFi to its customers. The owner was a middle-aged lady. When
she saw the two customers entering her shop, she welcomed them with a sweet
smile on her face. Granddaughter ordered two black coffees. One with milk and
sugar for the Grandmother and the other with only milk for herself. She also
ordered two large pieces of black forest cakes.
In this age of eBooks, she was still a fan of hardcover
books. She loved them more than eBooks because she could hold them in her hands
and feel them. She loved the smell of the books and its pages. At home they had
a backyard where there was a large oak tree. It had a hammock tied to it. Most
of the afternoons she used to lie on this hammock with a book in hand. With some
snacks to bite while enjoying the book. On the way home she was eagerly looking
forward to this.
