Second Hand Book

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Disclaimer: All the characters, places, names and situations are fictions. They are not made to offend any individual's identity or thoughts. They are just character background and my characters do not define me, but just my thoughts for the character. I also request my readers to not have any biased mindset, the stories are meant to stir some feelings in you, so just go with the flow and enjoy. Please do not copy the stories and repost them.

Love💜

Copyright © WD, 2021 All rights reserved.

P.S.: All credits of photos to the owners! I don't own any of them.

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India is the home to the largest youth population in the world, so understandably, all the exams that occur in the country are very competitive. The cherry on top is the astounding level of difficulty of these exams. Almost all the exams are regarded as the toughest exams in the world.

I was an IIT aspirant. To get into the Indian Institute of Technology, which is one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, I had to crack the two joint entrance exams (JEE). First the IIT-JEE Mains and then the IIT-JEE Advanced. While the results are declared it is not just how much you score, there are other factors as in the caste you belong to, this was introduced to uplift the backward caste as my country fought to narrow the gap. Diversity has its pros and cons. I am from a general caste and was poor back then, with no parents to rescue me and give me food, I had to work and earn my living. I became an ATM security guard and took the night shift purposefully. Lucky me had an employer who understood me and supported me. 

I begged my coaching institute to take me in, they gave me chances to prove why but I always failed. I could never pass even one of the entrance tests of the coaching center to get in. I had no choice but to study on my own. The misery around the world is that people do not ask or value people who want to study or have an interest. All that counts is how well you perform, your marks. Not a 99 percentile student you don’t reach the cutoff and out! Over expecting parents who have their children's timetable jam-packed with piano classes, dance classes to individual subject classes all week is another reason. Everyone forgets to let the young mind breathe and think for itself. Sometimes just providing all the resources is not enough. This was not the case with me. I ran away from my house at the age of 10 because my mother was not allowing me to eat boiled eggs when I had its sudden craving. I returned after 3 hours to my house burning into ashes. I have been alone since then. I ran away from my uncle's house the day I turned 13 because I was sick of hearing what a burden I was for him and how I was using up all his kid’s resources. I think you can call me a runaway child.

For me, it was not important to get into IIT so that my parents could flaunt it neither I had a wish to see my name and photo plastered everywhere in the newspaper and billboards, It was important because the day I ran away, a young man wearing a t-shirt from IIT Kharagpur was the one who fed me with boiled egg, and talked me into going back to the house and apologizing for what I did. I admired him also, I saw how he could buy a boiled egg for himself and me, and that was the reason the 10-year-old me decided that he would go to IIT. I had no one to worry about, no one to challenge, no one to prove. It was just me.

Since I would go short on money almost always I could not buy the other reference and course books all at one go during my 11th standard. I had no money left after I bought my regular school books. I had to walk in the city at different second-hand book stores and book stalls to find books in readable condition and for a reasonable price. I would never get the chance to issue those books from the school library. Someone used to pick them up before me always, it seemed like people used to stand and wait for it to come, or it might have been re-issued every time. Class 11th passed by like that, I finished almost 80% of the course from the regular textbooks. Due to my continuous rounds at the bookstalls, almost everyone knew me, at times I used to sit there and solve questions. Studying for 16 to 22 hours was something everyone my age was doing. My job as the ATM guard was pretty rewarding, I got to sit in an air-conditioned room with good lighting. 

Soon it was just two months to the D-DAY, the countdown had begun, everyone in the country seemed to be studying. I needed the book which is considered as the “Holy book of Physics”, HC Verma. The bookstall owner told me that sometimes students who would finish it would come to exchange it with other books, but it was rare. Students appearing for the exam would often keep it under their pillows before sleep so that somehow all the greatness of the book gets transferred inside their brain overnight. I still hoped to get a chance to touch the holy book. And when it was D-48, I got a call from one of the bookstall owners. He told me that if I could not reach there in the next 30 minutes, there was no chance I would get the book. I had to jump fences from my school to reach there on time. When I touched the book, my life changed.

I was out of breath and hurriedly I started shuffling both the volumes of the book to check its condition. It was the neatest second-hand book I ever saw in my life. I had just 47 days to finish it and it had 47 chapters. I started with X-rays and Semiconductors. Besides the details and explanation in the book, the previous owner had done exceptional work on the graphical representation and solving all the questions in the book already, everything done in those tiny little beautiful handwriting and colorful pens. Electromagnetic induction and waves, magnetism, thermal effect of current, it felt like I should go on reading the book. It was not the book but the previous owner who was teaching me. With little colored post-it notes here and there full of self-affirmations, love, motivations, sketches, and doodles here and there making me fall in love. With every turning page, I had a wider smile and feeling of love, it seemed like I was reading a romance novel and not laws of thermodynamics or kinetic theory. 

It was D-30 when I realized that things have changed, probably the previous owner started the book backward like me, now as the days were advancing, the jolly, happy quotes were no more. Things were serious, by that time I was already in a relationship with the book, and I had fallen for the owner before me. She had revealed her eyes, she sketched them in the chapter on ray optics. It felt like she was in pain. I wanted to finish all the chapters then and there but I had to prepare for other subjects too. I went on a break from physics. Returning to it on D-22 and advancing through the chapters I understood my love was depressed. She had heartbreak and probably was body shamed. I was shattered too. I was attached to this girl without knowing anything about her existence. In the chapter on gravitation that I completed on D-1, she drew something very disturbing, a girl falling from a bridge. My heart sank to hell on seeing that.

I went to the bookstall owner to ask him about her, he did not remember. I started to tremble, the strong feeling of love that I had in me did not let me sleep on the eve of the most important day of my life. I kept on thinking what if I am late and what if I would never find her. It was exam day and at 3 in the morning I was searching all the bridges in the city. At the crack of dawn, I saw someone sitting crouched below a pole light, wearing all black. About 500 meters from me. I called out, and I saw her get up and move near the railing. I started to run, it was my impulse movement. I could feel my heart in my mouth, tears were rolling down already, and she jumped. The things happened in a fraction of a second and I felt like I was dreaming, nothing so dramatic happened in my life after my house was on fire. I caught her hands, I still feel it was some magic because I don’t remember my run and catching her. My brain started to function when I saw her. Dark eyes firm with her decision of ending things, no guilt, dried tear trails on her fluffy pale cheeks, soft hands like cushions caught up in my woody stick hands.

Gravity is very strong on earth, I knew it on that day. All I told her was to do some mercy on me and pull herself up, otherwise, she would have pulled me with her into the infinity below her. She laughed, it seemed hysteric yet genuine. With all my 18 years of strength and power I pulled her up, she saw my struggle, all my veins popping out from my very thin body and she started laughing. While I was catching my breath she kept smiling, she asked me how I found her, I told her the story as fast I could. It was 7:30 already, our exam was on 9 we had to reach an hour before. We both had no strength. She offered me a ride in her car to the exam center, but I refused, I felt the need to be there with her. She took me to her penthouse, elegant and rich like in those movies. She asked me my story, I told her everything without any sadness or deep emotions because I did not remember much anyways. 

She started to cry midway and took my hands in hers. She said, "I thought mine was the saddest story. I thought my tears dried, but here they are!". I watched her, all her moves bewildered and still contemplating the chances that it was all real, that I was sitting in front of the girl I loved. Hesitantly I asked her story, I wanted to know why she was to take such a step. She told me that she has been living a lonely life in the penthouse since 13 after her mother left, and her rich father made a stepfamily which did not include her. All the anxiety eating and packed food made her gain weight she could never control and that became her reason for an attraction to bullies and body shaming until she found one particular scoundrel who made her feel special initially, used her, her house, and money for his benefits and ditched her. Things went downhill after that, her already worsening condition made her take that step. 

She told me she remembered me running to the bookstall that day. Since we did not appear for the exam we had a year to know each other, she asked me to come over often. After 6 months I left my ATM home and job and moved in with her. I was never going to tell her where I lived, but she found me there. A year-long full of love that we never got. A year-long understanding and good memories made us strong. A bit of healthy food and lifestyle made us both better, I became a little less skinny and she achieved the shape she always wanted to be in. We prepared for IIT-JEE together, she made me study. D-1 when I was very nervous, we shared our first kiss. The kiss that was supposed to make me sleep, took away all my sleep. 

We both cleared it together. 7 years from then, today I am in charge of my lovely wife who is bearing our first child, the love of my life. The one who made me feel things I never felt before I met her. We both work towards giving hands to people who need it when they do not find a getaway. She went abroad to get her psychology degree after her engineering one. I accompanied her to my master's degree. We never left each other. Physics remains our favorite. Gravitation gave Newton an apple, and it gave me my love. 💓