Dehradun, Sept. 15 -- The Books from My Shelves

Going to bed, for me, is an idea where my mind is lulled into calm and stillness by the ruffle of a book's leaves, the smell of its pages and the satisfaction of learning. There was a time when every book in my small library had pretty much been read by me. Time, work and parenthood have conspired to change that. Today, there are books I have read, books I have started and abandoned, books I have bought with the conviction that I will read them next, and books that have been sitting patiently on the shelf for years, waiting their turn.

I find the last category strangely comforting.

A personal library is, after all, less a record of what one has read than a map of the person one has been, ...