IT took termites to teach me non-attachment.

Recently, I needed material on the 1971 East Pakistan crisis from a section in my library. There, I unearthed a squirm of termites feasting on my books. As I consigned their residual fragments to a pyre, it occurred to me that, whereas once I owned my books, now they owned me. My remaining days would be consumed in ensuring their preservation.

My collection had been built up over years, since the mid-1960s. Sporadic purchases gave way to more selective accessions which were germane to whichever of my books I happened to be working on. Their subjects covered Pahari painting, Sikh art, British and European artists working in the north of the subcontinent, antique maps, on Dr Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in July 1971, US foreign policy towards Pakistan between 1969-74, and the journeys of the British vicereine Charlotte, Lady Canning, from Kolkata to the Khyber Pass.

I justified spending money on these books because they were essential for reference purposes, as books were not as accessible as they are today on the internet or through search engines. As one author put it, my library is “a cave of words that I’d made........

© Dawn