And life slips by like a field mouse...

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.....

Ezra Pound

You remember noting this down sitting on the floor next to one of the many book cupboards at C's beautiful house. Settling down on the floor, that's what you usually did the few times you visited C and her husband, German expats living in the city since many years. Their penthouse flat was full of huge wooden cupboards, filled with books collected from across the world on their many travels – your dream house.

It was also one of the most tastefully decorated houses you've ever seen, but then for you, those book shelves were it, the lodestone that drew you. You rarely spoke to anyone once you entered the house, almost to the point of rudeness - :) - from cupboard to cupboard you moved, often settling down on the floor with a book, while people moved around you, talking, glasses in their hands. You were relieved if you didn’t know anyone in the group.

You were never very good at small talk, and books were the straw you always grabbed at, to escape into. It was there, on that floor, that you remembered that you always did this when you were a painfully shy kid/young person, forced into company – grab at any printed material lying in the room, and keep your head in it the rest of the evening. The scariest place on earth was a house without books or magazines :)

It is not a coincidence that your house now has books lying around in all the rooms, to the point of untidiness. And the happiest thing you ever saw, a shy young foreigner who came home one day, walking from room to room, going through the books quietly, reverently, noting down titles. Watching him, you knew it was worth it, all the accusations of untidiness, of can’t-you-keep-your-books-in-one-place-ness.One must protect one's own. Kindness, as always, more important than anything else.

C did not know any of this. Because you never told her, you hardly had any real conversations with her, there were always other people around. But you knew she would understand, with that implicit empathy that people who love the same books have, the inhabitants of this parallel universe of communication, and connection, which one rarely experiences in real life.

She would pause in between talking to her guests, bend down and tell you something about the book you were looking at, smiling, her intense fragility lending an ethereal air to her gentle presence. Like you, she always carried a book in her bag, an anytime refuge.  You remember waking up one morning at Mandu, seeing her frail figure in the garden by the lake, reading.

So it wasn’t strange at all that the last time you met her, at the hospital bed where she was recovering from an operation for a brain tumour, you only spoke about the new novel she had on her bedside. She was happy to discuss the book with you, while death waited impatiently at the door, while she knew it. To someone who has passed through the deaths of so many characters, in all the hundreds of books she had read, would the wait have been less painful, or more? Does knowledge help, or hurt?

And one fine day, the life in her slipped away too, quietly, not shaking the grass.