I’m no Half-Blood Prince, but I do have a collection of books scribbled with other people’s stories.
When you buy second-hand books from College Street, you don’t just buy a book — you inherit a stranger’s memories, pressed between yellowed pages. A part of their lived reality becoming yours forever. Almost like the marginalia in Professor Snape’s Advanced Potion-Making textbook that held the secrets of his genius.
Over the years, the quaint shops lining Presidency University have become my happy place. For me, it is more than the charm of College Street or being one with the sea of bibliophiles searching for their next read. It is the feeling of coming back home with a new set of books, mostly second-hand, and rummaging through them for inscriptions of previous owners, heartfelt notes, keepsakes and any piece of memorabilia that connects me with the ghost of readers past.
It all started with a collection of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories that I stumbled upon on a drizzly afternoon during one of my solo book-buying sprees. Back then, I used to go on regular jaunts to the bookish lanes as a college student (read: when life wasn’t confined within the exhausting 9 to 5 shifts.)
The jacket faintly smelled of damp paper and dust. While skimming through the pages, a note slipped out — “To Amitava, from Lierma Mischak (Ukraine) 14.10.99. Never the friendship be strained. Good bye.” It occurred to me: A Bengali man and a Ukrainian woman, united by a shared love for Tolstoy, separated by time and borders. The first thought that came to my mind was, “How could Amitava give this book away?” It felt that special.
I don’t know if they ever met again, but every time I open that book, I can almost see their story unfold in front of my eyes — somehow the bleakness of Dostoevsky’s White Nights floats in my mind. Maybe they exchanged long letters after parting, maybe they shared a painful goodbye over coffee on Park Street before she boarded her flight. I might never know, but a piece of their story is now entangled with mine.
When I say that collecting these pieces of forgotten memories feels precious, it’s because of the trails people leave behind in the pages of a book — almost as if they ask you, the reader, to remember them. I sometimes intentionally visit College Street, just to hunt for such old books with a stranger’s story inked on their front page.
I found another story inside a battered copy of Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which came with four boarding passes from 2016 tucked inside. The names have faded after almost a decade, the destinations a bit smudged.
Perhaps a reader in a family of four bought it at an airport bookstore, and if they were anything like me, they might have collected others’ tickets and slipped them inside to keep them safe. Maybe the book went unread after the flight landed, and later found a place in Sarif da’s shop.
Some dedications are crisp and factual, stamped onto books as a reminder of an accomplishment. “To Sourav De, best wishes from Saltlake School, 2004.” Or “Sandhya – Ranjan Misra, 17 March, 2007, Calcutta.” They are complete strangers to me, yet their names feel familiar. “Gopa – Calcutta – 21/6/72”, almost feels like I’m watching a retro Bengali movie — a woman donning a taanter sari and reading Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence by the windowsill on a rainy afternoon.
My favourite among all these remnants, however, is a note that feels like a hug from someone I didn’t even know.
“Dearest Mithu, you are so very special. Love, respect and everwarm. Thanks from a heart you’ve touched. 11.03.88.”
Despite being decades apart from the time Mithu received her copy of Albert Camus’s A Happy Death, the ink remains intact. Whoever Mithu was, they must have meant a lot to someone. Every time I read that line, it feels as if the book is whispering, “You matter just as much to someone too.”
And then there are the inscriptions that carry a piece of my own childhood inside them. When I was a school student, my father had an annual ritual. Every report card day, no matter the result, he would take me to the Starmark at City Centre 1 and buy me something new to read. I received one such gift on 17 May, 2018 — a copy of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi — with words celebrating my efforts inscribed in my father’s neat handwriting.
Another memory sits in a dog-eared copy of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. My childhood best friend handed it to me just before Durga Puja when we were in Class 6 — it was the first book a friend ever gifted me. The pages are now spotted with yellow stains and the spine is cracked. But I still remember being holed up in my room and reading it during the long festive afternoons, without a care for my new clothes and the infectious dhaak beats at the mandap.
One day, my memories, too, will become a part of someone else's timeline. And I will never know who picks it up.
That's the beauty of it all. As a lifelong bookworm, I have found traces of joy, heartbreak, love and celebration between the pages of every used book I’ve bought from College Street. Dedications aside, even an old bus stub or a bird feather as a bookmark have also made me stop to imagine a life. This is what makes second-hand books so magical. They remind you that reading isn’t a solitary act. It’s a strange connection to readers of the past, present and future.
