The book loving sensualist

We’re living in the virtual age. Physical forms are beginning to lose their significance, as the world becomes more and more compact — small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, through the display of your smartphone. The need for physical presence, even in relationships, has become minimised, courtesy social networking sites, helped by video chats and video calls — stuff that you read about in science fiction not so long ago. And speaking of reading, we really don’t know how long the book is going to stay around in its actual physical form. What with e-books taking over with a vengeance, flipping through the pages is fast getting replaced by ‘scrolling over’ the pages. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines an e-book as the electronic version of a printed book, but the fact is that books are now being published directly on the web in an electronic version. So you have books that don’t even have a physical form anymore.That isn’t such a bad thing, though, because now you have a hoard of literary loot right there in your pocket, at your disposal whenever you please, without having to lug it around or it getting ruined in the process. You don’t even need huge shelf space around the house to store your treasure.And yet, somehow, having an electronic book just isn’t the same as having a ‘real’ book. It’s sort of like looking at the picture of your beloved, rather than seeing them in person. Perhaps it’s an old-school way of thinking, but can scrolling through a list of names on a web page make up for the experience of sauntering inside a bookstore? The feel of taking in the colours and shapes, walking from one section to the next — exploring at length, letting your fingers slip around the myriad forms and textures… breathing in the woodsy smell of newly printed words on paper… the experience is deeply sensual.Then there are those little nuggets of memory — ‘inheriting’ a cherished book from a parent or a teacher, discovering an old forgotten work in an attic or a storeroom perhaps, or just having ‘the one’ book that we always came back to, which could be counted upon to provide some emotional or spiritual relief — like an old friend that’s always there. There’s also the collector’s joy or the crazed fan’s delirious satisfaction of having all the parts of a much-loved series occupying pride of place in your room.But more than all that, there’s something about the human psyche that places a lot of emphasis on the sense of touch. Think about it — when we see something arresting, intriguing or just beautiful, we are tempted to reach out and touch. It’s that human longing to be able to ‘hold’ what you like; the longing that appears in its raw, unblemished form in infants. They reach out toward whatever it is that catches their fancy. Adults, moulded by civilised culture, restrain themselves; but who can deny the pull? Perhaps that’s why touch screens became such a phenomenon, and that’s also why e-book readers have come up with versions where you can virtually ‘flip’ the pages as you read.The more sensualist you are, the more you’d miss the smell, the look and the feel of the physical form. And I’m sure there are a lot of those out there. So hang on, ‘the book’ isn’t going anywhere in a hurry.