Books are immortal; don’t get me wrong, censorship and burning copies were enough to drive certain books to extinction. I mean that once the words are penned down and the idea is shared, they become immortal in the minds of the readers. In a way, books are like people; they are to be loved and cherished.
Humans are non-binary. Emotions, experiences, even the love that we feel is a spectrum, not a divide. Females can be callous and males can be gentle. To be human is not a job description, it’s not a controlled experiment, and we are not meant to be specimens under observation or puppets to be commandeered by the puppet master.
I sat in a sea of phones; headphones, earphones, phone calls, and reels catching up on the latest soap or a random YouTube video with a cute baby on it; you name it, we’ve got it. The Bengaluru Metro isn’t the Saturday night party space where you meet strangers who turn into friends, here everyone has a purpose. Each person has somewhere to be. Some students, some homemakers, others working professionals, I shared the ladies’ coach with these bright people who, despite coming from different walks of life had one thing in common, their phones.