The old bookshop, old for both books and the shop, was closed for months. Inside, a slit of sunlight illuminated the line of books, moving slowly from one to another, as if searching which one had the strongest spine.

"I need a sunscreen," said a sleek book with a glossy cover.

The other books ignored her.

The old bookshop was one of the few places where books of all sizes, publishers, and themes mingled. A riveting bestseller abutting a technical tome on one side and some obscure treatise on the other.

"A spider! A SPIDER!!" screamed the glossy one.

A library segregated them by subject. A "new" bookshop decided which ones will be displayed prominently, which ones will be buried behind others, and which ones will be thrown out.

An old bookshop, on the other hand, was a waterhole where all beasts came to quench their thirst.

"Calm down!" shouted the others. "Some of us have silverfish gnawing our insides like bureaucrats, and you are worried about harmless spiders?"

"I prefer goldfish than silverfish - they are oh-so-cute," said the glossy one, and the rest remembered why it is best to ignore her.

From the lower shelf, a book, Pustak, asked a question to another, Liber, above. "How did you end up here?"

If Liber had a nose, she would have turned it up in disgust. She hardly liked the uncouth company.

Pustak was a spry and chirpy, though. "I got sold as a part of a kilo."

Liber did not respond.

"You are so big and fat," said Pustak cheerily, who was herself a slim volume. "You must have fetched a winsome price."

"Leave me alone," shouted Liber. She remembered her birth, the black ink making up words on her smooth pages, the smell of being alive.

The author herself had scribbled her sign and gifted it to the fine lady, who had never opened it afterwards. The story of riots, for that was what Liber carried, was spread through launches and lit-fests, not through her pages. Liber was just a scheme to launder truth and money.

One day the lady grew angry waiting for her stock to arrive, but the lockdown had made it tough. She threw Liber out of the window, and that was the first time the pages fluttered like butterfly wings, and landed with a thud.

The rain-drenched mud stained her pristine words.

The old old bookshop owner, who knew the habits of such intellectual eminences, in one of his regular rounds, picked up Liber, cleaned up the mud, and placed her at the top shelf. Even in the old bookshop, some hierarchies survived.

"I was never sold," said Liber, as if proud.

"So, no one read you then," said Pustak.

Liber, despite herself, felt the need to talk. "Why were you sold?"

Pustak lost some of her cheeriness. "He needed money - times are tough."

"Did he...I mean...ever read you?"

"I can show you the dog-eared pages and the oil blotches."

"We are both here anyway," said Liber. "I am about riots, and you, religion. I come from a famous publishing house, and you, a nondescript one. I have hundreds of thousands of sisters, and you, what, hundreds?"

"I may not out-sell you," said Pustak, "but I am not a sell-out."

"It's not about me or you," said Liber, showing a surprising insight.

Pustak longed for the touch of those hands that had held her with love.

"It's always about me," piped up the glossy one, Mag.

"Your papers," said Pustak, "are useless even to just hold samosas or peanuts."

Suddenly, there was a booming noise of thunder from the sky, grey and ominous now.

"What is happening?" cried Mag, even as others watched.

The slits on the wooden door which had let out sunlight now became whistles and fountains as wind and rain started battering the old shop.

The water lever began to rise, the deluge drowning a screaming Mag.

Pustak bobbled up and down, dislodged from the lower shelf, the wind tearing her pages from her spine.

Liber felt safe at the top shelf, until the silverfish found their way up. No one had read her pages. /