Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
SHE was twelve years old, nearly hidden behind her tottering pile of books. I smiled, eyeing the beautiful titles stamped on the book jackets - Rowling, Paolini, Colfer, Tolkein and Prachett.
It's been a while since I've seen a fellow-book muncher. The race is slowly dying with the onslaught of raucous movies and 'stream-able' TV sit-com episodes. Among my generation, books are now slowly equating to dreary, monochromatic, dog-eared textbooks and charmless jargon-filled reference texts.
I strike up a conversation with the book-laden girl, intrigued by her taste in novels, secretly pleased with her well-chosen collection.
As the conversation winds through her favourite genres and the frequency of her book-meals, I find that she's a balanced consumer, having dipped and indulged in a variety of literature.
She's not a book-chewer; her nibbles are far too big and her insatiable appetite far too voracious. She is a book addict. I grin - as a long forgotten memory flickers at the back of my mind - a flashlight, under covers, my nose nearly grazing the fine print of one of my most well-thumbed books.
I watch her, almost enviously, as she props open one of her books, extracts her bookmark and plunges into the story as the bus rattles on. I ask to borrow one, joyfully pulling out one with an intricately designed cover and I sit quietly relishing the book jacket.
It's been a while; the smell of crisply cut paper, the crackle of the stiff spine, the rush of pages beneath my fingers. After months of tests, assignments, applications, deadlines - it feels good to just lie back and lose myself in another world.
I feel empty as I think about how the beautiful written world is dying out. What about the kids of today? Will they ever savour the taste of ink and parchment? Will they ever feel the thrill of running their fingers over rows of thickly spined books?
Is this the end of a glorious chapter?
Or are there more 12- year-old girls out there munching on the delicious printed words of a carefully marinated story?
I hope, with every single strand of sincerity, that they're out there - crouched under their blankets, midnight-snacking on some crunchy paperbacks. Yum.
