The book mark was on page nine. A beautiful hand embroidered book mark with pretty pink and blue flowers. The book had got lost between the other books on the book shelf. I remembered having started to read this book many months back. Now that I had found it again I was ready to get transported into the beautiful  world of stories, to lose myself within its pages. I opened the book on page nine to start reading again.

Good books compel me to read and re-read some lines many times for its sheer magic. Intricately woven words, creating a mosaic with words both intriguing and fascinating ! Sometimes when I am reading a book the world held in the pages come pouring out and roam freely all around me. The characters evoke a myriad of emotions within me. Love fringed with anxiety, joy laced with pain, desire soaked with fear keeps me in its grip . But this story is about page nine, I am stuck on page nine. The book has been waiting for sometime now. The book mark was on page nine.

As I opened the book on page nine I wanted to go back to the first line of the book. I do this quite often, as if the whole story is hidden in the very first line ! I had once read a first line, which read “Of course the garden is located where all our beginning, Karim’s and mine, are located:Karachi”, the book had me in its  grip at that. But coming back to the first line of the book held in hand, I read the first line and the second and the third and was about to turn to page nine when a burning smell filled the air around me. It was not my imagination, it was real, the smell was coming from my kitchen. I had left the milk pan to simmer on the stove. The milk and my reading hour both definitely got ruined for the day. I had no reading hour these days, to steal an hour for my book from myself was not an option. The book mark  came back on page nine and my book lay on the table to be opened again on some later date. The book mark was on page nine.

A few days passed by before I had time to come back to my book again. The book mark was on page nine but I could not remember what had happened between pages one and eight. My mischievous memory could not recall those tiny details of who was related to whom and how. I went back to pages five to seven to brush up my memory. I kept reading and every line seemed new. Had I read those lines before ? I couldn’t  remember ; was I half asleep or my mind was elsewhere while my eyes were reading. I read every line again, as though for the first time till I reached page nine. I was totally intending to read more when the daughter walked into the room and asked “Ma , interested  in watching a new show together, it is on hotstar.” Of course I was interested, this was an invitation I could not refuse. The book could wait but not the precious time with my daughter. And the book was once more shut on page nine. The book mark was on page nine.

Once upon a time I could read for hours, uninterrupted. Those days are lost, I have managed to fill my hours with everything else but a book ! Yet reading is almost like a fatal attraction,  once in love with a book it always lures me back in its folds. I reopened my book once again.The book mark was still on page nine, patiently waiting . The girl and the boy in the book were talking about ‘old uncle Rahim’. I remembered ‘old uncle Rahim’ he was the gardener, but just could not remember what he was wearing , was it a black checkered half shirt and a worn out denim pant. The need to know these tiny detail for sure was almost like a compulsive disorder. I had to go back all the way to pages two and three, just to catch a glimpse of “old uncle Rahim” limping around from one bush to the other in a black checkered  shirt and a worn out denim pant !

I sat with the book open on page nine and as a gentle breeze would sway, my mind sways  back to the beautiful garden where the young boy and the girl ran around chasing each other in rain soaked clothes. Why do I have to make a cinema of a book in my mind as I read ? I will never know, but the motion picture has to run parallel with the reading. I smiled, as I remembered the oleander tree in the garden with a blue bench under it. What colour were the flowers, were they pale pink or vibrant red.  I had to know, I had to see the flowers of eternal bloom in the garden, on page four. I had to go back into the pages once more looking for the oleander tree. I was losing my way in the garden, I had to come out of the garden before the dark, I had to switch the lights on, I had to go back to page nine, for the book mark was on page nine. The book mark with its beautiful hand embroidered red and pink flowers are still waiting for me on page nine.