Unknowingly Donating

[047] ... [General]

Happened to read this article Why You Should Take Pictures of Your Physical Media Collection and found it interesting, to catalog your media collection and tracking them through the serial numbers and such in the event of theft or losing etc. Normally we have heard of making copies of your collection, but this added another dimension.

It brought up a childhood memory nevertheless. My father encouraged us to read and regularly bought a variety of books. Comics, translated classics, magazines, short stories and such that transposes you to another world at that age. With the collection growing, he once suggested to set up a library at home to serve others. A long shelf agreed to host them in the corner of living room and in a week's time it was in operation. My father's friend who worked for a daily even mentioned it as a small news item.

Many came, neighbours, relatives and classmates, and borrowed--well, that's about all, just borrowed, never to return. Soon my father got transferred and a few inquires before we left about what was taken hardly evoked anything positive. Some didn't recall ever borrowing, some were not sure who else had borrowed from them. A whole lot of collection just vanished.

The feeling of losing something close never left, in fact, continues till date. Earlier whenever I saw a second hand bookshop or one on the pavements on Sundays, it looked inviting to search for some of the lost links. Nothing ever surfaced and eventually was taken with an assurance of them having been turned to paper envelopes or being sold off. It's a long time since the fact finally got accepted, like with some parents about their runaway kids who never come back. But the memories of them, be it the comics like Davy Crockett, Lobo, Kidnapped or the Disney ones, or the illustrated Aesops tales, or hardbound Oliver Twist or David Copperfield, Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe or collections of stories from the World over remains fresh...