Of Compression.

One of the hazards of marrying a fauji is the nomadic lifestyle. Everything you buy (that is not clothes)  has to be considered in terms a) how easy is it to pack and transport and (b) whether it will survive a cross-country journey in a rickety truck. This makes it a tad bit difficult when eyeing glass stuff or really gorgeous but delicate things that wont last even one move (like that awesome handcrafted miniature ship, complete with sails and stuff, but that's another post altogether). But glass and the like are not the only things difficult to move. Books are. Especially if you own a couple of trunkfulls of them. Ever tried moving a trunk that had only books in it? It's akin to moving a large boulder (as i learnt the hard way), done only at personal risk and little care for your back. Also, it's near impossible to move. So what do you do? You could distribute the books over all your various trunks. But that has its own problems which i'll talk about some other time. Or you could do what we did - cartons. Bubblewrap inside and out. Except that we ended up with some 9 cartons of books, 8 of which are still waiting to be opened (owing to several factors not entirely in our control). But considering our experience with the one carton of books that was opened (as well almost another carton full that emerged from trunks along with the ones we've bought in the past few months), we can't help be glad the bulk of our books are still packed away. 

Before you gasp and call us boors, hear me out ok. 

In the last 6 months we've moved 4 houses. And with every move, at least one car trip to and fro from the old to the new house has been entirely dedicated to our books. Do you know how tiring it is climbing up and down stairs with armfulls of books and loading/unloading them? Especially if you love them and are loath to toss them around without a care? The last time we had to do this (yesterday), we finally put all the books in a big drum sized bucket and heaved it up to the new house. This is when the Fellow finally decided upon something we've been unsure about (and i'm still not entirely convinced, no matter how tired i am of balancing book towers as i try to open the car door single handed) - the Kindle. He has now come to the conclusion that Kindles (and other e-book readers) were designed for faujis. After lugging about one-eighth of our books around four houses (along with the unopened cartons, dont you forget), the man has finally had it with hardcopies and is now looking forward to his entire collection weighing in at a few hundred grams. And when i tell you that he even mentioned both of us with our Kindles, you'll know how serious he is. 

But for now, i'm holding onto my paperbacks (vehemently) and figuring out where best to get bookshelves installed in the new house. We'll have this discussion when we  have to move houses again. Till then, lead me to Flipkart someone.