The Dusty Books

What books do you want to read?

“As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones,the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.”— Bhagavad Gita 2.22

I was cleaning my demised father’s room when I found them.Books upon books.Some dated as far back as 1896—their spines cracked, pages yellowed, margins holding another century. The smell came first: dust, mold, time. A smell that simply tells you how long something has been waiting.I stood there confused.

Why did he keep so many books? What was the reason for collecting so many voices and leaving them to rest on the shelves? Were they meant to be read, or only kept close? The question lingered without an answer.

They sat there quietly, gathering dust, aging slowly in their place. Books filled with other people’s experiences, preserved but untouched, as if waiting for a moment that never arrived.One book slipped from the shelf. No meaning attached—just gravity.

I opened it at random. Inside, someone had written about fear, loss, and endurance. Things my father rarely spoke about, yet seemed to carry within him.Then it became clearer.Maybe the books were never meant to be finished.Maybe they were meant to accompany him.He may not have collected books to complete them, but to know that others had walked similar paths.

To sit among ideas when words were difficult. To keep quiet company without explanation.Still, I don’t need to read them all.I don’t need to inherit every question.So I ask myself, standing among dust and memory:What books do I want to read?Not to store.Not to impress.But to live through, and then let go.I keep all the books that entangled with mine..

The rest, I release.Not in judgment. Not in regret.Just with understanding.

“You have a right to perform your prescribed duty,but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.”— Bhagavad Gita 2.47

And I walk away lighter—without frizzled.