Pages That Deepen with Time!

For a long time, I had been carrying a quiet wish within me - to return to the novels and novellas that once shaped my college days, to open their pages again and see how they might speak to the mind and heart of the person I have since become. I wanted to feel them anew, to test whether stories we once loved remember us as faithfully as we remember them. Today, at last, I made time for that small, whimsical longing… and what I discovered was nothing short of wondrous.

More Nostalgia!

More Realizations!

More Depth!

There is a gentle, almost sacred tenderness in rereading a book that once rested in your hands years ago - much like rewatching a film from your younger days and suddenly noticing glances, pauses, and quiet meanings that once slipped past you unnoticed. 

The story has not changed! 

The words remain where they always were! 

And yet, 

Something feels different, as though the pages themselves have learned a deeper language during your absence, waiting patiently for you to grow into their truth!

Today I wandered once more through the windswept fields and hushed emotions of Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874), a novel that once accompanied me in my UG years. Back then, I admired it as one admires a painting - from a thoughtful distance, attentive to its craft, its elegance, its structure. Perhaps I even read it with examinations in mind, hoping to gather marks along with meanings - who can say for certain?

But today, I did not stand outside it. I stepped inside. I felt the hush of its landscapes settle around me, the ache within its silences, the fragile courage trembling beneath Bathsheba’s pride, and the steady, sunrise-like warmth of Gabriel’s devotion. Scenes that once seemed merely beautiful now felt quietly profound; passages I once skimmed now lingered like echoes. It was no longer simply a novel I was reading — it was a world I was inhabiting.

And, it struck me then that time is the truest co-author of every rereading. 

Life annotates the margins! 

Experience underlines certain sentences!

Memory turns ordinary passages luminous!

We return thinking we are revisiting a story, only to discover that the story has been patiently waiting to revisit us.

Perhaps, that is why certain books never truly end. They relax on our shelves with the calm assurance of old companions, knowing that when we return, we will not encounter the same story again - we will encounter ourselves, reflected more deeply, more honestly, and more tenderly in their pages!