The Bookshop Trail

  

Up and down the ridge that goes,

Through hills of green and Blue -

Scattered like a string of pearls,

Are tiny townships few

 

With cosy names of antiquity

Of men who found the way,

(Alas - the richer history aeons old

Has long now withered away)

 

But in almost every town therein

You’re always sure to find,

A dainty bookstore in the heart,

As if Minerva - she was kind!

 

Some bygone, and some nascent too

The books both preloved-new,

In every bookstore you can see

A hearty locals’ queue

 

The bookshops form a winding-trail

For pilgrims of the tome,

A solitary thread for all those lost,

A bookmark back to home

 

From Glenbrook at the eastern end

To Blackheath and beyond,

Leura, Lawson, Faulconbridge -

The trail’s an erudite bond

 

Where the musty smell of books beckon

Hearts that yearn for ink on page,

Volumes of wisdom held up to

Turn the readers sage

 

Where decades worth of yesterdays

Are held in dog-eared sheaves,

Some underlines of grateful joy

Or a petal that still grieves

 

Where the older generations bring and draw

The younger ones to read,

All mixing in the pot of books

As if part of a single creed

 

It makes me smile, that even today

The love for books lives on,

The trail, a badge of honour, with

Which the hills adorn

 

So the next time you are zooming past

These vales, their fairy falls

Slow down and heed like yonder days

To the bookshops and their calls

 

You may never know what you may find,

A piece of Baghdad or of Greece,

Or a hidden papyrus that will lead

To the long-lost golden Fleece

 

Or a treasure wrapped in paper love

From Murakami, Kerouac

Whatever it is that you may find

Wiser you will turn back

 

Your homage to the scribes of past,

Their ink, their scribbling quills,

The bookshop trail – those hidden gems

Glowing silent in the hills…

 

__________________________ 

The ever-charming Blue Mountains – beckoning Sydney from every westward facing vantage point - has its own lovely Bookshop Trail. Lithgow, Blackheath, Katoomba, Leura, Wentworth Falls, Springwood….almost every town has its lighthouse of literature, it pillar of pedagogy, where you can find loads of books, mostly preloved, laced with that typical perfume that only time can bestow on browned pages. Every time I wander into these towns, I always look out for these cosy bookshops ensconced in one corner of the delectable town centre. From Pico Iyer to Rumi, Michael Palin to Gibran, I have found many a treasure in these nooks (often at embarrassingly throwaway prices). Conversations with the bookstore owners reminds me of their fierce but proud struggle for survival in the age of digital books and the time-devouring social feeds. But it is something I never miss, to strike a conversation with those passionate souls who trade everything for a bunch of books – reminding me of Calcutta’s College Street (Where it all began), the booksellers of Connaught Place, Victoria Terminus or even Shakespeare in Paris. 

As only the Blue Mountains can, something as simple as these bookstores has been beautifully bound together in its very own Bookshop trail – let the bibliophilia blossom, and the romanticism of books live on through this trail, defiantly reminding us that some things can have no replacement – such as the embedment of knowledge in ink, the smell of old pages ambered with time, or that feel of rough paper on hand, as the pages swish and continues – both the tale, and hopefully the bookshop trail….  

10^th April, 2024