The Book
by Snehal Vadher
[ fiction - april 06 ]
In the beginning, or rather, before the beginning, one is fascinated by the unbounded scope of the word: a word that is in turn drawn from an infinite pool of words. Once, the word is in this fashion - call it random if you will or the predestined choice of the subconscious -selected for meditation, the scope, as we progress from beginning to end, narrows down. But this scope narrows down only in relation to the primeval word, and if compared to the word at that stage of the text, the scope remains as broad, with beautiful filigree, as it ever was. Therefore, the true implications of the primeval word are being assessed at closer quarters than at previous locations.
The primeval word has the most number of direct associations to other words occurring in the text, or the connotations of the primeval word are parallel to those of a considerable number of words. The Book is concerned only with one word. It implies neither more nor less. But the entire text is dedicated to this effort, to produce this effect of realization of the word: the word not written, but suggested and implied. And indeed it was impossible from the beginning to understand the efficacy of this plan of execution, since each word in The Book will have to be the chief concern of another book and so on and so forth. It is here that we realize the futility of this approach, this idea, or can we take it to be the essence of The Book: that it contains an infinite number of microcosms within it? In fact, any book contains an infinite number of books, no matter how diverse, how irrelevant these appear to the concern to The Book. So the number of words in the text has at least a factorial of that number of books within it. It can be argued that the most succinct and indeed the only possible way for The Book to exist without this paradoxical population within it of microscopic viruses, is that The Book consist no more than just a single word. And this word be the primeval word.
Now we approach the question of the word. Why the word? Why not a symbol? Why not a photograph? It soon becomes evident, from the discussions in the paragraph above, that all of these media defy aphorisms, defy brevity, and thus are no good substitutes for the word. The possibility that any two books will be written such that they appear as a facsimile of one another is one in millions, or some such number which is the inverse of say, the factorial of the number of words in each book, and every possible permutation and combination possible within them. Do we mean to say that brevity is the chief issue while writing a book? Brevity was never the chief issue of anything that exists in nature. By saying this, I do not mean to say that a book mimics nature or something that exists therein. By this I mean to say that a book is the product of nature and it mimics itself, like everything else in nature always does. A book is nothing but a slow chaos enfolding like the branches of a huge tree, whose every and any branch is identical to any other, and the tree is an epitome of chaotic symmetry, approachable from any direction once its symmetries are abounding. It is said among some scholars that The Book is a map: a unique map of the brain. Every text, every book, is but a map of the brain. The eyes absorb the words, the words have their implications, implications have links to other words. This form a circuit in the brain and on the whole, The Book develops into what it really is: a strict map of the brain. It becomes what it gives birth to.
The questions which we have attempted are inevitable. But is there any chance that such questions are imperative? It is simple and rather too simple and dangerously naive, to believe, above everything, that the first book which will be written with no more than a word will be The Book. Since the existence of The Book demands the inexistence of any other book whatsoever. And indeed, even a single word is potent to encapsulate another million words. Thus, the thought which gives rise to a word, in its turn gives rise to a thousand more, and these generate a million thoughts and thus complete the circle. The existence of The Book is challengeable on this ground, that is, whether it can in fact contain only one word. A more plausible proposition for The Book to exist is that it should be entirely blank, wordless: should contain a pristine and unspoken bliss of being inexplicable.
