The L(?)Ink Between The Books

It was a Friday evening and Tim was coming back from school. Excited! Tim is a shy boy, in his mid adolescence just about to be 16. His world was more or less covered with one and only one thing : story books. Today he found a really interesting book from the school library that he issued for the weekend. That was one of the source of his excitement. Moreover, tomorrow is his 16th birthday! Which means gifts and hence more story books!

Tim is a bit different from other boys of his age. He does not have many friends. The closest ones are surely books and solitude. In his childhood Tim developed dyslexia. It is a disorder that leads to trouble with reading, writing and spelling words despite normal intelligence. As a result he faced a lot of difficulty in recognizing letters and could not read properly till he was 10. But with time it seemed to have almost disappeared. Thanks to his love for story books that helped him a lot to get over the problem by practicing to guess words from the context. Now he can read and understand most sentences without any problem. 

Coming back to home Tim quickly had his supper and configured himself into his cozy bed with the book. He had already finished reading a major portion of the book while he was in school.  The book speaks of the life of a young boy called Asaki and his dream-world. Asaki likes to fantacize about his imaginary girlfriend, Kasia who he believes is from a different world. He wants to meet Kasia and the book describes his futile attempts to get to Kasia's world.

Although the story line was a bit unfeasible, nevertheless Tim was finding the book quite interesting. As he was approaching the end of the book, he was eagerly waiting for the answer : whether Kasia is real and Asaki would succeed to reach her or is Kasia just a construct of Asaki's imagination?

The clock ticked 11 as Tim realized that he did not understand how quickly the time flew. It was time to go to bed. But now that he has reached the last chapter of the book, he could not restrain himself from finishing it up quickly.   

He hasted into reading the last chapter :

***

THE LAST LETTER TO MY LOVE

Dear Kasia,

I sit down to write this letter with a trembling pen and a shaking heart. I hate to admit this to myself, but this is probably the last letter I am writing to you.  As soon as my pen will stop, the story of Asaki will end and my existence will cease to be. I do not know how to get to you or if you will ever read this. But I still feel you inside me. I feel your pain and I feel your happiness. They cannot be fake. May be some day, some kind person reading my letter would bring us together with the magic of his pen and make our love-story real and eternal... ... ...

***

Tim was feeling quite sleepy now. He yawned and leaned over to see the time over the wall clock. It is 11:50. Quite late. But still the book cannot be left unfinished! So Tim was about to delve back into the shoes of Asaki. He was feeling sympathetic for Asaki.For most people, Asaki seemed to be an eccentric. But may be Asaki’s perceptions also had some fragment of reality hidden in it. May be in some far away land there awaits Kasia for him. And may be some day Asaki would find a way to get to her.

In his childhood Tim also faced somewhat similar reactions from the people around him. Many people thought Tim was mentally challenged as he could not spell and read properly due to dyslexia. But his parents believed in him all through and now he is just as normal as everyone else around him.

As Tim was getting lost in the thoughts, he heard footsteps on the staircase. He knew it was Grandpa. Tim ran to the door as Grandpa exclaimed with a broad smile on his face: "Happy Birthday my star! I have a little gift for you".

"Is it a story book?" Tim eagerly asked .

"Yes it is!" Grandpa replied with a smile.

Tim took the book from Grandpa and hugged him.

Grandpa said : "I read this book when I was of your age. The story is about a girl who believes that she has a friend from some other world. I hope you will enjoy reading it."

Tim could not wait any longer. He tore open the sparkled wrapper of the book and held the book in his hands. Then he read out the name of the book :

KASIA AND THE FRIEND FROM THE OTHER WORLD.

________________________________________________________

(the author's take)  

Post Mortem(Read this part only after you have read the story and thought quite a bit about it)

There is more to the story than you might have thought! Did you notice that Asaki and Kasia are anagrams? And since Tim is dyslexic, it might happen that the book that he got from Grandpa was “ASAKI AND THE FRIEND FROM THE OTHER WORLD”!

So there are two faces of this story. One is for the readers who prefer a realistic situation. The other one is from a bit unrealistic perspective.

The realistic face(The Link Between the Books)

So according to this line of thought, Tim issued the same book from the library that Grandpa gave him. But since he is dyslexic, he jumbled up the words Asaki and Kasia while reading the name of the book. But one problem still remains. Grandpa said that it is about a girl. But Asaki was a boy. This point can be resolved by arguing that Grandpa read the book when he was young, and it was a long time ago! So he might have goofed up on the gender of the character do to poor memory. Although this is not a very convincing logic, but this stands well as an explanation for making sense of the realistic interpretation. For people who like to believe this explanation, the name of the story is : The Link between the books. This makes sense, because the link between the two books is that they are the same. In my opinion, this interpretation is a bit dull and less interesting. Of course one can go on discussing on this with other logics, but let us now focus on the other and more interesting perspective.

The fairytale face(The Ink Between the Books)

According to this interpretation, the two books are different and it is a love story between two characters of different books. This interpretation is more interesting and less realistic. There is a lot of scope for imagination in this line of thought. One is, what is the mode of communication between Asaki and Kasia? This question is relevant because I mentioned that Asaki was unsuccessful in communicating with Kasia and he was frustrated and sat down to write the last letter to her. So how did Kasia get to know about her frien from the different world?There is a lot more to ask if you think along these lines. I will leave it on you. And the name of the story for people who would like to think this way is: The Ink between the Books. By ink I mean the two books or rather the two characters can be united only by an author with his ink. So I would expect one of you to fill the gap with your ink and imagination and bring them together!      

There are some more lines to think about:
Sanghamitra says: 
What if Grandpa is also dyslexic ?Dyslexia can be genetic!

Is Asaki writing the letter to himself? What if Asaki has a split personality disorder?

Does Tim fall asleep and the latter part of the story takes place in his dreams?

Swapnadeep says: 
What if Grandpa is Tim who did a time travel. :p

Anchita says:

The two books are actually different and Grandpa ensured that Tim reads it from the library before he gifts the counterpart of it. Probably because that is how Grandpa and Grandma met and he wants Tim to know the story.