I remember being 10, 11, 12... and together with my older sister and a cousin of her age, we would walk from the government quarters area near the city's main train station towards the city's biggest library, Ipoh State Library.
The building looks boring, and inside it would be frigging cold. There would be many people in there, but all of them quiet, and most of them stays in nooks and corners where they won't be found.
But we love it there. The smell of books, fresh and dog-eared, is unique. It's a scent that will always remind me of quiet days spent just looking from shelves to shelves books that will take your mind away from your own space. Each title, nicely wrapped in plastic cover, will have a white sticker on it, and the sticker will have prints of alphabet and numbers that we didn't know other people call em Dewey Decimal.
My sister discovered the choose-your-own-adventure books, and we would go through each possible step. Then we'd find another title by the same author by scouring the shelves once again. At times we'll find books with doodles on them. Some doodles are funny, there were even those with phone numbers of people we didn't know. But the stories were the most interesting thing.
We'd forget that we needed to finish homework.
I'd forget that my teachers think that I'm a lazy bum.
My sister would forget that her new haircut is a mess.
My cousin would forget that her parents quarrel day in day out.
Now a library filled with e-books is being introduced. We'll have no shelves to get lost in between. No white stickers with weird numbers and alphabets on them. No smelly books with plastic covers and thumb prints all over them.
Sounds like a nightmare to me, but I suppose it is inevitable.
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