A love letter to my Kindle
My beloved Kindle,
I have been thinking a lot recently about how lucky I am to have you in my life especially as I reread the Stormlight Archive (4000 odd pages without taking into account, novellas and connected books) on you. You were with me when I read book 2 for the first time in 2015, book 3 in 2018 and book 4 in 2021, (and the second time for 1, 2, and 3) and you’re with me even now, showing me notes from a younger Aishwarya.
Not many can say, especially in this day and age, that they have had a device as resilient as you. Sure, you can’t connect to new WiFi networks beyond my house and my parent’s house but you still continue to perform the one function you need to do: make the world fall away as I read.
I have not always been appreciative of you or as constant - I know I hurt you when I used the iPad even when you were around but you never gave up on me. You just waited for me, with your seemingly eternity-lasting battery, to realize that those other devices can never be as distraction-free or as slim and convenient. They can never light up my nights like you do or enable me to fall asleep without the worry that I’ll cause serious brain damage to myself when they fall on me. You are the best reading device one can have, even if Amazon has completely halted its quest to improve on the book and could really do more work with AI, summaries, page turn buttons, and so on. Even now, when I ignore you because of my inability to focus for prolonged periods and just read, you await me with a calmness that does much credit to you. You know that I will be back because who am I, without you by my side?
When we first met, I was a deeply bitter person who’d been through 4 failed relationships and I had no hope. I almost didn’t go through with it but my mother convinced me to give this another chance. She’s a wiser person than me clearly and I’m glad I took her advice. I’ll never forget the first time, 3 years in, that those fears quieted down and I realized you’re here to stay. I could make my notes on you and expect that when you did freeze, I could reboot you easily with the trust that the bug had been fixed forever.
With you, I am myself but also anyone else I want to be - a detective, a copywriter, a Radiant, a paranormal heroine, a historical romance heroine. We travel worlds effortlessly, slipping in and out of them no matter where we are - planes, trains, buses, lines, hotels. When we’re apart, I think constantly of when we can be together again.
We have been together 9 years, in complete defiance of everything Amazon and capitalism stand for. Frankly, I am more than a little shocked that there is planned obsolescence for you even though I am sure the real money is in the store and not you, the vessel. Nevertheless, I expect Amazon to wake up any day now and realize that our love threatens their existence.
I still quietly dream of growing older with you, of a lifetime of shared words and worlds.
Never gonna give you up,
Aishwarya
P.S - I never said I was beyond using humor to hide my discomfort with earnestness.
A note on love letters
One could say that love letters have fallen out of fashion in modern times because writing letters have fallen out of fashion but I think a good argument could also be made that, as a group, we favour cynicism over earnestness. And a love letter is all earnestness and hope, if anything, so if we must be earnest, we also endeavour to be funny. Thus making sure that everyone gets that we’re sincere but also haha, it’s a joke if you choose to believe it.
The greatest love letter of all time, in my great experience of reading letters, is the one from Persuasion. This is, of course, if one were to agree that love letters are for the unrequited. Assuming you do and don’t hunt me down for classifying most requited letters as “sappy” (most authors knew that you just wrote them as poems), you must note that there is no attempt to be anything other than sincere or open because unlike us, Captain Wentworth does not have time or the seemingly infinite array of dating app options or even the dearth of social media apps to use to contact Anne. He just has this letter and this letter will have to do everything - to convince, to praise and to affirm that Anne’s feelings for him are in good stead.
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F.W
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.
Ah, Jane Austen.
Loved this. Made me want to hug my kindle a little bit longer.
I haven’t explored it yet but I’m told there is a ‘colour’ kindle. Shudder!