WHAT IF........ we could only read one book for the rest of your lives?

By Aishwarya Chandra, BA (hons)journalism

Edited and Designed by mehak,B.com( program )

What if, one ordinary afternoon, the world changed quietly, no explosions, no announcements, just a simple, irreversible rule: you are allowed to read only one book for the rest of your life.

At first, it sounds almost romantic. You would choose wisely, of course. Something layered. Something timeless. A book that grows with you. Maybe one you have already loved, or one you have been saving for the right time. You would imagine yourself returning to it in different seasons of your life, uncovering meanings you missed before.

But then the weight of it settles in.

Because books are not just stories. They are doors. Each one opens into a new mind, a new world, a new way of seeing. To choose one is to quietly close all the others. No new characters to fall in love with. No unfamiliar perspectives to challenge your own. No accidental discoveries in dusty corners of libraries. Just the same pages, again and again, like a conversation that slowly runs out of things to say.

And yet, would it?

Maybe the book would not change, but you would. At sixteen, you might read it for escape. At twenty, for understanding. At forty, for comfort. The same sentences would meet a different version of you each time, reflecting not what they are, but who you have become. Perhaps you would begin to notice smaller details, a line you once ignored, a character you once misunderstood, a silence that suddenly feels louder than words.

Perhaps, then, the question is not which book you would choose, but which version of yourself you trust to keep finding something new within it.

And if such a tragedy were to befall upon all of us, which book would you pick? Would you choose something familiar, a story that already feels like home, or

something unknown, hoping it lasts a lifetime? Would you choose comfort, or curiosity? Certainty, or endless interpretation?

Or maybe the real answer is quieter, more unsettling, that the freedom to read many books is not something we truly appreciate until we imagine losing it. That the abundance of stories shapes us in ways we do not notice, quietly building empathy, curiosity, and imagination.

Because in a world of one book, the tragedy is not choosing wrong.

It is never getting to choose again.