Every word your mind may grasp here is abstract. It can only ever exist in my mind. My ideas are somehow limited to me. Somehow I attract, attractive criticism. The prose in here is too much to believe in.

"What If..." is my first ever book in prose, and so I write it as a child excited to hold a pen, but also as a writer lost in the tsunami of few of the greatest people to grace the pen.

After I wrote the first two essays in this book, I curiously googled other authors who'd have taken the liberty to write about it. I saw Jhumpa Lahiri's book, "The Clothing Of Books" and an essay called "The Decline and Fall of The Book Cover" by Tim Kreider in The New Yorker.

Jhumpa's book faced imbalanced reviews, especially in India. While there were a couple of praises, some just called it "another immigrant story".

Because just like our skin color, the topic of the clothes of a book is so controversial, that it's not often spoken about. If spoken about, it turns into a political drama, where marketing departments and their business publishers take offense as if we have questioned their authority over ours. Readers feel more authorship over the topic for they feel the book's cover should be pretty, in order for the book to outstand.

But books are not for museums. They don't need to look a certain way. Book covers are pretty the way they are. Or have we forgotten the initial thought of clothing a book with it's jacket? It was for ultimate protection.

Just like humans have various jackets, books deserve them too. Book jackets are designed so heavily, sometimes artistically towards the book's content, at times to market it and sometimes both.

We as humans don't always care for a plain red or blue hoodie. We grace them for what they are. Why can't we do that to books?

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While the other day I was in a Bookstore, a girl was shopping for books too. She wanted to buy three books for herself. When the manager suggested her one, she refused to buy an Indian author.

Although, all she was doing was checking the covers and selecting them. When her mother joined the party, they went to a rack full of Agatha Christie's catalogue. The mother suggested two books but said "take what you want. Don't blame me later."

When the daughter started searching, she began whining about how many books are there and she couldn't pick one. The mother quickly scolded her to read the blurbs to understand which ones to buy. She sat down on the cold floor then, crossing her legs and settled her clutch and the other two books she had picked up earlier on the floor as well and started reading every blurb.

What I don't understand is how one settles for a book with a "dashing" cover but then struggles to keep them from harm, or anything in that sense. Book Jackets are usually harmed in their first use itself.

Hardcovers are meant for such conditions, hence, they survive. But paperbacks are like millennials, always serving with a conflict of either to protect or attract.

I feel as if my happiness is only limited to my writing and the cover shouldn't be my concern. And still, my relationship with book covers is bitter sweet.