Clearance

At some of the bookstores in Singapore, like Times, or MPH, especially Popular, one can see the store being divided into various sections, touting titles under attractive headings like "Best Sellers", "New Titles", "This Month's Pick", etc. Some of the titles under "New Titles" sport names like "50 ways to get out of your couch", "10 tips for the successful businessman", most of them doomed to join the little noticed section "Clearance" next week.

It may be slightly inaccurate, however, to call the Clearance section "little noticed". Despite Herculean efforts by the shop assistants to make the section as messy and dirty as possible, it is possibly one of the greatest rivals to the Best Sellers section, as people haunt the clearance basket in search of the book they always wanted, but wanted to wait till the author hanged himself from bankruptcy, so the book would go into clearance. Usually, their search turned out fruitless, but that doesn't stop them from trying again the next time.

More likely than not, you will find books written by some celebrity who had some overnight fame, and rightly cashing on their new found fame, or notoriety, produced some books in the same night, hoping to make some money out of it. "The life of Paris H*****--an autobiography", "How I cut my arm off to save my life", etc, are such works.

When I browsed through the very titles which I had just made fun of, I feel a sense of sadness, a sense of futility emanating from the spines of the books. It is as though they are looking back at me, crying of vast disappointment, of despondency. A lifetime of effort, of hopes and high spirits, may have gone into the writing of these books. Yet still, nought counts if you are unable to get people to appreciate what holds within you.

As a writer, I had hoped to write a book, or many of them, someday. It might be too much perhaps, to hope that I would be able to produce some philosophical blockbusters. I don't even have an exact genre in mind. But I do know that I want to write a book.

And I know which section of the bookstores I want my books to go under. It has to be the Clearance section. Whenever I had hoped to achieve something, life always throws me something else instead. Let's just see what life would grant me this time round.