The Books I Left Unread Poem by Rajendra Prasad Meena Jaipur India

When the village grew too small
For all the questions in my head,
I packed my dreams into a cloth-worn bag
And followed where the books had led.

I learned to live on little things,
On hurried meals and borrowed light;
Some pages warmed my hands with hope
On nights when hope was hard to find.

I did not know where life would lead
Or how I'd earn my daily bread;
I only knew each book could build
Another road beneath my tread.

Today I stand before a class,
With chalk dust whitening both my hands;
I draw bright windows into distant worlds
For children learning where hope stands.

Sometimes a face among the rows
Reminds me of the boy I was—
The one who read beneath a smoking lamp
And dared to dream without a cause.

I teach them more than what I know;
I give them what the books gave me:
A way to look beyond the village fields,
A mind with room enough to be free.

But when I reach my home at dusk,
My own books wait beside the bed—
Their patient spines, their folded maps,
The thoughts I left unread.

I tell myself, "Tomorrow, then.
Tomorrow I'll return and start."
But tomorrow brings more papers,
And lessons waiting to be planned.

The years have gathered at my door;
My eyes grow tired before the night.
Time turns each page with a slower hand;
I fear the books I have not opened
More than the dreams that lost their flight.

How strange that I, who found my way
Through printed words and borrowed time,
Should now stand outside the worlds
That once made every world of mine.

Still, not one book accuses me;
Not one asks where I have been.
They hold the place where I left off,
Their pages breathing softly,
As though no years had passed between.

Perhaps one night I'll turn a page
And meet the boy I used to be—
Still sitting by that village lamp,
Still listening to the crickets,
Still hungry for infinity.

For books did more than give me work;
They gave my restless life a name.
I became the teacher I once needed,
Though I sometimes lose the reader I became.

And if one day my students ask
What helped me cross the years alone,
I'll point toward the books that wait,
Their quiet covers glowing in the dusk,
And say, "They built the life I own."

But somewhere in those silent pages,
A younger version of me still stays,
Waiting for the man he helped become
To find a little time to read again.