Sundaram nodded.

“You know, uncle, you can get all of these,” Karthik said, pulling out his phone. He tapped the screen a few times. “Ashokamitran books PDF. See? The entire literary output. ‘Water,’ ‘The Man Who Wanted to Fly,’ everything. Free. You can carry them on your tablet. This whole shelf is just dead weight.”

He understood the PDF’s logic. It was democratic, efficient, immortal. You could search for a phrase in a millisecond. You could adjust the font. You could highlight without a pen.