Reading
Humans are incomplete beings. And there is nothing better to fill the interstices of our being than words. In a country where not many people read, a reader feels like an outsider. I am not talking about those who boast about their reading list, and there are many who do so; but nonetheless one also has a soft corner for them, after all, they have tasted the immense pleasure of another world, that they are really proud of. I should also point out that reading is an immersive experience, the soul twists and turns as the emotions in the novel mold from happiness to sadness to despair. Just like Flaubert says, ten books are enough to transform a man into a sage. Books have a terrible power hidden between their words.
As soon as we start reading we create a dual self; there is a part of our self who is walking alongside a pretty woman in the alleys of the novel, and then there is another self who is aware of the scene the window of the room is presenting him, the lamp under which he is reading, the people he is looking at below on the streets and surreptitiously trying to catch a glimpse of the train of thoughts of the man walking down the street; we feel a sense of superiority after reading a good sentence, a feeling of power that seemingly gives us the control of the ways of the world as if we can penetrate the thoughts of the stranger on the street with absolute certainty. I have some books that I always keep by my side, the one that I admire the most is Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, I cannot be separated from it even for a moment, even if I am not reading it I want it in the environs of my sight so that I can look at it and know that I can pick it up and read a line from it whenever I am not feeling at home with myself; all of us readers have a book selected for us like that, a book that we have chosen to take with us to the grave so that we can talk to it whenever we want. It gives us a feeling of companionship like a person with whom we are in love, and who revels in satisfying us; this marvelous feeling can only be experienced by a true reader, who knows how it feels when the soul is thirsty for wise words.
It often happens that we happen to read a sentence that makes us stop reading and we think over it for the whole day, leaving the book aside. In a café, you would encounter these sorts of crazy readers, who are sitting alone with a book and smiling over it, and then let go of the book altogether and start staring at the people, struggling to shake off the magic of the words that has transformed the world around them. Reading pushes the boundary of our experience, it sharpens our senses. I was once reading Stendhal’s The Red and The Black in a London cafe, and anyone who has read it would second my experience, having absorbed my mind with the emotional description of Madame de Renal and her intrigues I looked up and saw the passersby walking along the pavement, I did not just see ordinary humans strutting along aimlessly, but a mélange of hopes and disappointments, immaculately dressed, serving a higher purpose of universal brotherhood by doing their individual tasks. These utopian moments are short-lived, but they leave an indelible mark on our habits and thoughts, and most crucially leaving a meteoric cloud of a feeling of sympathy towards others, which lives longer than the utopian thought; a feeling that we are all sick and need the support of each other to get through this absurd life.
Seneca once said that we do not have the power to choose our biological parents, but we have the power to choose our intellectual parents. He was pointing the didactic purposes of reading. Reading is talking, it is a soliloquy where the writer is the speaker who is expressing his mind to you; on top of that he is a patient listener, you can stop him anytime and say “But is this really true?” and then he patiently sees you scribbling the side notes on the book almost with a smirk, and we can almost listen to him saying “Go on ahead, you will find the answer to this objection.” A submerged experience of such conversation with the great minds, leaves no time for you to get involved in trivial stupidities, there are many great questions still left unanswered, in fact there are many great questions that are yet to be asked that our great intellectuals were not allowed to ask because of the injustice that death did to them. We become a part of the greater legacy, we partake in the great debates, we stand one with the great minds of the previous generations; readers are really crazy! And who would not want to be a part of this magnificent crazy world?
As is often written on the banners of the bookstore and on the bookmarks that no two people read the same book. The best way to check the veracity of this claim is to reread a book that you read five years ago. I read Hamlet for my A levels, and then I picked it up again after five years just to read the ghost part, because it fascinated me, and I happened to read the side notes I had made five years earlier, I could not stop laughing at them. That ostentatious pride of youth that we know everything almost made me ashamed of myself, as I read further on I realized an important rule in life: Never pretend to know even if you know something, be humble and listen more than talk. Another experience that my reader friends share with me often is that while reading a book again the memories that took place at the earlier time of reading flood our minds, they are trapped there in the words, and the mind releases them in a form that we let go of them and only smile at them, whether they be bad or good.
I will leave the readers with a debt to be repaid in the form of a quote from Oscar Wilde, when he was asked that why does he not write more books, he said that life is too short to read all great books, let alone write one.
