This piece shall be in response
to a single question that has been put to me numerous times by my group of friends
that predominantly consist of people who have not been bitten by the reading
bug, possibly yet. “Why do you read?”
Even after multiple instances of
encountering such a question, the first time I really felt inclined to answer
it, was when I had completed Gustave
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. It was some two years ago. I was possessed by Emma’s
ghost (Madame Bovary) then and I replied with the serenity of a hermit, “Reading makes me forgive everyone. It helps me empathize even with the insane, the
borderline psychotics or even the most sinister minds of the world”. The answer
was strongly backed by a very puerile perception that since I was able to
empathize even with Emma who in spite of having been blessed with a loving
husband and a comfortable existence, subjected herself to adultery and
consequent ruin. In fact, I was into believing then, that should a similar real
life situation arise of my wife cheating me, I would be able to forgive her and
let her free to unite with her illegal lover. Now I am 26 and on the verge of
getting married and when I reconstruct such a scenario inside my head, I see no
reason why I should not chop the parts of my wife’s anatomy and keep it in
refrigeration to show it to my friends.
I am no longer, a Messiah who would carry all the sins of the world and grant
them eternal salvation.
Very recently, to the same
question of why I read, I had found a different answer when I was under the
spell of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was a ‘magical realist’ novel. I told my inquisitive friend that the book
appealed to a centre of my brain which I did not know that it existed before. If
that sounds rather vague, I would like to explain better. None can dispute the
fact that one cannot draw oneself to reading, unless one of the characters of
his book has some traits that resemble that of the reader. The book should look
like the reader himself has been installed to operate in a different universe. ‘The
Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D. Salinger is one such novel which appeals to almost
all of the reading populace solely because Holden Caulfield, its protagonist
acts in some ways, as the adolescent alter ego of the reader. But you cannot
expect all novels which you come across to reflect yourself and you are bound
to be disappointed sometimes. When I started ‘One Hundred Years’, I could sense
that I was in for such a disappointment since there were too many characters
and lot of story in it and the author did not care to detail his characters to
make them flesh-and-blood so that I would try caring for them. It did not have
anything that conforms to the rule book of classic literature but when I was
halfway through it, I was not able to pull myself out of the strings through
which it had managed to tangle me to its web. As mentioned earlier, there was
some unknown centre in my brain that had responded to the call of the book and
I still descend into a reverie when I think about the book.
Still I feel I have not responded
to the question of my friend convincingly and he might have asked back, ”Alright
it appealed to your brain but so what? How did it make you feel better? Did it
make you any wiser or help you look at life better?” Frankly I don’t have an
answer.
Alright. Let me handle the
question with a very different contention.“Reading in many ways kindles your
imagination”. You are very much part of the storytelling as much as the writer
is. The writer directs you to create his world inside your head and the onus of
executing his directions is with you. When Kalki describes Arulmozhivarman as ‘a muscular warrior blessed with enchanting beauty and charisma’, he does not paint his image and display it to me like an Agra doll hawker. It is my duty to
construct the image based on his instructions and, for example, to make things
easier, when I imagine a slim Sivaji Ganesan for the role, the job is only half
done. But when he is prescribed to be muscular, I develop his image of him
further by burnishing him with some pounds of neatly sculpted lat muscles
supporting a stubborn chest. Now the figure of Arulmozhivarman is neither Kalki’s
altogether nor Sivaji Ganesan’s. I chiseled him myself into a man whom you
cannot replicate or find anywhere.
In many ways, the writer does not
invite you into his head and make you look at exactly the same things he has
been seeing so far. It is, to reduce it to simple terms, the act of a carrying
mother inviting her husband to place his palm over her protruding womb to feel the
agitations of the moving baby. The husband need not, and cannot feel what
exactly the woman feels.
Not one explanation I have given
above can wholly answer the question. But it cannot be denied that I do
empathize with people better than before; I have a better imagination engine
inside me; I love more people than I used to do.
Sometimes people ask me, “Ivlo padichu enna
kilicha?”(What have you achieved out of reading so much?) I can reply boldly “Why
should reading give me some definite measurable output? Why should everything
we do be measured solely in terms of the worth of its end product? “
I slowly realise I can never answer the question properly but I have to the best of my knowledge
tried doing that. If this is an examination, I might fail. But as I said
earlier, the writer can do only so much. The onus of passing me rests with the
reader.