Jeeva, Why do you read?

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.