Sunday 11 August 2013

To read or not to read

A passionate lament on Facebook by a friend of mine on the lack of reading habit amongst youngsters left me amused. Amused because the person (my friend) himself is in his mid-twenties, and then whom did he refer to as youngsters? No idea. It also made me think about books, what they have given me & my revulsion towards it nowadays. Though I’m not a well-read person I enjoy reading.My reading is erratic & the books I have left unread outnumber those which I have actually read. Reading has given me joy in fact loads of it .But why did I suddenly start to loathe it.Perhaps it has to do with my irritation with some well-read people with intellectual pretensions. They come in various shapes & sizes but have some common characteristics.
1) Regardless of their socioeconomic status they had access to good books right from their childhood.
2) Their reading pattern somewhat goes like this  Enid Blyton at five ,Dickens at 10 &  the likes of Shakespeare ,Shaw, Marx &Gramsci  as  they grew up.
3) They look down upon people with “impoverished” English &” low” intellectual quality.
4) They consider 90% of Indians as fools.
5) They are lament about the falling quality of Indian writing in English with the advent of the likes of ChetanBhagat, Ravinder Singh &Amish Tripathi
6) They have a “deep “understanding &” opinion” on everything under the sun
7) They don’t miss an opportunity to show off their erudition. Once I asked about Machiavelli to a friend the conversation went like this
Me-“who is Machiavelli?”
My Friend-“which Machiavelli?”
Me-“some thinker I suppose I’m not sure”
Friend-“the Machiavelli who wrote “The Prince”
Me-“I think so “
Friend- "I have read" The Prince" “
.Then she chose to give me a guided tour of her evolution as an intellectual & I was busy cursing myself. Another  instance, I was sitting with a group of friends we were talking about Anna Hazare’s fast  out of the blue someone recited “yedha yedha hi dharmasya” from Gita & everyone except me & another friend joined the chorus.
8) Finally almost all of them are big showoffs & even bigger bores
These people make such a big fool out of themselves that my revulsion towards them spills over to books too. What irks me the most about these self-proclaimed intellectuals is that never show the maturity one expects from a learned person. Reading gives you knowledge not wisdom. Wisdom comes only when you supplement your knowledge with experience. It is always better to take the advice of an experienced man than a well-read man,because the former knows what reality is. If  one had access to books quite early in life & if you are well read it just means one thing .You are blessed  to have got such an opportunity &  hats off to you for utilizing that to the maximum.  If you start believing & act like a wise man simply by reading a whole lot of books you are just a fool with loads of facts in your head. A man showing off his erudition is no different from another one who shows off his latest gadget or swanky new car. This is not to say that reading is a futile activity.On the contrary it has many benefits. Reading gives you information that will come in handy at some time or the other. It gives you a huge vocabulary that will help you to articulate your thoughts well. It helps you to maintain your sanity when life becomes tough. But limiting one to reading gives you severe limitations one has to travel, meet people & experience life to move to the next level. And the best reader is one who reads for the joy of it.And this is my free advice to those “youngsters” about whom my friend lamented, read if you enjoy doing it.If you don’t read you might be missing one of the biggest joys of life but that’s not the end of the world. And if you encounter any intellectual show off, just ignore them.