My Bookish Woes (2)

I often tell myself that one day, when I grow up, I will read non-fiction too. But for now I am content with my world of fiction. Such a confession often invites judgemental looks. ‘So you don’t want to broaden the scope of your reading? You don’t want to be informed? Don’t you want to grow (and sound) wiser?’ These are the implied questions that are raised along with the eyebrows. The underlying assumption being: fiction is not brain-nourishing, to put it mildly, or that it is juvenile, to put it bluntly.

In the last post I talked about how while growing up I was never introduced to classics. So I was untouched by the art of the Tolstoys, Austens, Brontes, Prousts or Twains. By the time I came to realise the importance and necessity of reading classics, it had been too late. After a point you just have too much on your plate. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to take time out for such pastimes or to make up for what you had missed out in your childhood. And thus you want to make the most out of whatever little you get of this precious reading time. However, for a reader like me this situation presents a new dilemma. Should one read things that one would like to read or one ought to have read by now? Or should one read stuff that’s supposed to make one wiser and more informed (or at least make one sound wiser and more informed)? Of course, I mean non-fiction. 

Whenever I sit to read fiction something in me feels a bit uneasy. Or perhaps guilty. Guilty of not devoting this time to sharpen my wits by reading non-fiction. Does reading Pride and Prejudice not befit me, for it could be written off as nothing more than glorified chic-let romance from the Victorian era? Does reading Madam Bovary (or Lady Chatterley’s Lover) not become me, for it can be scoffed at as nothing but litany of woes of an ingénue who asked for all the trouble? And, of course, won’t my reading Harry Potter, at this age, make no-one want to take me seriously? (Yes, I haven’t read that either; don’t abandon me now please!)

Although people like me would want to believe that reading fiction makes you smarter, there’s not enough credible and concrete proof to suggest so. Thus we still can’t conclusively say that fiction indeed makes us smarter and nicer. 

One may argue that reading fiction comes with its own benefits. The staple ones being: facility with the language, enriched vocabulary, development of the organ of empathy, escape from grim reality, awareness of and exposure to other cultures than your own etc. But are these enough? 

Firstly, it must be stated that fiction is not entirely untruth. It’s not falsified reality; but it is reality ordered and arranged in a certain fashion so as to make it more lucid and tangible. There are indeed additions and subtractions done by a writer to dramatise and to intensify the reality, but the base is, mostly, the lived experience (of the writer’s or of the people they’ve known). Not even wildest of fantastic fiction is without modicum of reality. 

Good fiction can go beyond the aforesaid perks, I feel. It could help you crystallise sentiments that are otherwise amorphous. It breaks down, in words, what you may be feeling at any given point in time, or that you may have felt at a certain point in time in the past. The joy of stumbling upon sentences that capture ever so precisely what you’re feeling is incredible; it makes you want to thank the writer heartily. It could also make you wonder if the writer was snooping upon you, or if the writer is endowed with uncanny prescience. Emerson had once remarked that, “in work of a writer of genius we rediscover our own neglected thoughts”. That’s the beauty of art: it helps you find yourself by losing yourself in it.

  Good fiction can even induce new epiphanies. It holds your hand and leads your way to the threshold of the sanctum of realisation; and then it withdraws its steps as you enter the sanctum, while it stands at the threshold with its arms crossed, smiling, contented in the knowledge that within you’re revelling in the glow of that realisation. Thus in a way good fiction has the potential of not only informing your outlook (‘inlook’ too), but also rendering it anew. Like any other form of art, good fiction could be both informative and transformative.

Another thing that draws me to fiction is that it gives you an impression, even if false, that you can control time. Of all things that are disobedient, time is most annoyingly so. But when you immerse yourself in a good book, time does slow down. You get to observe and dissect those micro-expressions, micro-thoughts, micro-moments that elude us in our high-paced lives. The consciousness of a (good) writer can push itself betwixt two closely overlapping, infinitesimal moments, and then wring out the very essence of all that is felt by us in those fleeting moments, such that the consciousness of the reader can then soak up that distilled essence.

“We can learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology,” Noam Chomsky had once said.

Even if not brain-nourishing, fiction could very well be soul-nourishing. Then, how could a reader, who has already missed out a lot of these wonderful gems in his growing up years, not feel compelled chose fiction over non-fiction? And even while I choose to read fiction, I am torn between the urge to read those classics and the stunning works of contemporary literature. As I read one book I feel tempted to pick another, echoing the perpetual complain of every reader: so many books; so little time! So apparently, my bookish woes aren’t coming to an end anytime soon.

My Bookish Woes (1)

I am writing this sitting in a train and next to me sits an elderly couple. The gentleman is easily in his mid-sixties and is reading a book. Curious to know what book he’s reading I tilt my head at a certain angle, imagining that I am doing so imperceptibly. But it is not so. His wife notices me and asks her husband to show me the book he’s reading. Embarrassed, I smile and thank him.

‘Oh, it’s just a novel! Tell me son does it suit him to be reading such novels at this age? Now at his age he should be reading Gita, but your uncle keeps reading these novels,’ the lady tells me and then chortles. The gentleman stares at her, then at me and goes back to reading his book.
This made me interrupt my own reading and reflect on this incident a bit.

 I was raised in a conservative vaishnav household, wherein reading any kind of secular literature, unless it was academic, was seen to be a form of dawdling. While reading non-fiction still qualified as quality reading, reading fiction (novels particularly) would attract disdainful looks from the elderly. ‘Human form is too precious to be wasted on these fabrications!’ their looks said. Reading novels was for idlers. My grandmother would tell us the story of some distant aunt of ours who’d earned a bad name for herself because she read too many novels; or maybe because all she did was to read novels. We were told that it was difficult finding a match for her. ‘Which saas would want a bahu that just drinks tea and read novels all day?’ my grandmother would say shrugging.

 As a result of this wariness that my folks had vis-a-vis novels, as children we were never exposed to classics; I had not heard of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters until after I finished college. There was hardly anyone around us who read fiction, which obviously meant there were no works of fiction in the house on which we could lay our hands. This is not to say that there was aversion to books or to reading. In fact while my SoBo peers were reading Austen, Dickens, Twain et al., I was reading Meera, Jaydev, Soordas et al.

Now in retrospect when I analyse the situation, I find it very amusing. In one sense this practice could be seen to be very restrictive and orthodox, depriving a child of the pleasure and treasure of world of fiction. Yet in another sense it could be seen as an exercise in decolonisation, even if inadvertently so. We were not disallowed per se to read these classics, but we were never encouraged either. And even when we did read them (thanks to the school library), we were completely oblivious to the canonical status that these books enjoyed. For us it was just another novel, and for my folks, perhaps just a waste of time (and of the precious human form). We would have never gotten around to appreciating the indigenous literatures, if we were distracted, or even possibly consumed, by the glamour of the English classics or novels in general.

However, this ostensibly decolonising practice could have also taken a perilous turn: it could have made us myopic and parochial, and worse still, chauvinistic. We too could have turned into narrow-minded nincompoops, who are so blinded by the almost mythical glory of the past that they fail to realise its goriness. But we were salvaged. And like it is almost every other time, this time too it was mummy dearest to our rescue.

My mother had been a reader in her childhood. And I can safely assume that she must have been a secret reader. I don’t know how and when she lost touch with this side of hers; but during our late-night conversations with her, I distinctly remember, she would often tell us how as a child she was fascinated by the world that Enid Blyton would create in her popular series. She would get us Chandamama (in English) to read and would also often read it to us also. So she was the one who had introduced to the world of fiction.  More importantly, she had also passed on to us her love for languages and reading.

But perhaps it was a little too late. A considerable span of my childhood had already passed without reading fiction, and whatever little I read would not qualify to be called refined literature. Still, the seeds that mother had sown did not go waste.

Much later in my life I decided to study literature formally. And my introduction to literature, and by extension humanities, as an academic discipline prevented my falling prey to chauvinism. (Though I must confess I was almost there. Almost!) It taught me that genius does not belong exclusively to one country, one race, or one community. And, interestingly, my being rooted in the indigenous culture in my growing up years also prevented me from blindly holding the western canon in reverentially high esteem. It taught me that imperfection also doesn’t belong exclusively to one country, one race or one community. So, in a way, it did solve its purpose of decolonisation. To put it simply, I realised: to err is human, and to think that we (the Orient) have never erred or that they(the Occident) cannot err, is bovine!


What I still could not fully shake off was this deeply ingrained guilt I feel while reading novels. Even today, I feel some sense of scruple if I sit to read a novel first thing in the day (no matter however desperately I want to). A couple of years ago an relative of mine had come to visit us. I was in the first year of my master’s and was trying to penetrate Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. He walked in to my room and upon finding me reading, he asked me hesitantly: ‘beta, is this your course book or just a novel?’ For him a book that was not a course book (prescribed in the curriculum) and was fiction, was still just a novel. Just a(nother) novel. What a waste of the precious human form!

But my bookish woes aren’t confined to just this culturally conditioned guilt. Books now present me with a new and a different set of dilemma. I should try to write about those the next time though. For now I have a book to return to. 

PS. The elderly gent sitting next to me is reading Half Girlfriend