On the joys of reading

I love reading books and articles, essays and oh, for that matter everything under the sun. I have read things printed on the wrappers of FMCG products and what’s written on signboards of shops while travelling in buses, whenever I have had the luxury of a window seat.

My roommates ask me what you get by reading. Whenever I think about this question, there are the basic answers that come to my mind – increase knowledge and develop a worldview, improve vocabulary etc. But when I sit down and contemplate, the benefits of reading are far more nuanced and valuable than all these.

For starters, I believe that reading liberates one’s mind and takes it into uncharted territories. You may call it escapism, if you like. Reading is entertainment for the soul and education for the mind. It all depends on what one reads, after all. Whether one is reading pulp fiction or serious literature, there are good chances that a reasonably educated person will feel a kind of ecstasy and joy out of it.

In our limited lifetime, it is impossible to understand and assimilate all the ideas that humanity has thought and expressed in the form of books. And not just books, there’s also so much interesting on the internet to be read. Reading non-fiction is very important to understand in detail a perspective on anything of significance. Fiction, on the other hand, is like chicken soup for the soul. Education can never be considered to be complete if one hasn't read great fiction, and not necessarily the ones in English only.

Charles de Montesquieu, the great French politician and social commentator, had once remarked, “I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.”

When my father, an eternal student of history, told me this when I was fifteen, it didn't make much sense to me. At twenty-five, I realize how true Montesquieu was.
Sadly, most of my generation’s reading habits are confined to Harry Potter, Chetan Bhagat and a few Bollywood-type novels written by authors who think books are like soaps, a commodity that needs to be sold to make money. I am not saying it’s not important for a book to make money. That’s crucial. But more crucial aspects are its literary quality and aesthetics. Even among the professionally educated ones, I seldom come across people who genuinely love reading for the sheer pleasure of it. While travelling in Bangalore’s Volvo buses and long-distance trains, I find people reading books and naturally I am tempted to take a surreptitious peek at the covers of the books, without infringing on their privacy. I look forward to the day when I can see people reading Bertrand Russell, Fyodor Dostoevsky or other writers of similar intellectual quality and stature.

That day, in my humble opinion, is still not in the horizon.