The art of reading
NOT so very long ago, the Harry Potter mania had become something of a phenomenon. Hats off to Ms. Rowling for the way she veered the new generation towards reading her books. Before the advent of Harry Potter, people had all but given up on the art of reading especially those among the younger generation. And then the Harry Potter tomes popped out of nowhere and created an instant following that has shown no sign of tapering off – especially among young.
Over the past several years, one has gone through the ritual of spending good money on the purchase of the Harry Potter tomes as they came out one after the other and, what is more, actually laboriously wading through the text – all the six hundred and some odd pages of each – and feeling none the worse for it. Despite going through this ordeal, one continues to be at a loss to quite put one’s finger on the secret behind the phenomenal success of these volumes. There is, of course, the fact that the world of wizardry conjured up by Ms. Rowling does afford a path of escapism to those living in our topsy-turvy world, beset as it is with pestilences such as globalization and the like. The positive fall out of the phenomenon, of course, is that the general interest generated appears to have revived the lost art of reading that had lately – and regrettably – been sacrificed at the altar of the so-called technological progress.
Not all that long ago (the reader may recall), reading a good book represented a singular pleasure most people looked forward to. Every now and then, the film version of a popular book would come to the silver screen. Having read and enjoyed the book, one invariably went out to see the film with certain misgivings. More often than not the print version came out the winner in one’s perception; i.e. the visual presentation in the film hardly ever matched the word picture of the written version. The art of (good) writing was, in a word, supreme.
Alas, things then perceptibly changed for the worse, as they invariably do. It came to pass that people lost the inclination to read books. Reading as an art lost out to the idiot box. Instead of reading a book people preferred to wait for the television version to appear. For some odd reason, people did not have the time any more! The number of those who went to the bother of reading the original, even in an abridged version, shrank to an infinitesimal minority. It was akin to the passing away of an era.Enter the Information Technology revolution; and the very goal posts were repositioned. The inevitable result was further havoc. The practice of leisurely reading – or good writing, for that matter – went out the window. Gone were the days when a person went through the exercise of purchasing a good book (or, if he/she lacked the means, drawing it out of a library), reading it at leisure, savouring it and – if it lived up to its promise – reading it a second or even a third time. Come to think of it, the real flavour of a good book could be absorbed only on the second or the third reading. Regrettably, this practice could not survive the shock of the Technological Revolution. What a ‘reader’ resorts to in the post-IT era is to ingest the substance of the book through the shortcut of the computer and then move on to greener pastures. The modern generation has little time or inclination to savour a book, much less go for a second or third reading.
Another of the mores that has been badly mauled by the information revolution is the delectable art of letter writing. Corresponding with one’s near and dear ones had its own special pleasure. The practice of expressing oneself in a longish, leisurely written, letter had a character all its own. One could pour one’s heart and soul into such a missive. The sentiments that unfolded in such correspondence were meant for the eyes of the recipient alone and this is what gave power and facility to the pen of the writer. And, what have things come to now? Feverish telephone conversations, hastily scribbled notes and terse, impersonal messages (in inane jargon, mind you) via the inter-net or cell phones are the order of the day. Letters as part of literature may well be thing of the past, never to return. The wonderful world of literature is the loser in the bargain.
The overall effect of the technological revolution in general and Information Technology in particular has been to sap the flavour out of man’s life. The edifice is still there. It may even look more glamorous than before, but the substance is sadly lacking. The computer, true to its genius, is fast dehumanizing the human being. Man is getting closer and closer to becoming an adjunct to the machine, rather than the other way around. The technology buffs may argue, and with reason, that this is the price that has to be paid for progress; that in order for mankind to move forward, personal sacrifice is necessary.
One can argue back that a line has to be drawn at some point. One needs to pause and ponder before the point of no return is reached. Because once one takes the decisive step across the divide, there will be no turning back. There is prudence in not starting anything that one cannot stop. The feverish pace of the technological revolution leaves one a bit dazed. One has no hesitation in confessing to the persuasion that reading a good book remains one of those little pleasures that make life worth living. Thank goodness for small mercies.
— The writer is a former Ambassador and former Assistant Secretary General of OIC.
