Literature and life

Writing this piece from a well updated and swanky media centre established in the campus of Rajiv Gandhi Engineering College Chandrapur, which is all decked up to host the annual extravaganza of Marathi literature – The Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan; is simply a great feeling. While roaming around, I can see reporters from various media groups – some new faces, and some very well known; taking notes, filing reports and sending emails. Being an insider of this media brigade gives a proud feeling. And this proud feeling doubles, when I realize that I am here to be a part of a literary event – one of the most prominent literary events of the modern age – The Sahitya Sammelan.

Millions and millions of books around on hundreds of stalls; and if one starts taking a round of this exhibition seriously, even three full days of the festival would fall short. One after another, the symposiums on various subjects and orations by literary greats would be the special attractions. Poetry summits, story telling events, and cultural events will add more colour. Literature is something out of the world phenomenon and traditionally it has influenced one and all. Literature has initiated revolutions – social and political, it has shown path to the change-makers; and it has done probably the greatest work of documentation of changing thought-process of human race. Still, the organizers have to call film stars and theatre actors to attract crowds at the festival. Well, whether this huge number of college-going youths was there to see them, or due to the compulsion (probably made by their respective colleges), is still an unanswered question though; because, film stars are no more crowd pullers these days. Does it mean that the youths were there for the love of literature? This probability also fades as the number of youths turned in to visit book exhibition was very less than those who participated in the rally. Then why they were there? As I said before, just because it was made mandatory to them.

The event began in the evening with eminent speakers stressing mostly on the thought-process of youths. They said it is dire need of today to let youths know about the literature and its importance. They took blame on themselves saying that the generation of seniors failed to produce literature attracting youths. But, is it really true? Is only the so called low quality of literature responsible for poor reader-connect?

What I think is what I experience. I used to read a lot during my school days. My parents made me read some trademark novels of Marathi (Mrutyunjay, Yugandhar, Rau, Chhava, Yayati, Swami, etc) when I was in high school. Then, as soon as I started going to college, I suddenly stopped reading. Even if being a student of English Literature, I preferred to refer the ready-made notes as reading original text was very much time-taking for me. But, I used to concentrate the lectures very carefully to note down anecdotes shared by my lecturers, who, most probably, must have read all the original texts.

If someone used to ask me, what I was reading at the moment, I used to answer – ‘Nothing. And why should I read?’ I used to think that with Internet, all information is there on my finger-tip and I should not waste my time in reading. Well, my memory, or say, anyone’s memory is not like computer’s, that remembers everything read. So, why to stress the memory and read when the ready-reference is available right besides you?

Well, well, well! I started my professional life and realized that I was a biggest fool. Human memory is not like computers, yes. And believe me; it is better than the computers’. When we read something good, it pleases us. Then we forget it and read something else. And to our own surprise, the thing forgotten re-appears in our mind suddenly, at some moment, catching us unaware! Our brain captures something interesting, stores it somewhere in an unknown zone and re-sends it to our main memory box whenever we need it. This exercise of brain is very interesting. Once, we start reading, we start realizing this amazing capability of our brain.

One book gives thousand reasons to think. Our brain starts interlinking the books, comparing the thoughts, and much more, which we don’t even realize. All this happens automatically. Hence, now, I again read, just to see the amazing qualities of brain.

Accessing Internet gives instant information, and that is very important for that particular moment. But, reading literature teaches life.