Book Pocketing
By: Geo (May 13th, 2009)
Reading as a habit or interest is waning in popularity. However, if you go to a place like Crossword, suddenly you feel that it is not so. That place buzzes with activity and with people and you get inclined to tell yourself, “Well, people still do read”. But the percentage of readers has certainly taken a beating in the last few years. The city libraries are a mute witness to this. They present a gloomy picture of the gradual depletion of voracious readers who used to flock the libraries every evening. Apart from a few elderly people and a handful of students, the libraries wear a deserted look most of the time.
Javed Akhtar puts it more scornfully when he says that books in Mumbai are selected by Interior Decorators. The books in the shelf have to match with the color of the carpet and the color of the furniture! Probably true but how deplorable.
When I was in school, we had “Project Library” under the interest of a few teachers and every student was encouraged to borrow books from the library, at least two every week, and they were supposed to continue the habit. At least I started reading. ‘Simple living and high thinking’ was the dictum of those days. But with the gradual advent of globalization and nuclear family structures, life has become mechanical and money-oriented. ‘High living and why thinking’ seems to be the dictum! Students are constantly being whipped for performance and the concept of intrinsic value addition is now a long lost idea.
Am not sure how many schools these days are encouraging any reading habits at all and even if they are, how many kids are taking it up remains to be seen. Not so long ago, I asked an eighteen year old friend of mine to read an article I had written. When he saw the two paged article, his jaw dropped and it seemed as if I had stabbed him and almost scandalously he exclaimed, “So many pages? I will take one full day to read it! Have you not used images in it? All I see is words everywhere! It is so lackluster.” This same guy was punching thousands of SMS every month and reading many more!
Anything more than the size of an SMS is perhaps too much a read! The popularity of blogs and forums is heartening in one sense, but again these are much shorter as compared to good old books and therefore don’t demand too much of time, attention and commitment from the readers – aspects and attributes that this generation has dearth of.
The mails are short and sweet (that’s what they prefer to call it), the chats are baptized in mono-syllables and the language is festooned with abbreviations and smileys. However, with their seemingly short attention span, they don’t relish reading the newspaper. Mostly they just look through. The content in the newspaper and magazines and the amount of space allotted to images and the kind of images published are a clue of the state of things.
Even among the smaller kids, Popeye and his gang, aided by multimedia games have drowned the shuffle of the pages. Most kids prefer to spend their free time watching cartoons or playing video games. Though the Harry Potter mania brought some attention back to books, it could just be another ephemeral phase withering away sooner or later.
And then, when these kids are not free, there is the pressure of class work, home work and tuitions not to speak of extra-curricular activities that they also take up to maintain an edge over the others. This they say is one of the principal reasons in wean-off-from reading culture. However, if a kid does pick up a book for pleasure reading, parents will surely get behind them and chide them for reading something that has nothing to do with their course.
Library does become popular for college students, but only when the examinations draw nearer. It is then that the students, in a panic state, just browse through their course related books. And that’s it. The reading is restricted by the syllabus and most often by the ‘Most Important’ – as classified by the teacher. The bottom-line is that there is hardly any pleasure reading.
What most parents fail to understand is that for an all-round development of an individual, reading habit is essential. In fact it is found that if reading is instilled in students, they will avoid dubious means and short-cuts to pass examinations, and instead savor learning and also have a greater faith in themselves and their abilities.
When I came across an article highlighting an upcoming trend of people opting for small pocket sized books, though it championed the cause of short matter, however, since it was book, I was delighted. The electronic format, howsoever advantageous, can never give the feel of holding a book in your hand and relishing it. These pocket books selling hot were dictionaries, quotes, poems or short stories, but the knowledge of people carrying it along with them in their going out and coming in, was good news, at least as long as they were not doing it to match with their pocket or purse or dressing!
I have started pocketing a daily devotional. Though I do not carry it daily, but it does offer the convenience of carrying it anywhere and I am relishing gaining wisdom and knowledge, be it when I stop at a traffic signal, or in between my work.
The book looks more real to me than the matter in my laptop. One of the reasons that the book looks more real is because, in a book any specific page will loyally show only what is printed on it, while the computer screen shows anything that it is asked to relay. Weird reasoning perhaps, but I suppose I will surely shell out a few more weird reasons to justify pocketing of books and the good old reading habit. Start book pocketing, start reading.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:57 am
hehe…funny..i knw who tht eighteen year old kid is….lol
May 13th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Very aptly said. I know of a lot of people who read just because they have to and not because they want to. The best way to open up your horizons is picking up a book.