Long time back on a November evening of 1995 when the shadows were growing larger, chirping birds ready to flutter their wings to leave for their nest me at the age of 8 first entered into the dusty, untidy room of our local rural library at my place Chakulia, another small village of West Bengal. There were total 5 Almiras in that library and Librarian told me later that all of them had more than 2500 books. I was kind of electrified to think of so many books to read though most of them were in Bengali. In the next 4 years I had literally gorged on them and 400 books were registered in my name. Though selectively I read most of the Bengali Classics and also the translated Russian ones but slowly I started to hunger for more quality books and not the conventional romantic fictions left there. I wanted to read more about the History, Cultures, Literature of other languages etc. After I left the place for my higher studies here at Aligarh Muslim University I got to know that more students treaded on the way I had been through. Probably they also hunger now for the same and jaded with the usual ones.
Moulana Azad Library of my University comprises of more than 10 lack books and third largest University library in the Asia. I feel proud to look at its collection and always dream to finish some stacks of books. But when I look at the students here I feel upset. Though they would issue books of their syllabus but probably very few read books on the other topics, the books those would help in the gentle opening of the petals of their mind. Yes such a big library is remained unused on some fronts.
Yes this is a global phenomenon now. We think of the old adage, “Reading maketh a full man” – reading makes a woman and a man full of information, of history, of all kinds of knowledge.
This generation feel proud to be teemed with superficial knowledge. News on the front page of the paper, Headlines at 7pm and if little more it would be the columns by the modern ‘experts’ that shape their knowledge and ideas. Some would like to enlist themselves in the elite class of reading if they had been through some Sydney Sheldon, Jeffry Archer or Chetan Bhagat stuff. They defend themselves talking of the modern revolutions like Computers to Internet, Mobile to IPods’. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking.
Not long ago, I read somewhere about a village in Zimbabwe where the people had not eaten for three days, but they were still talking about books and how to get them, about education. People want to read the same kind of books that people in Europe want to read – novels of all kinds, science fiction, poetry, detective stories, plays, and do-it-yourself books, like how to open a bank account. All of Shakespeare too. A problem with finding books for villagers is that they don’t know what is available, so a set book, like The Mayor of Casterbridge, becomes popular simply because it just happens to be there. Animal Farm, for obvious reasons, is the most popular of all novels.
I really don’t know how my next generation will perceive reading in the next few decades or this shunning of ‘reading’ will continue giving the excuse of the inanities of Internet or tech-savvy life. But I believe that in the corners of the world, at the terra incognita’s some people would remain there with the same hunger for the books, for the knowledge mankind seek since its evolution on the earth.
I and Sourav decided to get a brief introduction of them, not with pity but with concern, walked up to these folks. Both of us were welcomed with the scripted pitch which was almost by heart to us. We made one thing very clear to them that we were not talking to them to buy their stuff. To this Amar refutes saying, “What makes you walk up to us?”, which sounded very rhetorical as he continues “Is it out of pity??”