Love for Reading Books

A few weeks back, my wife was down in the clubhouse library room adding some newly inducted books to the library shelf (we run a small library in our society). One of the neighbours passed by and remarked something like “Who reads books these days? Our kids study all day at school. You again want to force them to study after coming back home?” For us, books enjoy a status of unquestionable reverence. They mean something good, pure, noble, lofty. Reading books is good. You don’t ask why! And here was someone asking why! This left Shilpi stunned and speechless.

This piece is not to pass a judgement on that lady. For all you know, it may have been just a joke. We know for sure that that lady is a smart person working in a senior role in a reputed multinational company. So, no comments on her intellectual capability either.

The fact is: her remark made us think. Really! Why read books? Information and entertainment are available in other forms too. Then, what's so great about books? I think, it's a valid question begging a serious answer. And this is the reply I would have wished to give her. Not a lecture on the merits of reading habits in general (though I can't claim it has turned out to be something radically different than that), but a very personal account of what books have meant to me all my life. Before I forget, a heartfelt thanks to that neighbour, who made us understand ourselves a little better.

Witness a Beautiful Mind

Books are an embodiment of accumulated knowledge, thoughts, imagination and emotions of the author(s) on a chosen set of topics. It’s an image of a beautiful mind -- the most beautiful thing in nature. Is it the only possible image? Of course not! The beauty of mind can reveal itself in various other forms: a picture, a movie, a play, a sculpture, a speech, an organisation, a product, an idea, a piece of research… I think this list is endless. Even a beautiful human relation is a creation of a beautiful human mind.

Books, or long form writing of any kind, is one such manifestation. It can’t be done by individual, isolated pieces or by mere expertise in a language. The intellectual glue, the overarching theme of the book that binds it together, and how its tiny little parts fit together without being forced, is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed. This phenomenon is what keeps me picking one book after another. It’s not necessarily a thirst for knowledge which is available in other forms too and probably more efficient ones than books. It’s also not for entertainment, which again, is an easily available commodity in many other forms.

Active and Nourishing Entertainment

There’s another reason why reading, especially reading books, is such a unique experience. The magical experience hidden in the books is a gentle and shy creature. It comes and knocks on your mind’s door only once. If you are distracted, if you aren’t attentive, you will miss that. The experience you get in reading is also possible only when you put in the active effort of searching in the words that the book is trying to project on your mind’s screen. This is active entertainment as opposed to passive ones like audio-visual or social media. On the one hand, visual content gives readymade pictures of tangible things, e.g. people, places and events, while reading, we have to conjure them in our head. On the other hand, visual medium can't present anything abstract directly, e.g. emotions and thoughts, and has to take help from their tangible manifestation, e.g. facial expressions, or visual symbols or voiceover narratives. Written words shine at presenting abstract thoughts, because these are just words; the abstract ideas they contain really take form in your head. When you are reading, you aren’t just consuming pre-digested nuggets of information and entertainment, but are actively working on it, processing it to create the experience or outcome you are seeking. This is a fundamentally effortful activity yet is capable of creating a level of relaxation not achievable through most other forms of entertainment. Its analogy in the physical domain is exercising. Of course, it’s strenuous and makes you sweat, yet it may be a more effective way of unwinding after a hectic day than watching a movie or partying hard. Reading, in short, is a co-creation process where you collaborate with the author to create your own entertainment. 

Commune with Great Minds

Many books, especially non-fiction books, have given me an exquisite experience of being in a conversation with the author. Great books don’t merely present content that has to be passively absorbed by the reader. Rather, they are written in a conversational style, goading the reader to think, agree, disagree, challenge, applaud and sometimes say ‘Eureka!’. An intense reading session has often left me with an aftertaste of having conversed with a great mind.

Long Term Assimilation

I have found my mind chewing on the extracts from a book long after I am done reading it; and through years, assimilating ideas from multiple books. This, though not completely unique with books, is definitely the most prevalent in the case of books, and happens much less frequently with, say, movies.

An Elevating Escape from the Mundane

Books are also an escape — from a reality that sometimes tends to get too monotonous and dreary, where sometimes one tends to feel like a prisoner — of ordinary, practical, worldly and socially acceptable ways. You can escape into the world of science fiction or fantasy. You can travel into a Utopian or dystopian future, or deep into the past ages. You can work alongside a detective to investigate a gruesome murder, or you can feel the passions of a lover. On a different, more intellectual, note, you can immerse yourself deep into subjects of science, philosophy and art. This escape, unlike many others, doesn’t intoxicate you, doesn’t create dependence. Instead, it shows you how liberating it is to forget yourself and your ordinary selfish life by immersing yourself into loftier issues and subjects. Such an escape, even if temporary, cleanses you, leaves you perceptive of a reality beyond yourself. This is soul-nourishing.

What is Success?

I think this an ever-pertinent question for all of us. I may have written and spoken about them at various points. Probably, my answer was different everytime. Doesn't matter!

Here's what I said today to one of my colleagues:

'For me, success is walking out of my office into the hallway and meeting some colleagues I genuinely like and in seeing the same feeling on their face.'

You may think why I define it this way. Do I want to make it easy for myself? There are so many other goals which are far more concrete, much more measurable.

Name and fame in the academic world. Publications, citations, promotions, awards, projects etc. these are all almost universally accepted as measures of success for academicians. I don't question their authenticity. I have spent a good portion of my career chasing them, fretting about them. Even now, I don't want to make any tall claim that I don't care about them anymore. Yet, other intangible, immeasurable goals have steadily gained in importance and have clearly surpassed the tangibles in their desirability.

Does it sound that I have chosen an easier goal from for myself? If you look at the number of people who achieve this versus those who achieve the tangibles, you will probably reconsider your opinion. In fact, in any place with people of high capability, genuine goodwill is as rare as pearl in an ocean. What you see are jealousy, unbridled ambition, high stress, conspiracy, secrecy and, at best, fake pleasantries.

These are all offsprings of hypercompetition which is an inevitable result of people desirous of something that's finite, and hence scarce, getting together at the same place. There can only be one director in an institute, one head in a department. If you got a paper selected in a prestigious venue, it's inevitably because your paper prevailed over several others. Each success is accompanied by countless failures, because the lower the probability of success the more desirable that success becomes.

Let me repeat that this alone doesn't make such successes bad. Their difficulty is also related to their inherent value. A director does important service for an institute and nation. An HoD plays an important role in shaping a department. An idea published in an influential venue has the potential of changing the world for the better. The real value of these achievements is in what they give to the world, not inherently in how many people desire for them.

The desirability or popularity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for inherent value. For example, having sex with an attractive model on Instagram may be a matter of desire for millions. Does that by itself make the attractiveness of that model an inherently valuable thing? I hope you are saying 'no', for that's definitely my answer. Einstein's discoveries may be inaccessible to all but a few in the world. Beyond what's available in popular media, most of us don't know him at all. His being one of the most famous scientists may evoke feeling of awe. Some of us who consider themselves mentally capable may develop aspirations of becoming a legendary scientist or intellectual like him. Yet, the pure beauty of intellectual pursuits is completely hidden from a vast majority of the world population. Does this make Einstein's work unimportant? So, does that convince you that public desire or popularity or high competition may be correlated with inherent value of something, yet it mustn't be mistaken to be analogous with inherent value?

Now, hopefully, you will allow me to argue more fervently in favour of my choice of the goals on the basis of which I intend to define success.

Genuinely liking somebody, especially in a space where you are heavily invested, where bars are implicitly high due to high density of talent making genuine and well-meant compliments and acknowledgement of contribution and talents harder to come by, is also very hard. Competition begets more competition, giving rise to a host of insecurities, jealousies and other forms of negativities. To aspire to experience genuine liking towards a fellow worker, with whom feeling competition and rivalry is much more obvious and is even tacitly encouraged by the prevailing professional atmosphere, is a non-obvious choice, so that's one thing.

There's one simple way to be universally likeable: become a stupid and an utterly useless person. That way, you are no more a threat to anybody. But that rules out the possibility of your being able to add any real value to the world with your existence. That's a choice one may make; but it's not a good one. Earning amicability by bartering the very point of being alive is hardly a good bargain. So, we are closing off this route too.

How do you experience and evoke amicable feelings in others while being busy trying hard to live a truly meaningful life? High performance will inadvertently bring in rewards: money, accolades, praise, power, even if you genuinely don't work for them. You can't stop them from coming, as you can't stop your rivals from noticing this and making you the subject of their jealousy. The only way this can be done is by becoming a cause of a major inner transformation among people who surround you.

In consequence of this transformation, your colleagues will be able to focus on the real, implicit value of your efforts and contribution rather getting consumed with jealousy. Such a fundamental transformation at a social level is unthinkable unless it actually takes root in yourself. It's vain and dishonest to preach a nobility that we ourselves fail to practice.

Therefore, the project of earning yourself a workplace full of genuine camaraderie and positivity is, more than anything else, an exercise in self-transformation and purification. To be able to do this is very hard and even more valuable - and hence a truly monumental success.

Dirt Strips on Our Roads

If you have recently been to one of European or North American countries and land back in Bangalore, the difference in the nature of the traffic is too stark to miss. There, it glides; here, it crawls. There are so many reasons for this. Here are some I can think of:

• There are simply too many vehicles and people in India
• Bad roads, i.e. potholes, uneven road width etc.
• Bad driving
• Lack of useful footpaths causing pedestrians to spill into the thoroughfare
• Hawker carts, taxis and vehicles parked within the edge of the road
• Commercial establishments built too close to the road
• Bad town planning which causes bottlenecks, e.g. ill-planned distribution of human establishments creating hotspots
• Bad traffic management

Many of the above are very difficult problems. We can't do much about our population. Most of the above need major replanning of cities, educating large multitudes of people about traffic sense, setting up surveillance and punitive structures and so on. This is very costly, and if at all possible in India's case, would take years to happen.

Road Dust

This post is not about all the above hard problems. It's about a problem which seems to me a much easier one to solve. It's the dust that accumulates on the edges of our roads. See this:

The light brown strip running along the road is earth settled on the road. Its width is over a metre. I wouldn't be surprised if this accounts for approximately 1/6th of the total road width. This part of the road is unmotorable and un-bicyclable. In short, this part doesn't get used at all, not even by pedestrians. In presence of such traffic woes, this is a colossal wastage of precious road width. They further choke the already woeful traffic, causing delays and accidents. If you are on a two-wheeler or a bicycle, this part has less grip than the rest of the road, making it dangerous. For bicyclists, its unusable because its uneven and rough, making it harder to pedal on them. When it rains, this part becomes slippery making it further dangerous to venture on them. And this is a very common sight on Indian urban roads.

And to the best of my understanding, this problem is nowhere close to as hard as all the above listed problems. With one cleaning operation done, I presume, even in a very dusty environment, it would stay clean for weeks if not months. The benefits are immediate and immense. It would free up that much width of the road, making it faster and safer to ply on. There are these dust sweeping trucks available which municipalities and Gram Panchayats can procure. They can share or rent these if they can't afford to own one. They can contract the task out to private parties. My guess is this won't be all that expensive. They already do this routinely in some of richer areas already.

I am telling something every road user knows well. Often, we don't say such things because we think it's too obvious, or that the authorities don't have the will to do anything about it. This time, I thought, let me just put this out for exchange of thoughts, and possible notice of pertinent authorities. Maybe, it's obvious. But it doesn't hurt anyone saying it anyway.

I request authorities to take notice and take a step. Doing something about it is easy and inexpensive, I think. One more thought (relevant to World Environment Day today). Please remove the dust off these roads and mark that part as cycling tracks. 🚴🚴🚴Automobile drivers are anyway not using this part in many places.