Skip to main content

Writers who don't read

 As a teacher of English language and literature in a senior secondary school, my only complaint in the last few years has been that my students don't read anything other than their course books. "Your answers in the writing section possess the thinking levels of high school students at best," I told my class 12 students the other day while returning their examination answer sheets. 

It's not about the style. Style is something that I have stopped bothering about as a teacher. Gone are the days when I could expect from my students a sentence like "A sudden warm rainstorm washes down in sweet hyphens." That sentence, of course, belongs to J M Ledger, no student of mine. A student of mine would have written that as "It rained and there was a wind also". As prosaic and brusque as that. Poetry died long ago. Style died too. Stifled by ruthless pragmatism. 

It's not about style, however. Not poetry either. It's about the content. I can forgive the demise of poetry and style. We live in the age of trolls and memes. Blatant lies and fabricated truths reign in our social media. Poetry cannot survive in post-truth world. What does style mean in that post-truth world?

What is a writer's job in that world? If that world does not sustain poetry and style, doesn't it demand a quality of content from the writer? Why do we need writers to tell us that "It rained"? 

Writing must offer something worthwhile to the reader. Something to think about. Something that pokes the brain. Something that tickles the heart. Writing must move the reader to greater thoughts, greater deeds, greater vision than those she already has. What else is writing for?

A writer can do all that only if he has roots in the great wisdom of the past. A writer who has no touch with the great writers of the past as well as the present can't be expected to give us anything substantial. Writing is not sermonising from a self-righteous pulpit. It is about presenting wisdom in a strangely beautiful way. No one can do that without being in touch with the great masters. 

I want writers to take me to the sunset sky that looks like "a carnivorous flower" [Robert Bolano's metaphor]. 


PS. Written for Indispire Edition 367: Are there more 'writers' than readers today? #WritersToday

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairMarch 23, 2021 at 12:38 PM

    I think the kids read a lot ... The problem is they are reading all the wrong stuff ... Look at the amount of text they devour on social media! ... Very few of them read good English.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 23, 2021 at 3:05 PM

      Can Instagram & WhatsApp messages be considered discourses? You know the answer better. Most of my present students haven't even heard of good writers whom they should have read by now.

      Delete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरMarch 24, 2021 at 3:17 PM

    Your views are agreeable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RaghavMarch 27, 2021 at 6:48 PM

    A thought provoking blog!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
13 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
14 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more