Skip to main content

Reading or Writing?

A corner of my personal library


If I had to make a choice between reading and writing, I would choose reading undoubtedly. I am not much of a writer in the first place. Nobody will miss anything even if I stop writing. Secondly, I cannot afford to miss the magical worlds that unfold when I open books. Writers are great people. I mean good writers. One of the present tragedies is that too many bad writers get too much publicity and hence writing has earned a bad name. Another tragedy is that a lot of falsehood is written today and passed off as irrefutable truths.

In spite of all that, if you force a choice on me I’ll go for reading. I have learnt to choose writers who are good for me (and for others as well). I know how to winnow the grain and discard the chaff.

Right now I’m reading two books simultaneously. One is kept in my workplace and the other is at home. The one that I read in my free time while I’m at school is Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy by Christophe Jaffrelot. The other one is by a less known writer on a subject that may not be of much interest to quite many. It is Funeral Nights by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, a bilingual writer who writes poems, novels and stories in English and Khasi.

Both the books enchant me in their own ways. Jaffrelot is an eminent scholar. He is the Director of Research at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS in Paris and professor of Indian politics and sociology at King's College, London. This new book of his is “a no-holds-barred account of the disruptive march of democracy and governance in India from the long-established status quo to the totalitarian ethnic style of governance.” [Quoted from the New Indian Express review].

Funeral Nights presents the history of the Khasi people in the form of a fictional narrative. I wouldn’t ever have bought this book had I not lived for fifteen long years (long because they were quite excruciating for the most part) in Shillong in the land of the Khasi people. I knew the author of this book personally too. I remember him as a very gentle soul with a self-effacing smile and subtle sense of humour. But my personal association with him was too brief for my assessment to be objective and my memory to be reliable. I like his book anyway. I learn a lot of things about the Khasi people from this book, things that would have stood me in good stead if I had known them back in my Shillong days.

Knowledge. That’s what I quest after. Mine is a Faustian quest. Reading is what fulfils that quest. That’s why I cannot but read.

PS. This is written for Blogchatter’s Blog Hop: “If you had to choose between reading and writing.”

My previous post in this series: Puzzles, puzzles all the way

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJuly 12, 2022 at 9:30 PM

    Hari OM
    I too read for intellectual expansion - as you say, anything well-written and NOT apparently produced by some internet algorithm... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 13, 2022 at 6:42 AM

      Good reading is losing popularity today, I think. Most of my students don't read anything other than course material and chats on their phones!

      Delete
  2. Murthy K v v sJuly 13, 2022 at 4:59 PM

    Smart phone took much of time these days. Sometimes it's true with me also. You are reading two books simultaneously.That's really awesome sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 13, 2022 at 8:45 PM

      Since Facebook keeps blocking me off and on, the phone doesn't take too much of my time 😊

      Delete
  3. deepti menonJuly 17, 2022 at 7:26 PM

    Reading, no doubt, opens the mind to magic. I appreciate the fact that you have been able to make a choice in this post, something which I could not do in mine, as both reading and writing go hand-in-hand in my case. I love both equally, I guess. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. rupam sarmaJuly 18, 2022 at 9:55 AM

    Reading... Loved the post.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ninu NairJuly 18, 2022 at 11:35 AM

    It's nice to know that you placed reading above writing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. SeethaJuly 18, 2022 at 1:04 PM

    Hopped in to say that your writing does add value & it will definitely be missed, at least by me. I don't comment much often but I must say, I'm a fan of your writing, and your choice of words and perspectives (though I may not agree with all of them!).
    Also, loved your clarity and conviction in choosing reading.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 18, 2022 at 3:33 PM

      I know some of my views are maverick and even scandalising. But glad you articulated your opinion candidly.

      Delete
  7. GeethicaJuly 20, 2022 at 1:51 PM

    You made easy choice where people are confused for life. Nice decision.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more