If you’ve reached this page of the newspaper, congratulations, you already read more than 80% of India. But don’t flatter yourself. To be in the top 20% of this country in any stat is ridiculously easy: just earn `25,000 a month, own a second-hand car, or make sure your father’s surname is famous.
We’re told books sharpen the brain. As kids, we read non-curricular books because someone forced us. As adults, when we actually need to read more, we somehow read less. Not because we don’t want to — everybody wants to read — but because video killed the radio star and then obliterated the writer.
Every house has a bookshelf. Its primary function? Collecting dust and impressing guests. When a friend visits, they pause dramatically: ‘Wow, what a collection! You’ve read all these?’ The owner smiles and lies: ‘Yeah, most of them,’ while knowing half were gifts and the rest unopened. Some interior designers even buy books that match your sofa cushions. Their job is literally to judge a book by its cover, so the owner doesn’t bother to read the title.
Then comes the inevitable: ‘Can I borrow this one?’ And suddenly your 3BHK transforms into a lending library. You lend it out with the pride of a knowledge custodian. The borrower takes it home with the enthusiasm of a newly appointed cricket captain. They open it at night, read 139 words, and now the book gathers dust in a new pincode. Weeks later, you meet them. ‘How’s the book?’ you ask. ‘Oh, I’m reading,’ they reply — which is technically true. They read the title daily as they shift it from table to bed to chair. The book is a guest, it doesn’t have its own place. Eventually, it’s returned. Not because it was read, but because the gap on the shelf was making the owner restless.
Airports are where reading ambitions catch fire. You walk past Lacoste, realise your Air India ticket doesn’t qualify you for Lacoste, and drift into the multi-utility bookstore — also a snack shop, headphone shop, and pillow shop. It’s like Ratnadeep, but not so deep. You had budgeted for either a neck pillow or a book. So you step up, skip comfort, and buy the book. You open the prologue, but suddenly the crew’s safety demonstration is more gripping than Arundhati Roy. Live performance > print. You try again, but the number of pages turned is far fewer than wafers eaten. Soon, you’re full, sleepy, and the book is good enough to be a pillow.
The truth is we do read — just not books. Captions, memes, tweets, traffic signs. Which is why our deepest emotions are now expressed through a GIF, a heart emoji, or just a thumbs up. Whole life stories are compressed into one word: OG. OP. Crazy. Amazing. Cute.
But we never give up. When we finally decide to ‘seriously read’, we pick the most difficult book on earth: War and Peace. It’s less a novel, more a climb to Mt Everest. The old English scares us so much that it ends up supporting a broken table leg instead of our intellect.
We could read Chetan Bhagat, who writes simple books, like a walk in the park. But after watching him dance on Nach Baliye, we judge him too harshly — even though he actually finishes writing his books while we never finish reading ours. He dances and writes. We neither dance nor read.
And yet, the business of books survives. We’ll keep buying them — for promises, for decoration, for guilt. But don’t you give up (na na na). One day, you’ll stumble across a book that sticks, like gum under a school desk. That’s when you’ll finally finish your book without a pause. Until then, at least keep reading my column every week.
Sandesh
@msgfromsandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)