KOCHI: When the Annual Status of Education Report (2022) came out, it revealed a declining trend in Kerala. Like many other states, the overall reading capacity of children has declined in Kerala too.
The ASER test analyses the ability of students between the ages of 5 and 16 to read letters, words, a simple paragraph at a Class I level of difficulty or a story at a Class II level of difficulty. The result is an alarming fall in their reading capacity from 52.1% in 2018 to 38.7% in 2022.
Teaching in a college for close to a decade, I had forgotten that the youngsters in my classes were once-upon-a-time readers of Balarama, Tinkle and Kalikkudukka. When I shared the ASER statistics with them, they didn’t look surprised.
“We like to watch movies over reading novels. After all, both are stories. A film keeps you more engaged,” shares one very honestly. Only a few share a different opinion. Maybe times have changed. Should someone archive a generation that loved to smell a book, hug it tight and savour a story, page after page?
I sat musing in the college library, watching the rain. My Alice was dancing in Wonderland, and Snow White fighting a dragon. A half-finished novel lay upside down on my table. I saw the librarian directing a student to a helf to find a psychology book. What helps a generation to fall in love with books, when they are children, even when it is not a homogenous group?
I love the youngsters for their vitality, speed and e-enthusiasm. After the pandemic, school children have become great techies. That said, I would also love more of our blooming buds to fall in love with books, which requires patience and discipline.
From the teacher
There was a time, says Dr A J Thomas, a former editor at Sahitya Akademi and writer, when his class teacher brought books to the classrooms in the 1960s. “He would leave the books on the table and let the interested students pick their choice. Then those hooked into reading would go to the library voluntarily once a week,” he says.
Thomas was quite fascinated by fiction and history then. “I read both Malayalam and English fiction. I read ‘The King of the Golden River’ and ‘The Expeditions of Francisco Pizarro in South America’ when I was in Class 8. Then there was the translation of a part of Shahnameh (by Ferdowsi) — the tragedy of Rostam and Sohrab,” he recounts.
He loved reading all by himself. “When I was down with chicken pox, I finished the entire Basheer collection in our library. Ever since, Basheer remained my favourite for a long time.”
The literary stalwart advises, “Follow your interests and taste. Make a deliberate attempt at first to read through any book you choose. Soon you will get the hang of it”.
Fiction to politics
It was around sixty to seventy translated and concise versions of the world classics borrowed from his cousin’s bookshelf when he was eleven, that put Gokul T G on the road to serious reading. He is now the RTO and senior deputy general manager at Urban Transport of Kochi Metro Rail Limited. “I read most of the Malayalam literature from our village library and came across Doonesbury there. The subscription fee was Rs 10,” he recollects.
Gokul was a fan of fiction when he was young. “I liked to read O V Vijayan and VKN. My Communist uncle presented me with translations of Russian literature. That is how I read Dostoevsky and Gorky. In college, I was more into Kundera, Hesse and poetry by Ted Hughes,” he says. Gokul’s “absolute favourite”, however, is G Aravindan’s collected comic strip ‘Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum’. He treasures all his childhood books in his personal library, except the ones that are donated to the local libraries.
“These days I mostly read politics and academic books. I still read a lot of comics and have a sizable collection of graphic novels. I have time, but sometimes I find that my mind doesn’t catch up as easily as it used to. I read many books at a time. Two of those right now are Modi’s India by Christophe Jaffrelot and Linked by Barabasi”.
‘Thanks to Amma’
Amal, short story writer, novelist and cartoonist, and also a recipient of many awards, is thankful to his ‘Amma’ who used to get him Balarama and Poombatta. “Till I was ten or twelve years old, I loved to copy sketches from those, and narrate stories to my friends. Soon, that became my world”. Amal continues, “I was close to fifteen years old when I heard about a library in our village. As soon as I knew of it, I took membership there. Though we had a library at school, the doors were seldom opened”.
But like Thomas, Amal too has fond memories of his UP class teacher Venugopal who used to bring books from the school library to the classroom. “I remember reading ‘Mali Ramayanam’ and ‘Circus’ at school. My elder brother was very passionate about cinema. The cine-magazines which he brought home, became my favourites as I grew up”. Amal says that he was very fond of the ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ series. No wonder he grew up with a passion for cartoons and graphic novels.
‘All by Gandhiji’
K B Valsalakumari, the former principal secretary (Revenue and Disaster Management, Kerala) has read almost every book by Gandhiji in her college library during her pre-degree days. And it wasn’t easy, she says. “When I went to check out the remaining books on the shelf, the librarian said, ‘I think you are borrowing these books for someone else’. He refused to believe me when I said they were for me and refused to issue the books. I had to complain to the principal to get the rest of the books by Gandhiji,” she remembers.
Valsalakumari read both Malayalam and English books when she was in school. From George Eliot’s ‘Silas Mariner’, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, novels by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, poetry by Kunjunni Mash, and detective fiction, she read everything within her reach. “I donated most of my books to a library run by an NGO in Thiruvananthapuram. Now I read whenever I can find some time for myself. Currently, I am part of a reading group that meets once a month, and am going through Chekov’s stories,” she says.
Uncles’ library
Fathima E V, associate professor and award-winning translator, grew up in the company of books. She has fond memories of a library owned by her uncles in those days. “They called it Brothers’ Library and lent books to friends. With the money they had, they bought more books. I find myself blessed to have been born into a family that reads. It was more for the women at home that those books were a delight. In those days, they read translations of many books in Malayalam,” she says.
Fathima loved Russian literature, translations of Bengali and Urdu novels and Sherlock Holmes. “I read ‘Thirukkural’, ‘Koka Shastra’, to ‘Bible’ and books by Emile Zola, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Vladimir Nabokov, from this library. Both adults and children thought of all stories as true, treated the characters as real people and engaged with their fate passionately. Some books were donated to other libraries later,” she says.
Fathima remembers that many around her used to visit the library. “I used to visit Mahi Public Library frequently after school and read whatever I could lay my hands on. On Saturdays, many children used to frequent the library. And we had fun trips to the library on holidays,” she muses.
Though Fathima had no favourite writer as such, she liked to read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Emily Bronte. “I learnt Tamil from Ummah who grew up in Sri Lanka, and used to read ‘Ananda Vikatan’ and ‘Kumudam’, mostly jokes and humour, which were published in those magazines”.
She still keeps books from those days, however, many more have been donated to local libraries for want of space.
World of ‘Mittayi Pothi’
Architect Indu V loved reading books so much that when she was growing up, she wished she could make a profession out of it! “My father, one of my cousins and an uncle were bibliophiles and book collectors. I never had a membership in any library, but my father used to borrow books from his college library for me. I read in Malayalam initially, and slowly started reading in English too,” Indu says.
She was also a fan of Bobanum Molliyum and through her cousin, she was introduced to Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha and Archies. “Apart from comics, I loved Enid Blyton’s books. I was quite a fan of Hardy Boys, Secret Seven, Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie and Sydney Sheldon when I was in school. I looked out for abridged versions of classics for kids. I hovered over every page of Harry Potter in my teens.”
Before High School, her favourite was Sumangala’s ‘Mittayipothi’ and ‘Evoorinte Bala Sahitya Krithikal’. “I remember Mittayi Pothi as a sweet read, and Evoorinte quirky”, she reminisces.
“It was my neighbour Varghese Uncle who lent me Mittayi Pothi and ‘Totto-Chan’. I was reluctant to return ‘Mittayi Pothi’. I was fascinated by the beautiful illustrations in watercolours so much that I bought it at a book fair when I grew up.”
Like many readers, Indu is also a Basheer lover. “Ah, the lightness and fun of his books! But my perennial favourite is ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy, right from school till today.”
However, she confesses. “I do not read as much as I used to. I have installed a reading app to help me revive my habit. Anyway, my target is to read for at least fifteen minutes a day after work. I have vowed to do my best here, though I find it very challenging with the hectic schedule,” Indu says.
It might be illustrations or characters or plot, or sometimes all of it which had drawn them to books. It would have been their teacher, parent or neighbour who initiated the love of books in them. Whatever it was, once they started turning pages, they were ready to walk to the ends of the world with Basheer, MT, VKN, Agatha Christie, Gandhiji and others. Once a reader, always a reader. Those once-upon-a-time teen readers still carry the habit and love of reading on their greying heads.
We do not lack good books today. What is becoming rare are insatiable readers who would love to cuddle on a sofa with a book. Yes, we have moved to the world of audiobooks. But the feel of a book, is it already something of the past? I see a rainbow through the glass pane of the window in our library. There is that “thing with feathers”, as Dickinson says. We know that it is called hope.
The writer is a poet, translator and assistant professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam.