The way I like to spend my summer holiday is in front of the TV, playing video games with the curtains closed and the lights turned off,” says Greg Heffley, the darling hero of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series authored by Jeff Kinney. The whimsical aspirations of this popular fictional kid will no doubt find an echo in the heart of every kid, who is well on his way into his teens.
There was the time when it was firmly believed that summers were to be spent reading books and learning from them. Not behind closed curtains and dim-lit rooms. There was always a stack of books at home. Books, bought or borrowed, kept us company till we signed out of the vacation. My grandmother was an avid reader and would pore over even crumpled sheets of newspapers used to wrap groceries. Reading refreshed one’s mind just the way jogging revitalised one’s body, she would say.
The neighbourhood libraries were raucous hubs of activity. Shelves were ransacked and bookings made much in advance for popular authors and titles. Our college librarian was on the friend’s list of every student and was the most prominent person on the campus. The very same libraries that liberated the minds and elevated the moods of residents of the locality are now deserted for the best part of the day. The greying profile of their dwindling customer base is proof enough that these erstwhile classrooms have lost their patrons to other modes of activities.
Today, homes are brightly lit through the night. Chennai might lag behind Delhi or Mumbai when it comes to the buzz surrounding nightlife on the streets. But it surely is an aggressive competitor in keeping awake till the wee hours of the morning. Restful nights have turned into working nights, wiping away the day-night divide that was more pronounced a decade or two ago. But one is not sure whether the night owls who work overtime are reading or whether they are hooked to their gaming devices that have slowly weaned them away from books.
However, book lovers would reassure that it’s not time yet to join the bandwagon of doomsday prophets who have pronounced the reading habit dead. The ongoing debate on paper versus digital reading could perhaps give a fillip to the king of habits. Let’s hope that the lightweight features and the adaptive experience offered by e-readers would recreate the romance between readers and authors.
One may not walk expectantly to a bookshop or a library. One may not pick up random books from the stands and flip through the pages or look at the last lines. Instead, one may log into an e-store to browse titles and add a few to his cart. Nevertheless, the magic lies in the reading. If not between the folds of a book, it could be sensed between the swipes of one’s fingers!