When two little girls showed me why I read
Feb 2017. It was my first winter in New York and as an Indian who moved from West Coast, I was still learning to cope up with the extreme cold in the North East. Hence my weekend plans were low key and indoors like a coffee and a new book at the downtown Barnes & Noble.
It was going to snow that particular weekend afternoon. Therefore I expected fewer people to leave the comfort of their homes and compete for the space in the reading area. Benefiting from my early-riser habit, I found myself a perfect spot next to the glass wall facing the street and picked up a new release elaborating the evils of Wall St. In a few hours, people started pouring in and I learnt never to assume things about New Yorkers based on my 30 years of experience, with people across 8 other cities. New Yorkers don’t stay home, least of all for a meager snowstorm. As more of them joined me in the reading area, my focus started shifting from the book to the people around. The locals are definitely more interesting than Flash Boys.
Sitting next to me were two little girls with their father. From the looks of it, the elder one must be around 6 years old and the younger 4. Both of them were immersed in reading children books and their father was watching over them doing nothing other than sipping a coffee. I wondered why they were there? Why didn’t their father decide to stay in the cozy confines of the home, hand them over an iPad and watch soccer instead? I am sure there is some iOS app or video, delivering the contents of the same books in an animated fashion.
Perhaps he was there because he wanted the next generation to experience how he grew up. Perhaps he wanted them to develop an ability to create a world of their own, using only the words in the books not aided by modern technology. He wanted them to look at those illustrated houses, streets and parks, relate them with their real-world experiences and imagine how they really look like, probably even embellish them. When a dialogue happens in the book, the girls should be the ones to decide the intensity of love, care, anger, rebellion or authority expressed by each character. They should be the ones to read each sentence at their own pace, pause after every one of them, if needed, and thus extract the meaning out.
Perhaps, he wanted them to learn how to find a personal space when surrounded by the crowd. Or perhaps he simply wanted them to be in an actual social space of a kind where, everyone is trying to learn something new from the words written by a stranger. Unlike those virtual social arenas where each man is a slave to his own opinions.
As I ratiocinated, I unraveled the reason why I always resort to a bookstore or a library when in need of peace. It is due to the absence of pretense and callousness and the presence of curiosity. When someone opens a book, they open themselves up to someone else’s perception, experiences and opinions. A stranger, they have no pre-conceived notions about. Someone they can’t go back and question.
Therefore I equate reading a book with a spiritual exercise. Where one connects to an idea concealed in their subconscious mind using the words of the author. They retrospect and relate this idea to the experiences and aspirations of their own life and thus gather all the information to take a decision that eventually translates into a belief system.
I read so that I learn and think about things I don’t come across in my day to day life. I read to enrich my mind with experiences of people all across the world. I read to explore. I read to evolve.
