Thank GOD for the PRINTING press!
Without
it, nothing else would have been possible. There would have been no books, no
iPads or even Xboxes!
WHAT WOULD you say has been man’s
greatest invention in the last thousand years? Would you say electricity,
computers or rockets? The iPhone or the Xbox? Your guess would be wrong.
Experts believe that the numero uno invention has been the printing press. Its
creation made all these others possible. Books became easily available and
people became literate. Back in 15th century Europe, before printing came
along, a 500-page book may have cost the same as a small house! Thank God we
live in a time where we don’t have to choose between reading and housing! Books
are a parallel universe in which you might be a newcomer but never a stranger.
One may discover that like Robinson Crusoe, one is not alone on the island. As
you wander the world through books, you may trawl the streets of Victorian
London with Oliver Twist, walk the steps to the guillotine with Sydney in A
Tale Of Two Cities, fly in a bomber over Germany, attend a class in Hogwarts
with Harry Potter, read a new recipe, perfect your golf swing or learn about
the mating rituals of tribals. Even though reading for pleasure is fast being
replaced by reading for purpose, I think a business executive might learn far
more from Catch-22 than from a dozen books on management.
Reading makes immigrants out of us, nomads
rather; it takes us away from our comfort zones, our truths, our rigidity and
our homes and finds new homes for us everywhere. The delight may be vicarious
but it makes you forget time and simply bask in the present. Books are the
means to immortality: the characters never truly die. Through them we
experience other times, other places, other lives. When Brad Pitt tells Eric
Bana in the film Troy that “there are no pacts between lions and men”, he is
speaking Achilles’ exact words as Homer wrote them 2,000 years ago. I ’m often
asked: what should I read? Read what gives you joy... and do so shamelessly.
Experiment. Even if you’re a rare person who is delighted by the classics,
don’t make them your steady diet, any more than you would eat at elegant restaurants
every day.
I can’t get people who are not
readers. They just can’t seem to tear themselves away from the great ‘glass
teats’ – TV and computers. Sure you can get entertainment and information from
both. But can they ever match the soul-satisfying experience of a book? The
glossy look, the feel of its spine, the scrape of fingers against the pages,
the musky smell of print and the hidden promise. The aesthetic appeal of a
stacked bookshelf. Many people predicted the demise of books, particularly its
death by microchip. It hasn’t happened yet.
The reason is simple: If all the
nutrition of a meal could be packed in a pill , would you serve capsules and a
glass of water for a family dinner? It’s not simply that we need information,
but that we need to savour it, feel the heft of it. A laptop is portable but
not companionable.
Having said that, I think reading
off a screen is better than no reading at all. After all, Great Expectations is
a BOOK whether on Kindle, iPad, iPhone, on a laptop or loose sheets of paper or
a papyrus scroll!
Reading is addictive. Someone who
has had ‘it’ a few times will want it again and want it enough to beg a friend
to hide the damned BlackBerry for a couple of hours so they could finish the
last pages.
Surrounded as we are by glitzy
gadgets and gizmos, I still can’t think of a better gift for a child than a
hardbound, colour illustrated copy of Hansel and Gretel or Heidi. Can you?
- by Sanjay Chopra HTBR130303
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