It’s trendy to write an open letter, isn’t it? I see with increasing intensity letters being addressed by mothers to daughters, citizens to the Prime Minister, critics to actors, leftists to right wingers and activists to almost everyone!
So here I am penning a letter to you, my steadfast companion of years – books. Stacked in brick and mortar stores, rotting, moth eaten and disregarded; the awarded and the classics, those composed by philosophers and intellectuals, the bigoted and the wilfully ignorant.
Yes, I feel compelled to write to you for you are responsible for transforming me – from a slow thinker to a vigorous one, from a frog in the well to an activist and liberal. If you have provoked me, you have also pacified me, if you have exasperated me, you have also assuaged my pain, if you have mystified and stupefied me, you have also enlightened and bored me – but you have been a constant in my journey.
The Many Ways You are Useless Today...
So today, I want to thank you for always having my back – but also, to warn you that as I look around today, I fear for your future…
Suddenly you seem cumbersome and expensive to many. (This, despite the fact that television screens get larger and more embellished with X-Boxes and DVD and CD players annually at a cost which can buy hundreds like you.)
It is painful to carry you around, many claim – even though many a times you are sleek enough to fit into a handbag.
You are not as stimulating as television shows, they say – even the most vivid love making scenes you contain cannot match even one sexually explicit episode of Game of Thrones.
You are high maintenance, you need to be dusted too often. (And with precious antiques and wine glasses to dust, who has time for you?)
In the age of Twitter (where even thoughts have a word limit) and Facebook (which excites base emotions of envy and angst at fanciful pictures of people we don’t know), you demand ‘dedicated discipline’ without providing instant gratification. I mean how many “likes” does a book review generate compared to selfies of friends on a beach holiday?
And besides, in this world where success is equated with money (for what else does a man like Donald Trump have to offer to the Americans), how many authors make it to the most successful persons lists? And you know this the best, given that many of your blockbusters are about economies and vagaries of money.
Why I Fear For Your Existence
Yet, history subscribes to your power of sparking revolutions and ideologies, dictators fear you the most, autocratic regimes ban you outright, fundamentalists stifle and suffocate you, the powerful want to monopolise you. Yet you’ve had the grit to carry the torch of truth.
You have ignited many a mind – if not for My Experiments with Truth the world would have never known the potency of non-violence. If not for the Communist Manifesto there would be no trade unions demanding fair wages. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a cornerstone for the feminist movement – just as Origin of Species was for many fundamental scientific theories. And was it not Uncle Tom’s Cabin that tormented our conscience against slavery – just as The Wealth of Nations coached us on ‘free markets’?
Despite your momentous contributions to our world, you are slowly fading from its very face and if you do not believe me, look at the empty library halls, peruse the ‘to-do’ lists which scarcely have a reference to reading, hear the discussions around a water cooler in an office – and you will realise you hardly ever feature in them.
Witness how the stores and shops that once housed you with pride wither away, look beneath the pomposity of educated and elite homes where not a single shelf remains reserved for you anymore. You are now mundane and irrelevant – not an investment that would generate quick returns.
Can the sheer joy that one feels in holding and feeling your pages be surpassed by the pleasure of swiping through smart phones? Can television give depth to thoughts, give that flourish to words and imaginations? Will it be right to deprive future generations of the excitement of pilfering through shelves stacked with you? NO, is my answer and hence I am holding steadfastly to you – but I cannot guarantee how long the likes of me will be able to shield you from the ruthless eyes of the mighty…
Yours Faithfully,
Twisha
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)