Reading or Writing : Pastime or Purposeful

 

Reading is mostly a passive activity for most people , but it can be an interactive pastime too. Even fiction can be so stimulating ; as against some passive leisure activity, when there is a constant churning of the mind through reflection, debate and criticism .  This is particularly so, when you intend to follow up the read with some serious writing.

Here I  shall restrict myself to fiction.

There are writers who start with a pain point in a society. It is this issue that is aimed to be conveyed from different perspectives. Then characters and events are so developed and the main issue is never lost sight of. There are stretches ,particularly in a long novel, where the writer goes on to some superficial aspects of life, just enjoying writing about the day to day happenings. But a reader is by and large kept anchored to a deep reality.

Jayakanthan says in his foreword to a short stories collection , that he has not written a single word as a pastime. He comes down heavily on his critics who demand that kind of leisure reading .

 

Once when Mahatma Gandhi was ill , doctors advised him to avoid stress. He asked , if it was okay to read. He was told he could do light reading . Gandhiji asked “ What is light reading ?” 

Then there are other writers who just love writing ; enjoy writing for the sake of writing. They are happy showing to the reader an exceptionally painful or beautiful or maybe a comical scene from day to day life. These scenes may relate to the realities of that period but the events themselves stand out making no moral judgements on the society or individuals.

As someone who loves reading Tamil fiction , I would say, Thi Janakiraman or Jayakanthan fall in the first category while Sujatha or Raa ki Rangarajan would fall in the second. 

Both types of writing can be immensely enjoyable depending on the reader’s mood and inclination . There are times when one  is so carried away by the style of writing that nothing else matters much. 

Recently , I read a book by Raa ki rangarajan “Housefull”  the writer says “Just for the fun of doing things differently, he started with the fourth chapter and let the reader guess the earlier chapters. Then he went on to the third , second and the first chapter , in that order,  to resume the story from the fifth .This was done as a serial in  a weekly magazine. He observes with satisfaction that no reader had any difficulty in understanding the story nor were they any complaints .

That’s pure fun of writing and reading.

Most people would agree that it is the leisure kind of reading that’s more popular. 

There are many writers who need to put in a lot of effort to  write pulp fiction and there are wordsmiths who effortlessly write on serious themes. Whatever be the kind , for a discriminate reader , it shows when the writer enjoys writing as much as the reader enjoys reading.

The pure joy of writing comes, I suppose, when there are no deadlines to meet and no conscious effort made  to make money or to please his readers.

To wind up, here’s an interesting anecdote from Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi.  

Bharathiyaar wrote his master piece Panchali Sabatham in two parts . The first part was published by Bhartahiyaar himself in 1912. Unfortunately there were not many takers for this book. Around the same time, he wrote a parody on the elites in India aping the British,  “Fox with a golden tail” . The book was written in English just for the fun of taunting the anglophiles in India and the condescending Indo-philes from England.

The book “Fox with a golden tail ” sold like hotcakes ; so much so that there was a huge demand for reprints .

Bharathiyaar’s reaction was typical .

There’s a story that he gave away the English book for free to anyone buying his Tamil masterpiece , Panchali Sabatham.