How I found my way back to book reading

(Opinion Page Column in Khaleej Times dated Dec 6, 2021)

Once upon a time, apart from outdoor games, the only antidote to children’s boredom was reading. The only pastime for women after their daily chores were magazines and books. People reveled in books, and libraries thrived. The printed word was then our primary source of knowledge and entertainment.

I have no idea at what point our new age predilections snatched our leanings towards books. It was likely a gradual process to which we willingly gave in; a slow metamorphosis that happened with the coming of newfangled ways of entertainment. Looking back, it is hard to pinpoint in which alley we lost the unparalleled joys of reading and became vassals to the snazzy visuals.

Many people that I know confess to having ditched books in favour of other things. There is an unambiguous tone of regret in their voices as they hurriedly list down reasons for abandoning books and try to exonerate themselves of the guilt. I also sense a secret desire in them to get back to the old pleasures of reading, if only time and other life variables permitted. This piece is for them; to those whose allegiance to books is still intact in spirit, to those who still believe in the indescribable charms of literature and are looking to return to the pastures that they once grazed and grew in.

The reasons for books to become redundant in our lives are obvious. No matter how hard we try to pin the blame on ‘lack of time’, the truth is that many of us have delisted reading from our routine. It is no more an imperative in our lives, neither as a source of knowledge nor as recreation, for we have found alternatives. It is debatable whether the alternatives are better or worse, but the fact that we have made reading dispensable in our lives remains. Things that previously were important to us often got relegated to the lower rungs only because we allowed them to. So let us first strive to consciously put reading back on the charts for its inherent benefits. I did it at a time when I realised that my inclination to reading was veering away from me and if I didn’t act immediately, it may become alien to me faster than I could imagine.

Not all plans come to fruition unless it is followed up with positive action. So, I reminded myself how reading had once been an uncompromisable part of my life and reflected on how it had contributed to my growth as an individual and as a writer. I reiterated to myself its apparent merits and pledged to give the books that had lain unopened on my shelf and in my Kindle their due.

At that point, I also realised it wasn’t that there was no reading happening in my life. On the contrary, there was so much of it happening and so haphazardly that nothing that I read was adding up to anything credible. I decided to weed out all unnecessary reading on the internet, sorting important articles while browsing and filing them away for reading at a designated hour during the day. Essentially, I learnt to see the difference between junk and useful reads, which does not necessarily mean sticking only to the ‘serious stuff’. Even trivia had its own place, but I did not allow it to claw into my productive time. Recognizing how pointless it was to read everything that caught my eye on the internet was the biggest turning point in my return journey to books.

I taught myself to stop trawling the social media and the internet aimlessly and assigned a time for it. Getting disciplined about it worked further wonders and I soon found myself reaching out to the book on the table or in the Kindle more often. I set a limit to reading random opinion and commentaries online, an overdose of which was only turning me into a mental wreck.

I kept two books by my side at a time so I could alternate between genres for a change as per my mood. What I did not do was to set reading goals because I did not want books to be part of an intimidating self-challenge. Soon enough, what initially felt like a compulsion became a delightful routine, sometimes for pleasure, and at other times for understanding and contemplation.

Luckily for me, I hadn’t lost my love of books; I had merely strayed. All I had to do to get back to them was to fix them firmly on my agenda and swipe the distractions out of the way.

Beware, fame can be an uneasy crown to wear

A few months ago, I chanced upon a blog written by Swedish author Fredrik Backman whose books like A Man Called Ove and Bear Town set author goals for writers all over. The blog titled ‘Something about the Anxiety’ enumerated the author’s own battles with hopelessness and depression despite his being on the New York Times Bestseller List numerous times.

Around the same time, I also heard about the sudden and untimely demise of an Indian TV actor, discernibly in great nick both in terms of career and health, and then more recently, of yet another Indian film star, Puneeth Rajkumar. The two Indian celebrities had succumbed to heart diseases that were allegedly caused by the scourge of our times, ‘stress’.

As I followed the stories of the three men above, and of a few others who were cruising the firmament of fame, I traced a common thread in their glossy lives. They were successful, wealthy, celebrated, but they all were likely under duress, implicit and obscure, that comes unbidden with such luminous living. Backman described it explicitly in his blog as ‘the pressure and expectations of everything around this…career thing…’

Not all of us are destined to super success and stardom, but let us be honest, none of us would grudge some fame; none of us would pass up an opportunity to grab a slice of glory we believe we deserve. Even in our most meagre practices, our objective is to garner attention. Why else do we wander in the hinterlands of social media for hours on end, secretly waiting for the number of likes and loves to climb? Why else do we make concerted efforts to advertise our exploits, both big and small?

The craving for fame is inherent in a vast majority of people. We only need to closely watch our intentions to realize that the biggest motivation for all our endeavours is to be a celebrated entity one day in one or all continents. I don’t challenge our right to hog the limelight for the right reasons or scoff at tall ambitions, but I have become increasingly aware of the price people have had to pay to attain and maintain celebrityhood. I scratched the shimmering surface to decipher the perils of being renowned and made some profound conclusions.

Whether in the higher echelons or in our regular realms, public acclaim builds a unique self-image in us. It forces us to make small tectonic shifts in our manner and method, and we begin to project a version of us that fits and feeds the popular impression. In time, we become estranged to the real person that we once had been, and the pressure to be someone that we originally aren’t becomes a bondage.

We become names to reckon with, with attributes and ornaments thrust upon us. We have obligations to fulfil — to meet other people’s expectations of us and to constantly seek their appreciation because slowly we have deified ourselves with their worship; the chimerical love of strangers has become indispensable to our existence, and before we know it, we have submitted ourselves to their whims. We have lost our freedom to be ourselves and what ensues is mental pressure of the most excruciating kind. It is a frightening prospect that I shudder to even picture in my head casually.

Fame is a double-edged sword. It spurs us to excel ourselves and it makes us stooges to others. Is there then an equitable outcome to our ardent enterprises, one that allows us to accomplish but at the same does not rob us of our essential selves? How do we progress in our path without the fear of pledging ourselves to other people’s outlooks?

The answer might sound banal and formulaic, but it is legitimate. Let not the objective of our lives be to top the charts alone. Let not our passions be driven by the expectations of outsiders. What we want to accomplish must remain within the purview of our essential needs. We must reserve the power and courage to call the shots in our lives.

The simplest way I have found to do it is by asking myself every morning what activity or occupation I am going to indulge in that day in the larger context of my life, and more importantly why I want to do it. I make sure that the answer to it remains ‘to have enough means for a peaceful, hale and hearty subsistence’.

Any reward that comes without having to compromise on this prerequisite to life is welcome. Anything that will purloin it is utterly futile.

What a Brief Tryst with a Nobel Laureate Taught Me about Life

How often does one get to be within whispering distance of a Nobel Laureate? How do a few fleeting moments of such fantastic proportions where you stand under the same spotlight as someone whom you hold in the highest esteem for his work impact your life? Listen to this story of my brief tryst with Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature this year at the Sharjah Book Fair.

The only times I have bought the book of a major prize winner on the day of their winning it were when Arundhati Roy won the Booker in 1997 and now, in 2021, when Gurnah won the Nobel Prize. In both instances, what drove my decision was a sample of their work that grabbed me and said urgently, ‘Listen to this voice.’ I have been a literary devotee of Roy since then, and now, after reading ‘Gravel Heart’ by Gurnah, I have pledged my allegiance to his writing for life.

I was already smitten with his storytelling when the announcement of his attendance at the Sharjah Book Fair was made. Ecstatic, I marked my calendar, but all I had planned for was to be in the audience, saucer-eyed, glued to stories from his life that shaped him and brought him this far. I was eager to know what qualities the person whose writing had something so soulfully familiar in it, possessed.

I took in every word he spoke about his writing life and the paths he had covered, the rejections, the slights, and in the end the sudden emergence from anonymity to acclaim. I saw in his past a trail of what I was going through as a writer and the throes of being in the shadows for long.

The fact that his fine writing had taken twelve years to find a publisher and make a debut underlined the difference between good writing and popular writing. It reinforced my belief that being a bestselling author and being a fantastic raconteur are two different things. Gurnah was critically acclaimed but never had enough readership, so much so that when his name was announced by the Academy, it sent the world scurrying for information about him.

What I heard that evening was not a story of overnight success or sudden discovery of talent. It was a narrative of several decades of erudite brilliance shrouded in near obscurity. When time had rubbed its satin cloth on the patinated sterling for long enough, it shone one day, to the delight of people like me who are now besotted with his magical prose.

The unhurried manner in which he wrote, revealing even heartbreaks ever so gently, the finesse with which he intertwined personal destinies with the fate of nations, the finely layered, detailed characterization, his simple but elegant language were attributes that made him a literary superhero to me. But at the same, I realized those were the same attributes that had kept him away from the limelight for so long. The new world lusted after plot-driven, fast-paced narratives and not those that worked as poetic palliatives. Yet he persisted with his passion, unworried about popularity, combining lexical beauty with his core beliefs.

The luminary on the stage had imparted so much to me as a writer in such a short time that when the session was opened to Q & A, I stood up, my heart drumming deafeningly and said, ‘My name is Asha. Congratulations, Sir, and thank you for your fine writing. I have just finished reading my first book of yours and it has left a deep impact on me. I write a bit too, and if sometime in future I make a mark somewhere, and I am asked about my literary influences, your name would be among the first ones I would take. Thank you for your magic.’

Later, when I got up close for the signing and I said my name again, he looked up and said, ‘Are you the one who writes?’ I said I was, and he said, ‘I normally only sign in the book. But for you, I will write your name too. Good luck to you.’

I felt anointed in that moment. I knew it wasn’t just another fangirl moment or a photo-op for the social media. It was an occasion that told me that there indeed was a God of small things who made even the most improbable and impossible things happen in life. To Gurnah, it was the Nobel. To the rest of us, it could be something else.

(Asha Iyer Kumar is a Dubai-based author, children’s life-writing coach, youth motivational speaker and founder of iBloom, FZE. She can be reached at ibloom@ashaiyerkumar.com. Her latest book of stories ‘That Pain in the Womb’ is now on Amazon.)