The Butterfly's Burden
Books: the path to pure pleasure
As I was driving to work on a bright and sunny morning though the streets of downtown Toronto, the roads felt unusually empty, perhaps because it was the long weekend and people had already left for cottages or other out-of-town weekend vacations. As I read the names on the signboards of various downtown restaurants, I thought to myself, if my friend Jolly were here, she might have teased my excessive interest of food, accusing me that my intake of food was at an all- time high because I happened to be fasting for the month of Ramadan. Of course, I would have vehemently protested, insisting that when one has fasted for over 43 years as I have, temptations of food did not enter the mind.
All at once this food place on Spadina Avenue caught my attention, "Fresh and Wild" and below it, a catchphrase, "Life is too short not to eat well." Then the punch line, "Be fresh, be wild." I do not know about others, but to a food lover with some sense of aesthetic beauty, this sign board would be enough to induce one to go in and sample their food. And to the eternal poet and lover, freshness and wildness are a potent combination that could reach and spread its fragrant clouds in multidimensional ways to the primeval caves of physical and spiritual contentment.
A library of countless books flashed in my inward eye. If your mind is fertile enough, you can go wild on a planet where fresh reading material is constantly surrounding you. You could immerse yourself in unimaginable, multifarious ways, entering and absorbing yourself in various new literary worlds, contemplation and contentment.
Happiness, merriment, pleasure, endless joy, whatever you want to call it, this world of black and white letters in any imaginable shape or form can take you to a new world of priceless tales. Be it fact or fiction, short or long, poetry or prose, books can consume your soul from beginning to end, for just about anyone and everyone. In any piece of literature, be it the figment of one's imagination or equations of reality, some readers want surprises, while others cannot stand the suspense and they read the end first. But everyone is a victim to a good plot.
I remember those days at ViqarunNisa Noon School when stories and novels would be passed from hand to hand and we could not finish a book fast enough. Barbara Cartland, Harold Robbins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Dana Girls, Nancy Drew mysteries, One-Thousand-And-One-Arabian-Nights , and so many others. The latest books of DoshshuBonhur or DoshshuMohon, purchased by the more affluent students the day it came out in the market, would be read the same day, and then would be passed on to the less affluent but equally keen readers. The value of having money and to be able to spare that excess cash on books seemed like an insurmountable mountain I could only fantasize climbing! Then later in Holy Cross College and Dhaka University, the same cycle of passing on the best seller books continued. PremendraMitra, Shankar, Niharanjan Gupta, Achinta Kumar, Rumi, Tolstoy, Plato, Dickens --- anything and everything opened up new worlds for us.
Reading, the very process of it, and its ultimate impact knows no bounds. There's the therapeutic reading that one does before going to bed to help one unwind before entering the land of dreams. There is braille reading for people who lack sight but still have imagination and vision, there are talking books, tapes and videos for people who are hard of hearing, there are magnified letter books and tablets for people who are visually impaired, and in this modern age, an iphone or kindle. There are, as well, people who voluntarily miss out on this reading world and enter the world of movies, cd's, or live theater instead to derive equivalent pleasure.
My daughter Fariah, a second year PhD student, and I, share anything we read with one another. As I was growing up, I remember that my parents always encouraged my siblings and me to read. Everything from hardcover, to paperback, magazines and journals were read many times by the people who occupied or passed through our household. There was always a book or magazine on my reading table when I reached home from school. Either Shakespeare's complete works, Gitanjali, Shanchoyita, Mao Tse-tung, Wordsworth, Gibran – with a bookmark from my father waiting just for me, pointing to a particular passage that I should draw my attention to. Novels by Sharat Chandra, Buddhadev Basu, Bimal Mitra, put there by Ma. I remember her reading, "Begum" every week, a leading lady's magazine at the time, or crying every time she read Ananta Pipasa, a weekly serial. When my daughters were mere babies, I remember turning on the Bengali rhymes tape "TonaTuni" when I put them to sleep in their cribs so that they could appreciate the art of story telling from a young age. Until the time they could read by themselves, I would read from a new book to them every night.
There are many people who read with a distinctive purpose. And others, who read for pleasure but end up finding a purpose. One day my friend Chapola lent me the book "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseni, and said, "Read it, and immediately you will ask yourself, what can I do for Afghanistan?" This struck a chord in me. Another time, Fariah suggested that I read "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. When I had finally finished the marvellous novel, she asked, "Mommy, now what can we do for India?" Emotions are evoked and kindled when you read certain books. As you contemplate the chaotic state of affairs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Sierra Leone, and read about these countries in detail, you feel helpless, inspired, empowered and emotional. So much so that you want to reach out in any way you can.
Then there are those books which teach you to Cross Boundaries, others which teach you to Explore Territory, while still others give you lessons in gliding over Life's Thin Ice safely and cautiously. Books teach you to be cautious investors in life, like people investing in Savings Bonds and G.I.C's. There are other books from which you learn the lessons of taking higher risks in life. You either hit the jackpot or lose it all. Just like different natured people walking through the different phases of life's eternal mysteries, books teach them the rules of caution and not to take high risks and lose everything the next moment. In other words, books ultimately teach us about life in multifarious, unique ways.
Rummana Chowdhury writes from Toronto, Canada.
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