So how is everybody? I hope you all are doing fine! Did the title make you all think that this will be one of those posts where I blabber about how unfair the world is? Or how insecure and frightened the society has become? Or how we can only wish for greener earth and bluer sky and clearer water and fresher air and better life? Or how there is no way back for humanity and we are slowly poisoning ourselves for the eminent apocalypse? And knowing all this doesn’t make us all live together in peace! We keep fighting against each other! Instead of treating everyone equally, we discriminate between humans created by a single superpower! As you all know that God comes to us in different ways and tries to teach us the lessons which make us better human beings. We deny God’s authority and power and indulge in acts which harm other humans or animals or plants or microbes who have as much right to be on this planet as any one of you! And you say to yourself, I’m sure the day will come when we all will regret everything we’ve done, and try to rebuild the broken bridges! But that my friends will be too late!

Did your mind drift off and wondered how the world has changed and there’s no one we can trust? The world which we are living in today is so fragile and volatile and divided by religions! Religions are not bad. But when a bunch of idiots twist religious teachings, turn them into something ugly and use them to cause terror all over the world, that’s when we pay the heavy price! And even when it is written in our Puranas that women need to be treated with respect, that’s not truly the case. Did you also think about their safety and wished that we lived in a society where women were allowed to do anything they wanted, wear anything they wanted, at anytime of the day and could roam around without any fear alone at night on an empty street! Did you really think I was going to waste my time writing stuff when clearly there is a lot written and said about all theses problems to no avail? Well no, I’m not going to write about that! I think this blog is read by a class of people who know their responsibilities and need no further encouragement.

What I meant when I put that title was, the world of books! Just by reading the first two paragraphs of the post you all went into overdrive and started questioning things, didn’t you? You must have thought about all these issues at least once. I’m sure you have read about all these things enough already and have felt sick of yourselves and the human race you belong to! Not that I belong to a different race, and I didn’t feel sick while writing it. I did feel extremely disturbed while I was formulating each sentence. But well I just wanted to prove a point and I think I’ve done it here. The point I was trying to make here is, Books, or rather words, have limitless powers. Books can change an entire generations thought process. Books have the power to lift people above the dark clouds of depression and show them that there is a way out! On the contrary some books can make people restless and disturbed! Some books like The Alchemist take us on a ride and show us how we must tackle our problems to realize our destiny. While others like The Animal Farm or 1984 show us how useless it is to think that we have the freedom to do whatever we want. It’s just an illusion, like The Matrix, created to make us believe that we have it under control. It’s obviously our choice which books we read and what we learn from them. I just believe that one should read as many books as possible. And as they say, one should not judge a book by its cover! A great cover might contain a shitty book or vice versa! But if we didn’t read the bad books, we would never appreciate the good ones. Just like happiness. We would give lesser credit to the good times in our lives if we never had any bad times to compare them with.

Anyway coming back to books, someone has so rightly said, ‘Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.’ I haven’t been able to write this post for the past few days because each day after returning from work, I was getting lost somewhere in London with a private detective trying to solve a murder mystery. Last week I was with the famous Prince of Ayodhya, Ram, when he won The Seeta Swayamvar, married his Soulmate, Seeta, and went off for a long holiday in the Dandakaranya with his wife and Brother Laksham! It’s a thing that is common with most of the readers I guess. That we try to picture the scene which we are reading. It’s our imagination which helps us create our own version of the book in our mind! If we were given a chance to turn that book into a movie, we would just portray what we experienced while reading the book!

A writer, if he (I don’t mean to take sides but writing he/she every time can get a bit tedious. Hence I’m using ‘him’ as a representative of all the good male and female writers out there) is good enough, has so much power at his disposal. There’s a saying in Hindi, ‘Kisiko apne ungliyonpe nachana!’ A good writer can quite literally do that! A writer has all the strings of his puppets! He has the choice to make a character weak or strong. He can turn the tables with a single line and turn reality into a dream. He can kill our most favourite character and break our hearts and he can make them alive again! It’s like you have an empty house, you start putting things in it. At a point when you run out of space, you throw the old or broken things out and make way for new ones! A writer keeps doing that in his mind, only here there are real people instead of furniture. The characters maybe fictional for a reader, but the writer has no doubt his characters are real. He is emotionally attached to each one of them, although they only exist in his mind. It’s safe to say that every writer has a Multi Personality Disorder. Each character is a fragment of his own, with one or the other emotion in excess which defines that character. And depending on how the readers’ emotional IQ is, each reader finds their own favorite characters!

It’s crazy how we all get so involved with the people who don’t even exist. We want to know what happened to them till the last page is turned! And if there is a sequel on the way, we can’t wait to get hold of it and know what happens next. We cry when our favorite character dies in a book, or we get restless and impatient when the protagonist is up to something interesting. We never even care that much about the real people around us sometimes. If only we did, the world would have been a much better place. I guess it’s the fact that all these characters are hypothetical which makes us like them more. Because real people have flaws. Not that the characters in a book are flawless, but they are portrayed in a way that we accept them with their flaws, or we fall in love with them because they are flawed. Imperfections are what make them more special. And it’s not that we don’t like our friends or family. Sometimes a character reminds you of an old friend and makes you smile without you noticing it. Sometimes a scene from the book is so real, that you feel all of it is happening in front of you and the writer is narrating the scene with precise details. I have visited many places through the eyes of the writer. I’ve been to places which don’t even exist anymore. I’ve traveled back to those times when I wasn’t even born. All I had was the narration and the empty canvas of my imaginary drawing board. And when you have nothing to compare it with, it can only turn out as good as you imagine it to be! Books have their own little worlds. They are like a portal into a parallel Universe. The characters only exist on the other side of the portal, but their memories remain with us even after the portal is closed. And every time we think about these characters, the portals open a tiny bit and start drawing us back into it.

That’s when we keep reading the same book again and again. Every time the book tells us a different story. Even the same story can teach you different things depending on the state of mind you are in. I’ve experienced this many times. Even if the book is bad, some of the pages are worth keeping stored in your memory. Each book you read, scratches the grey cells of your brain and leaves a small mark. Some marks fade out, but some remain for life.

I’m a bit crazy, as I have already made clear in my first post! Hence, I frequently get bored of the real world. I get bored of Whatsapp and Facebook constantly hitting me with notifications. I get bored of meeting my friends and family. Not that they are boring, I’ve been blessed with the best family and friends ever! But still I do get irritated sometimes. That’s when I realize I need a dose of Unreality! I spend sleepless nights with my books until I know what happens at the end! I feel exhausted and tired when it’s done. If the book is bad I immediately take another book! But if the book lives up to my expectations, I spend the next few days or weeks in peace until the cravings for another one start again! It’s true when I say that I’m addicted to books as people get addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. And it is a great addiction to keep for life! I dream of sitting in a room when I’m old, with racks and cupboards of books all around me. But it’s a long way from now!

As for the world I wish I lived in, well I actually do live in it when I’m reading. Unless I started writing about my own world, I would have to be satisfied with those who have told their stories and opened up their worlds for everyone. For now I’m going back to London as the Murder Mystery is really picking up pace!

I tried to keep the post short because the post is about reading, so I did not want it to discourage the non-readers! I have failed miserably! But I hope you all read the post and make it a habit to read good books! They not only teach you good things, but make great topics during conversations, specially when you and your crush are fans of the same author! 😉 Plus books are worth keeping for a lifetime. A piece of cloth loses its value over time. It’s the other way round in case of books. Better said in Fight Club, ‘On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everything drops to zero.’ But this theory doesn’t work for books, An old book is as priceless as a new one, maybe even a bit more!

That’s all folks! Hope you enjoyed reading the post! Do put your comments below! See you soon!

Abhijeet Jog