Confined To A Genre 📚

Being confined to a genre is more common than the reading fraternity would like to admit.

My personal favorites were Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie with classics like ‘Pride and Prejidice’, ‘Wuthering Heights’ thrown in once in a while for good measure.

For decades I couldn’t pick up anything contemporary, regional or anything other than my favorites.

If I happened to start Chetan Bhagat, I would wonder, “Is this even  English? How did he even get published in the first place?”

I didn’t feel the effortless ease while reading Indian authors in English. It was like driving a very old car with jagged gears. It was  really easy to relinquish them totally and return to my comfort zone ie., Agatha Christie and Holmes.

Reading is not just for knowledge it is for companionship and I was most comfortable in their company.

Once in the library certain titles began to call me out. I guess I was at the threshold and crossover was just natural.

‘The Alchemist’ by Pablo Coelho ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’ by Robin Sharma, ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne, ‘The Biology Of Belief’ by Bruce Lipton and many more.

One friend led me to another and for the first time in my life I was among so many friends who cared for me enough to not only help me escape into a book but show me the way to the things I knew not.

It wasn’t really a crossover, only I had more comfort food in my pantry now.

Next I became part of a Critic Club where reading a story of the writer sitting in front of me in flesh and blood was a great high and then when I joined a Book Club which hosted and interviewed the new age Indian authors, sensitized me towards Indians writing in English. They were talking about the world as it is. It was not easy to shut them out, for they were saying what needed to be heard.

English began to appear not just as a borrowed language but a Universal medium unifying culture’s, communities and conscience.

Reading A Book Is Like The Whisperings Of Another’s Mind Into Ours

Yes, books speak to us, sometimes ever so gently and sometimes ever so loudly.

Each book is the distilled emotions, experiences and intelligence acquired over a long period of time. It’s not only the time spent on creating an idea but also crafting the intangible into the tangible and the journey doesn’t end there in fact it begins from there.

The certainty and the uncertainty about its worth, then the acceptance by the publishers, followed by the tiresome editing, the publishing, the marketing, the availability and finally the desire in the readers for the book.

Those are the intricacies during the birth of a book. A book like a person, is born to fulfill its destiny.

Each book is born to fulfill it’s destiny and its journey is creating, introducing, mobilizing or honoring ideas.

A Mind must have pondered plenty before it pens its essence on the paper.

The question is why must a Mind want to do it? Is it for Name, Fame or Wealth? Yes obviously for all those reasons but also some kind of consciousness about Duty given to that Mind.

The writer is duty bound to a Force greater than himself and only because he is conscious of the duty he becomes the chosen one.

So many elements are involved in bringing out a book and then a book gets ready and when a reader finally picks it and begins to read it, it speaks to him.

One book can speak to readers spread across Centuries, Continents and Cultures. The question is who wants to create a fraternity through the book?

The books outlast their authors, so the writer is simply a medium who was given a set of moments, a set of experiences and a set of words from which to turn out meaning which whispers to the one who reads.

Are the whispers those of the author alone or of another Consciousness becoming alive for a reason and is the reason our Evolution?

Listening Is A Skill

Music 🎶 plays when I am cooking, 📚 reading, ✍ writing, relaxing, 🚗 driving, working, when I am alone or when I have company.

It’s like the background music in a movie. I can hear it, be aware of it but it’s presence doesn’t intrude, it must be comforting for why else would I play it?

When I say music, it implies both the instrumental and the lyrical parts.

Well, today it so happened that as a family we decided to invoke all our favorite singers to our living room. One after the other, the maestros appeared on the screen, what was strange was that we had our own stories attached to the songs which we hadn’t shared before. As the lyrics unfolded, with them unfolded our emotions. Our memories began to move one another and in doing so became a ‘Mega Memory’ in itself to be cherished by all of us.

It happened because we listened. That which was in the background came to the forefront to forge a lofty legacy.

The thing is that we hear our loved ones and others who matter like the music in the background. When did they become irrelevant and their words just sounds like the traffic sounds?

When did the repetitive chanting of the parents began to sound like ranting to the adolescent, when did busy parents began to hear their kids like the distant noises, when did the elderly became both inaudible and invisible?

Having lost or relinquished on purpose, the art of listening, we didn’t realize that we no longer listen to our Heart or the Soul. Believe me they do talk to us, but we hear what is in the Mind, well, Mind is a magnet that absorbs and hears everything without really listening. Mind is like a television anchor of a News channel, hosting multiple speakers, voicing multiple opinions all speaking over each other and all at once. You can hear them but do you really want to listen to them? Of course not.

Listening is not only a skill, which as students brings out the brilliance in you, as an adult helps to achieve excellence, as an elderly person helps you understand others, it is also much more.

Listening is an act of respect along with sharing your ‘Mind Space’ with others. Whom will you grant this respect? Surely to those who care for you and those you have chosen to listen to, for they will be your ‘Acres of Diamonds’ that you will visit for inspiration.

The more you listen consciously, you will stretch your ‘Acres of Diamonds’ and who will be richer for that?

Listening to those that matter because you matter to them, is the wisest way to discover all that can make you the best version of yourself .