Literature?

I’ve just finished reading the morning papers. Was thinking how our newspapers can be like the minds of people with multiple personality disorders. An IPL celebration a few pages ahead of the massacre of 76 CRPF personnel by Maoists. Rihanna talking about her pals having an Indian wedding a few pages up from a srap dealer dying of radiation he picked up from scrap containing Cobalt-60 lying around at a scrapyard. And then of course movie reviews – and then, how India is second only to China in the increasing sales of Light Commercial Vehicles.

The great news of 3G technology now being approved and auctioned by the government to private bidders came right below the radioacive waste and on the right of the Home Minister’s offer of resignation after the Maoist massacre in Dantewada.

It was while reading Eric Fromm, a brilliant psychoanalyst, that I got his description of the insanity of our media. Advertisements for shirts that will make you irresistible next to a child’s rape, amputated limbs next to a brand of designer sarees for weddings.

What does it mean? Has the world got so complex, and do all of us live in so many small particles of the world that we ourselves are like the newspapers – bits of unrelated human matter living out our own parts, like these unrelated and unrelatably unconnected articles – and we only become a part of a whole unconsciously by a scientist’s cold laws – Adam Smith’s supply and demand, Comte’s sociological theories, Freud’s priniciples of drives and instincts, Toynbee’s theories of factors that influence history. Is that what makes us a part of a whole – a theory in an academic lecture or Marxian discourse – an abstraction, observation, reflection, analysis, empirical statement?

After puzzling and being baffled over today’s papers – I sipped some steaming hot tea and closed my eyes under a cool fan that provided a tranquilizing respite from the scorching 40 degree Delhi summer outside.

As I closed my eyes in this safe haven – the paper stories came to life in my imagination – the growing up of these CRPF men, the time they were boys, their parents and school. Being brought up in their neighbourhoods, their parent’s responses to their decisions to apply for the paramilitary forces. Their children. The regular reports of their postings to their families back home. SMS-es, chats with kids.

And then the ambush, the soldier lying screaming as a bullet, mortar, shrapnel is inside him slicing into his body parts – maybe his eyes, genitals, spine – crushed, agonising. Screaming helplessly minute after minute, hour after hour to silence. Probably being kicked by one of the attackers and beng stripped of his ammunition and weapons in response – maybe thankfully shot in the brains as a respite to get out of the agony.

And then the reflection of the story – 400 words – next to a shirt brand that makes you irresistible to women and prospective emplyers, above the new 3G revoution that’ll make our mobile phone internet surfing be at double the speed, below a vibrant headline of the do-or-die IPL game tonight.

I opened my eyes, in this cool safe, secure South Delhi flat of mine, sipped some more tea that was growing lukewarm, as my eyes opened – imagination under closed eyes converted to analysis over opened ones. The paper had so much that I wanted to know – so much more information that I needed and wanted. How is our economy growing? Car sales were a good sign for India but what progress was their on alternative cleaner energy sources to petrol and diesel? When are the Nilekani’s Unique Identification Cards going to be out? What impact will that have on a nation – that is now traceable, accountable, contactable? I read about a Bangladesh judge thankfully banning Islamists from forcing women under the veil required in the shariat? More questions – how do moderate Islamist states function and integrate Sharia with modern democratic principles?

I wanted to grasp so many subjects that would provide keys to this plethora of puzzles in the newspaper laid out in front of me – the variety of contexts that I needed to have to each of the stories that intrigued me. Economics, Political Science, History, Sociology, Psychology, Ethics - would give me some answers I thought.

But then I realised I rarely read the newspaper in such detail. And then where’s the time to get to know so much?

More importantly I realised that this Multiple Personality Disorder, this skipping, unrelatedly on the surface of human events – carefully sliding over the dehumanised thin ice that prevents us from falling into any of the cracks of tragic human experience and pain that the stories hold in their limited words – keeps me away from being a media hound.

Am I an escapist then? An avoider? Perhaps. Somewhat. But I don’t think entirely. I like novels, or books that dwell through an entire experience of a subject. Is that an anal psychological trait? One thing at a time? Top to bottom? In depth? No. I don’t think so. I think a novel does justice and lives out a story. Fully encompasses, holds, delves and experiences. Falls under the thin cracks of these newspaper stories and drowns in the depths of human life and feeling. The Grapes of Wrath made us experience the Joads in their pain during the Great Depression across the hundreds of pages of that voluminous tome. And yes, I’m sure the New York Times had the heading and story (next to attractive adverts and baseball no doubt) of Depression deaths due to starvation. But I felt it in Steinbeck, lived and breathed with Tom Joad.

I’m still in my safe haven. I’m extremely community unfriendly, quite isolated in my own bubble. Perhaps I can grapple out of my self-centred existence – my comfort zone – and do more for my commnunity respond more as a citizen. (I actually plan to work on those traits this year. It’s a goal I’ve put down.)

Another goal this year of mine was which degree I would choose as a field of study because I plan to complete my graduation in this ripe middle age and start the first year of my chosen degree this year (in a few months in fact). I scrolled through in great detail the courses of London Universities Distance Education section on the internet.

At the end of all the dwelling and ruminating - I didn’t go for psychology, economics, sociology, media studies or politics that I’ve talked about above.

I went for Literature.