Mining the mind

There is a great perceived conceit in the term literary. Book readers – mostly women – play it down. But book readers, when men, who have realised that they are in possession of an interest where the scope to entertain and enrich oneself is immense and long term become insulated bores. They bore others and others bore them, because the others are not ‘literary.’ But is it the others’ fault or indeed their own?

I read a memorable quote (in that it has stayed in my memory!) from VS Naipaul (is quoting Naipaul, the undeniable high priest of literature an act of conceit sneaking in?) which read, “To become aware of your past is to cease to live instinctively.” Such a deep yet simple observation. Perhaps something that might occur to us in a flash, before it passes us by.

To me, to realise that you have developed literary taste (how I squirm to even write the two words) is also a moment when you cease to live instinctively. Without doubt you gain a lot from having developed this interest, but isn’t it also a huge loss. All the fun to be had if one lived instinctively, especially in a country like India.

One could argue that it’s better to cease to live instinctively by reading ravishing prose than to be instructed so by ravaging life. Because eventually, we all end up ceasing to live instinctively and while prose eases us into this (at times) weary process, life’s ways are less civil, shaking and jolting us rudely, against our wishes!

And yet, don’t we all want to live instinctively. Anew. “To dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands. With all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves. Let me forget about today until tomorrow,” Bob Dylan. More conceit!

Those heady long drives, with the wind screaming at you provide us with just that. With each moment, surviving just an instant; each moment buried under the next.          

All sublime pursuits are elitist. Perhaps a truly ‘literary-minded’ person does not indulge in this pursuit thinking of being perceived as exclusive, rare.

But I wonder, if literature (eeeks!), though it enables us to stop living instinctively, does it also provide us with new ways of seeing. Something we want from life, but don’t have the eyes (or is it heart) for it.