Following is a paragraph from Gurcharan Das’s book, The Difficulty of Being Good. Mr. Das had taken early retirement from a successful corporate career and decided to take an academic holiday in which he did a lot of reading and thinking and discovered for himself the meaning of life. Here is how he went about doing so. Quoting from the above book:
I wanted to read the texts in Sanskrit but that would have needed a lifetime – given my shallow grasp of the language. I was hungry and impatient. So I decided on the next best course. I would arrive early in the morning at Regenstein and follow the drill I had learnt from Daniel Ingalls. I would pull out from the shelf a volume of the Mahabharata’s Critical Edition. With Whitney’s grammar on my right and Apte’s dictionary on my left I would read a small passage. It was hard labor but Wendy Doniger consoled me saying, “Reading Sanskrit is good for the soul.” I would tire after an hour or so and then I would turn to van Buitenen’s translation and read it for the rest of the morning. If I had a doubt I would go back to the original. It was an unhurried pursuit. I did not want information. I wanted to be cultivated and I read at leisure with lingering appreciation.
There are many reasons to read good books and this reason of Mr. Das (to be cultivated) is one of the best of them. I also want to make another point here before I forget. Mr. Das did part of his reading in Sanskrit. I think that if you know more than one language it gives you or makes you familiar with a completely different outlook to life. It is a different way of looking at the world and yourself.
Combine that with the fact that learning a new language is supposed to be excellent for your intellectual development. I would like to praise Mr. Das highly.
But the best of all possible reasons to read is the one which I had when I was young. I used to read because I enjoyed it. It did not need any other reason. I just wanted to have a good time.
I think that this is the purest of all possible reasons.
These days I have to force myself to read. A lot of the time I find myself browsing Netflix. I have lost the desire to read that I had when I was young.
Time and tide wait for no man.
For more on reading and how to go about it there are two books that you may find interesting. Links are below (not affiliate links):
And chapter 36 of the book below by Rolf Dobelli:
Mr. Dobelli is an author so it is his business to be widely read. Yet he limits his reading to only about 10 books a year. And those books that he chooses he reads repeatedly, over and over.
I hope you liked my article. Please share it on WA, FB and X and let me have your comments. Feedback from my readers keeps me going.
Find this handy. Buy me a coffee