Rummaging through the dust caked books in my ancestral home my eyes fell upon the book- "The history of reading" by Alberto Manguel. It was half-eaten by the silver fish. My father and i were loading books into sacks to transport them to the city where they would receive proper care and would be protected from the dreaded silver fish.
My father's phone rang. A discussion regarding the Nobel laureate in literature, Patrick Modiano was followed. After hanging up the phone he told me the stories of the person who was talking to him all that while- the old English master who had taught him in his golden school years. The poor old man was technoplegic. He regarded technology as putrifying the sacred knowledge entrusted to us by our ancestors.
Internet, e-books and Kindle have succeeded in preserving billions of books. But somewhere down the road, the enjoyment of reading a book has vanished. Holding a book in our palms, feeling the print of the pages and recognizing a book just by its smell- all those short yet enduring moments have perished. Renowned writers like Jean Genet earned their wisdom by stealing books. He was a wanderer, wherever he went he took a book as a souvenir. Technology is now snatching away the opportunities for such thieves to become writers one day.
The pleasure of walking down unknown streets in search of second hand book shops and discovering rusty yet rare books and enjoying the exhaustion caused by the whole journey cannot be replaced by sitting in an air-conditioned room , pressing a few buttons and reading from the screen.
Standing in the path of technology whose illumination draws everyone to walk down that road, it is hard to resist. It is hard to resist to explore that road. There is nothing wrong in experimenting,but preserving old traditions is necessary. There are many arguments in favour of technology, not that I am criticizing technology, but we must somehow not let the essence of reading books get perished as we walk down this road.
