Not that I was bothered much because the disgust had not been primarily vented upon me in the first place, but I came to know about the feeling of exasperation she apparently goes through on a regular basis when she reads the literature' I seem to have started creating and sharing with some of you over the last couple of years, with brazen audacity.
While I would strongly suggest to my little 'e-fan club' to dismiss my literary garbage as a vain pathological process sickening an infertile mind that is probably going ballistics due to premature senility crossed with insane narcissism, the thing that bothers me is the state of contemporary affairs around me that triggers the pathological process from time to time. And that brings me to the exasperated question my friend has asked in her mail : why waste time reading and writing where I should be busy securing my socio-economic status to confront the demands of a rapidly mutating reality that modern times present before us all ... why waste time where nothing will change to respond to the voices of honest,asking minds, or to the acts of lunacy I indulge in.
Now let's get serious.. As far as Reading is concerned, there is a reason,a natural one, why I, all of us here, keep ourselves attached to books.. to what successful extent is subject to certain external factors behind our control, but perhaps we 'feel the urge' to do so no matter what, and that's the reassuring thing. Absence of that is an indirect yet one of the first pointers to Stagnation -- something which is against the nature of Nature..
The need to keep one's self connected to literature -- I feel that it is both inherent and the response of a mind that gets created, in optimal amounts to its surrounding stimuli. I must state that it doesn't, in any way, comment upon the intellect of a human mind or qualify human minds to segregate them into intelligent and dumb categories, or for that matter into superior and inferior groups where the parameters are cultural and intellectual attributes -- a perception which some 'intellectuals' have always seemed to exhibit in the most dismissive of ways, with upturned noses (a trait that should be simply shouted down by all, and in the most risqué and commonly vulgar of ways -- exactly what these high noses turn their faces from with sarcastic smiles.)
It is more so if I try to restrict myself to the medical profession (though whatever I express holds true for every profession which is pursued with sincerity and honest passion), as most of us rarely find the time and the chance to try extra-professional activities. It IS essential for medical professionals to remain actively associated with stimulating forms of art, literature being one such...
It has been advocated and suggested consistently over the centuries as a necessity or need for the human mind, and correctly so. Consciously keeping myself away from the luminous, immortal names of the greats,the giants and the geniuses (at times things become too bright and dazzling for the common eye which misses to see and percieve,at times even the possible attribute of mortality of the immortal), I mention here a favourite quote of mine, attributed to Yoshida Kenko,a Japanese philosopher in the 12-13th century : "To sit alone in the lamp-light with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare...".
Plainly speaking books influences the human mind with the balanced rationale with which one looks at life and chooses the way to interact with it. And with that comes the secure attribute of stability with which man participates in every process of perception of what lies immediately outside his own entity, which is so necessary for all of us to interact and understand.
For two minds to understand and pay honest attention each other, standing in the common field of life, it is imperative to understand and conceptualize life itself as correctly as possible. Drifting away from this optimal correctness creates a whole spectrum of perceptions all right (thus providing the eager student of life a broader area to choose from) but with increase in choices, the possibility of incorrect choices,the 'mishits' increase too. Though the skeptic and the cynic can put in an argument statement here that nobody reaches his goal bypassing his fair share of trials and errors, the answer lies in the statement itself -- it is desirable that the share remains fair 'only', the possibility of which decreases with the increase in the choices of life. And one of the most secure ways to approach life is to have a stability in perception which is exactly what books offer to provide us with. And understanding the needs and expectations of life better needs enables us to understand each other better -- the safeway to a good life, with peace and the least possibility of confrontations in any sphere,in every stage of our existence.
That accounts for the Reading. Regarding the writing, the less said the better.
I do not claim that my outputs will decrease with time, and if that sounds a threatening possibility, so be it. What can one do about a lunatic, other than keeping him in straight-jackets? And a circus needs its jokers too to keep the entertainment going.. (Smiles)
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Sent from my BlackBerry®
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Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
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"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein
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