All the people who know me, know that I read. I am always reading some book or the other, and the only times you’ll catch me not reading is during my exams. At this point, it’s an inevitable part of my personality and because of this, at times people out of small talk, disgust or genuine curiosity ask me ‘Why do you read?’ and I never have an answer to that. I just brush it off by saying ‘I like to.’ and move on. There isn’t any other response my brain can articulate because I just get so stumped by the question every time. It gets me thinking ‘Why do I read?’. What makes me pick up compressed dead trees with blobs of ink on them? Why is it reading and not something else?
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My response
The best my brain could come up with is curiosity; a very basic and generic answer. And it’s true. I am always up to learning new stuff and trivia.
I aspire to be disgustingly well-read and ‘over-educated’. Whenever I learn about something, I try to find a book with a premise built around it so that I can understand it better.
This is because As a reader when I read, I’m not just reading but living a new experience. I have seen multiple combinations of different facets of life and so many places through books.
I have lived so many lives as a reader. I’ve been a guilty Afghan Refugee, a powerful black journalist, a controversial Hollywood star, a mystic Sufi poet, a mad wife, an insane scientist and so much more. I’ve been a man and I’ve been a woman. I’ve been young like life and I’ve been old like death. I’ve felt excruciatingly numbed and I’ve felt nauseatingly overwhelmed.
All of this with just reading books. And once you’ve experienced that, you want to learn more. Know more. Gain more. See more.
Maybe I read because I want to experience life because when you’re a reader, you’re not just a reader but you’re also a traveller. A traveller through continents, a traveller through time, a traveller through space, a traveller through different lives. At this point, It’s not just living life but the quest to find different lives on the way to heal and get healed.
One of the feelings that a reader experiences is realizing that there are millions and millions of books in the world and as a reader I can barely read any of them, in my lifetime.
As depressing as it sounds, that realization shifted something in me. I feel so much more excited about my life now. There is more to it than just a good score, a better home or a great life. I always feel that I have wasted my life, when I haven’t lived it yet, and books act as a reminder that there is so much more of it to see. When you realise the enormity of pages that you're yet to dive into, you see the reflection of the world, the expanse it covers and the magnitude we can only imagine in numbers.
In this world, there are so many books to read, so many places to see, multiple languages to learn, many cuisines to try, cultures to experience, a hundred emotions to feel, and people to love and feel for with all my being. And that’s just so EXCITING. I’ll have to start now to live the most of it and collect little pieces of life from all around the world, whether from pages or different coloured skies, to make mine. I’ll never have a day in my life where I’ll wake up feeling purposeless, questioning my existence. Even if I wasn’t born to explore the crevices of this universe, I’ll fight to make it my fate because once you’ve been corrupted with the expanse and the diversity of the world, you want more of it like how a filthy businessman wants money.
But I’ll be honest. As much as I love this theory, as much as I want to believe in it that this is the primary reason I read, it’s not. All this curiosity, all the different lives I lived, the urge to experience life and all the feelings that I’ve felt for reading and exploring life aren’t the REASON I read but the EFFECT of reading.
There are days when I come back home tired, down and depressed and all I can think of is to crash into bed under my covers and read. To feel the woody pages on my fingertips and to be lost in some world, away from where I am. Even when I don’t have the time to read during exam weeks or I’m just not okay or I don’t have the energy to read, I stumble near my books and pick out my favourites and read back the lines I’ve liked, all the notes I’ve written, to remember how it felt like reading the book. It’s the same feeling as reminiscing with your friends about the good old times. There are times when I find myself staring at my shelf looking at my books, like I’m having a silent conversation with them. The rustling of pages in the wind sounds like silent ‘it will be okay’s to my ear and consolations to my wretched heart.
And none of these feelings come from curiosity but from the yearning to escape and mostly to feel okay.
Sometimes I feel like I’m falling into an abyss of nothingness and I can’t see anything. I am constantly in a state of terror because I have no idea when my body will hit the ground and shatter in oblivion. All that I have around me is darkness with no spec of light to spare.
Sometimes I feel that in life I am like a kid on the beach, who’s watching the sand castle she built, getting washed away in the arms of the sea gods, each particle being swept away, each wave hurting her pride. All she can do is sit and watch its demise.
And it isn’t that books show me the way through the abyss or pull me out of the void. Books don’t help me build my sand castle back or fight the sea risking its life. Books don’t listen to my story. Books don’t know my isolating grief or my secrets inside.
But a book has accompanied me in the void, whispering in my ears, ‘You’re not falling in a void, but floating in your mind. You’re not going to fall, you are very alive. A book has sat down beside me at the beach looking at the blue sea and the purple sky, making the silence comfortable and assuring, saying I’ll be alright. A book has helped me find my story in its pages, making me feel heard and sympathized. A book has talked about my grief and assured me that I am not the bad apple in humankind. A book has helped me feel emotions when I was numbed with grief. A book has helped me feel alive when I felt the world caving in me. A book has said the right words, at the right time. A book has made me feel very human, and not like a monster who needs to die.
A book has made me feel okay in ways that humans haven't, it has made me comfortable in ways that my friends haven't, it has made me feel understood in ways that my fellow adults haven't, and I do not know how sad it sounds, but it's true. If there's any way in my life, I've felt that I’ll be okay, most of the times, I’ve felt it when I've had a book in my hand.
So why do I read you ask,
I read books, to escape, to feel okay, to feel human and most importantly, to feel alive.
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