Sunday, 20 August 2006

• Currently Reading The Hobbit By J.R.R. Tolkien see related

  Words

  Can read this book again and again........when I first read it I must have been 9 or 10, now I'm 22 and it can still captivate me....since I have first read The Hobbit I have read much more (nowhere as much as I would have liked)..but this was the first book that took me completely away from the world I knew and immersed me in a fantastical one complete in every detail and since then I have never lost the desire to go back again and again.

  There are some books that will stay with me forever and I can pick up and read and re-read at anytime.....some have had me in splits making me stop after every couple of lines because I was laughing to hard to read, and others that touch you and bring out emotions without you realizing they have. it was this ability of books to stir such strong emotions, to rouse the mind and soul....to make one feel fear, joy, love, hate, instill courage and forge an everlasting bond with those that read the words that made me realize how strong words are.

  There are many cliches that are thrown around...."the pen is mightier than the sword", "words can move mountains"....etc, etc.......they are cliches and we hear them and ignore them. after all who can take it seriously after hearing it so many times, especially when all the so called journalism around us only shows us how words can be misused. but like all cliches once upon a time these thoughts were new, they weren't used to describe anything from classics to advertisements on the back of cereal boxes. words when in the hands of the skilled can cause wars or mend fences. the skilled author can use words to tell you the desires of his heart and mind and make you feel they are your own. I only started to realize the real impact of words in college and now during my post grad....in college I had a English literature as one of my papers and one of the first things I was introduced to was the romantic poets. no matter what they wrote about one thing was always there, love for the natural world around, the desire to escape or transcend the real world of people and the ability to make you feel their love for beauty, their anguish, their fears and dreams. they could convince you to leave all behind in search for beauty....that was what hit me at the time the beauty of words.......normal words which I used everyday, took for granted.....in their hands they became more beautiful than even the original things they were describing, for they poured themselves into it. they could critique society or describe a flower and I would sit captivated while their images sprang up around me and the world I knew faded away...I mean I have seen daffodils or thought I had until I read Wordsworth's ode to them and saw them through his eyes....how can someone see so much even in the most beautiful flower?

  I passed out of college (somehow) graduating in eco not lit, fortunately or unfortunately I'm still not sure.....the writing bug was in me though. the seed was planted in school when I read the likes of Tolkien and Roald Dahl and others. then even more in college....but I could never express my feelings the way they could and poetry was definitely beyond me. I felt I had a lot to say but never could, I can blab about inane things for hours but ask me to write and I can never put on paper what I think I am thinking......that's the problem I guess I never know what to write about. I have permanent writers block even before I have written anything (worth reading that is). that's one of the reasons I started this blog, thinking that writing normal things in my life would help get me writing......but after a few posts when I was frustrated I again felt the familiar choking, I just couldn't write....even this post was just intended to be about one of my favourite books but I guess my love for books and words has temporarily freed my hands :)

  Well I'm digressing (actually this whole post is a digression)....was telling you about words. well I left college and after a few months of not knowing what I was doing (during which I happened upon a book sale where I could buy books for as little as 10-20 rupees.......heaven!) I landed up in a post grad course totally by mistake and unrelated to anything I had ever done before...international relations. I had no idea what to expect and I have to admit my reading has gone down after I joined (never enjoyed ref books) but it did expose a whole new aspects of words to me.....their raw power. every revolution in the history of man has had scholars, theorists, writers, poets who before even the faintest tremors were felt, spoke to the people, moved them, gave birth to ideologies which formed the backbones of future movements, and later they justified even the most extreme acts of the revolutionaries.........be it the French revolution or the Russian, the Indian freedom struggle or the fight against Apartheid....can you imagine the French revolution without "freedom, equality and fraternity" or our own freedom struggle without "inqualab zindabad", "quit India" or "tum mujhe khoon do...."? these words become synonymous with the struggles and before they became slogans there were people writing about them.....the most powerful tool any revolution has is its printing press from where all the pamphlets carrying their ideologies are spread to the people. Lenin while hiding underground wrote many pamphlets which became the driving forces of the Russian revolution and later the Soviet Union and he was not the only one there was a whole debate going on through the written word on the best way to overthrow the Czar right under his nose.....if you ever have a chance you should look up the emergence of the printing press and how it played an irreplaceable part in the forming and uniting of nations. even the second world war the bloodiest of all wars was fought on the basis of ideology...and both sides had their scribes busy at spreading their version and world view. it is hard to find an American book at the time which does not spread their propaganda be it fiction or academic (and most books especially academic ones seem to be published in the US)

  I always used to wonder what ideology was or why people gave so much importance to theory......having doctors as parents one tends to be used to a more practical outlook....but now I see that a theory can change the course of history......people still talk of Plato and Aristotle....Machiville and Kautalya still inspire administrators.....Marx has people fighting till now over what he actually meant and Gandhi convinced millions of people all over the world to turn the other cheek...can you imagine standing by while someone slaps you in the face? words can make people immortal.......they are everlasting and have the magical ability to make their writers live on through them.

  I hope someday I will be able to put to paper what I think I am thinking.......I don't want immortality or people to remember me (don't mind if it happens though). I definitely don't want to move people to war......but I would like to get my thoughts out of me and voice them to others...to be able to work wit words and mold them, to mix them and conjure out of them vivid and beautiful pictures.....too much to ask maybe......but till then I have this blog to ramble on, comfortable that no one is reading and even if they do they wont take it seriously.

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