Reading Re-kindled

Reading has been my forte since I was little. It is a passion which I have carried since then. I believe ideas can change the world which stands true no matter whichever field we are in and the way ideas reach us is when we read. Those days, parchment was inked with great ideas and expressions which made both the expresser and the expression famous. Today, the parchment has been replaced by the ‘screen’. Monitors, tablet screens, smartphones, and of course the iPad and all the other gadgets. Reading has been redefined. Literature has found a new platform where ideas are now generated to a wide audience. Instead of being inked on paper, they are etched on screen. The wide network and the innovative technology has altered the mode of expression and also brought new genres into the field of literature.

                Flash fiction or the shorter story as I call it has made its presence felt. These stories are easier to share on the social networking sites and hence are preferred. Precision is being appreciated and words have become short.  Earlier I used to have a shelf full of books, (still do). But now, I can carry my own library with me on my amazon kindle and it makes reading more fun. My favourite authors and their works stay with me always. Technology has redefined reading to a large extent. Instant knowledge is provided anywhere, anytime. Previously it was “did you read this book?” now it is “don’t they have an eBook?”

 

To this day, I still love books the real ones, which reassure you of originality of ideas and which reassure you of the fact that what they contain is the property of the writer. This sense of originality is what is uncertain in the virtual world. At a point the idea becomes more important than the person whose brainchild it is. This amounts to disrespect and intellectual theft which is the crime of the virtual world. There is a reason it is called the web I guess. The threads are so intricately woven that sometimes there is no way to the truth. Literature on any subject can be tampered with.

At the end of the day, books and eBooks are equally loved. The fact that a large part of the reading public to this day, chooses parchment over the onscreen document says something. Change is a constant, but not a replacement. In the end I would say, I now realize as long as I love reading and get the original versions, reading will be my forte in both the worlds, i.e. in both the real and the virtual world. TS Eliot said that what we read defines what we are. And in the present times technology is a part of our lives and defines us.

rachana allamraju

a sailing ship in search of a shore to anchor.

Leave a Reply