Pandemic Reading by Keerthana Jagadeesh
It was June, we had just come out of the lockdown and my first trip out of the house, after those two fear soaked months was to Blossoms, the book shop on Church Street. I asked for a copy of The Man Without Qualities like I was asking for a loaf of bread at the kaka shop. Just give it to me already, I muttered. The shop guy went off into their tall teetering stacks to look for it like some kind of hunter-gatherer. This old, white haired Kannadiga uncle appeared near me, shuffling books around on the shelves. He’s usually rearranging all the books in Blossoms so that nobody finds anything they’re looking for. And he can be overheard telling college students, ‘To you, even Murakami is the classics!’ Before I knew of his snappy ways, I asked him where I could find this Joyce book. He looked me up and down and asked, ‘You want to read Joyce?’ What a fuckin’ thatha this Kannadiga uncle is, hanging around like he’s read every book in the store.
The shop guy returned, slapping the Man Without Qualities on the counter victoriously, all of its thousand-plus pages. The Kannadiga uncle cleared his throat loudly when he saw the book cover and he scrutinized me as I paid for it and slipped it into my bag. How embarrassed I was of my ambitions, especially my reading ambitions. As I exited the store, I overheard the uncle telling somebody cheerfully, ‘I don’t want to discourage them you see…but young people need to know that they’ll be dead before they read everything they mean to read.’
At home, I clutched the fat book to my chest, held it up to my mouth like a second mask, made it don my spectacles like it was a mannequin, carried it from one room to another, used it as a coaster, took it up to the terrace like it was a cat and even used it to kill a cockroach. If I did read it, I picked a page at random: ah page 656! Isolated sentences jumped out at me with any meaning I wished to ascribe to them: “Whoever could describe it would be a great artist — no, a pornographer!” I was dancing around the edges of the book, trying to enter it through underhanded means.
In the past, like way, way back in the past, I read books like I was destroying a luscious sheet of bubble wrap. Pop pop pop done done done. My ferocious reading pace and unshakeable attention span — though wasted considerably on Biology exams — were a constant source of pleasure for me. Pleasure from an apt word, a fine sentence, a beautiful image, life-like novels — all that is gone. My quick-footed reading that moved curiously from one sentence to the next has left me with just this vague pleasure in being close to books. It’s the strangest feeling — like missing a friend because you found her forgotten sweater in your room. These days it’s difficult to read even a tiny Rupi Kaur poem on the internet without checking my phone, falling asleep or simply daydreaming.
And while (not) reading this book, the old man at Blossoms hovered in my room, mucking around my things and making himself at home. That fuzzy white hair, the bump on his forehead, his clumsy walk, the formal grey pants worn like pyjamas — I came to envy him for his old age, for the way he moved around books like he knew them well. I imagined he came from a home where everything was perfectly arranged. Maybe there was cane furniture in the living room. Perhaps he studied law, perhaps in his day he got into fisticuffs with Guha over a discussion about the classics. Perhaps he had a wife and she died in childbirth. And their baby died as well. And that’s why he kept busy in bookstores? I don’t know why, but I made the old man suffer incredible tragedies. Not only did he lose his first wife, his second and third wives would also commit suicide.
I went back to Blossoms. After years of making that stupid joke — “what is a Noam Chomsky?” — there I was, briskly asking for his complete works. Once again, the shop guy went off into the dusty, mesmerizing stacks that seemed to stretch out like land. As I waited, I flipped through those jewel coloured pocket sized books they keep around the billing counter — those books that are no more than knick-knacks aimed at people like me who don’t read but would like to carry a book like it’s a cute change-purse rattling with bright coins. Bookstores barely count as businesses but when I know I’m the customer or the “target market”, I do the opposite of the “predicted” behaviour just to confuse whatever business might be surveying me. Why? Perhaps to feel like I was unknowable? Perhaps to not know myself the way businesses knew me?
Just then, I saw that old Kannadiga uncle shuffling down the aisle. He asked me roughly what I wanted. He wore two masks and a face shield and looked like a model citizen. Waiting for a book, I said. Which one? he asked. None of your business, I replied. Surly lipped, he stood by the counter waiting with me. The shop guy returned with the complete Chomsky and made a bill for it. The uncle laughed a short joyous bark and when I turned to give him a withering look, he said, ‘I suggest, don’t read that book now. You’ll feel that things are worse than they are.’ I ignored him, paid for my book and left the store. I was not in the mood to entertain the advice of old Kannadiga uncles.
I went home with that big, heavy book. Safe to say that it was all the Chomsky I could Chomsky with and Chomsky to. I soon realized that if I said Chomsky enough times in a conversation, it started to sound sexual.
Here’s what I got from it:
America — what a scam
intelligence — narrowly defined
radical left — grassroots
important figures in history — not exactly the turning points we think they are.
I struggled to read barely ten pages. I was too distracted by disembodied hands cooking American dinners on YouTube. That old Kannadiga uncle had said that I would feel like things were worse than they were if I read Chomsky right now. I could give a flying Chomsky about the hell-hole the world has always been because I was too preoccupied with my shame, my slowly rising tower of shame. Two books bought, somewhat ostentatiously and they lay there on my table, unread. When visiting friends saw my pile and asked with an interested look if I had finished them, I snapped — no — and changed the subject like it was something too personal for me to talk about. When a friend suggested I read something lighter, shorter, maybe a ripping Mills & Boon, I privately judged her for those stupid recommendations and told her with great swagger that as a teenager, I would’ve torn through these big books in a week. She didn’t say anything after that. In fact, she stopped talking to me about books altogether.
I don’t know when I became so touchy about all this. To lose my ability to read books and watch my attention — my precious attention — slip through my fingers seemed like the worst kind of self-betrayal. I admit this loss had its origins well before this past year, in all the years that led up to and cumulated into this congealed one. But what had previously been a benign thing, as simple as losing an earring, became in the past year a giant tarantula of a personal failure, a private shame, crawling all over me and sleeping under my skin. As self-flagellation, I set myself to read these interminable books that I knew I would fail to read.
I went back to Blossoms again because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Books covered every single surface — floors, corners, stairs, shelves, tables. The shop guy was off doing inventory so I stood there waiting, immobilized by reverence for all those words and all that life crammed into that bookstore. Others were browsing, kneeling on the floor and reaching for the uppermost shelves. Those tall, creaking aisles loomed ahead with no end. Those words, those woods. It seemed like some great kingdom.
That Kannadiga uncle appeared like he always did, out of the blue. Back so soon? he asked me. I acted like I hadn’t heard him. Finished with the last two books you bought? he asked. Surly lipped — no, I replied. He laughed softly. Everything is not in here, he said, pointing to the book shelves and shaking his head patronizingly. Don’t need you to tell me that, I said. This is not a temple, you know, he said. And you’re no priest, I snapped. I have a daughter about your age, he said. I have a thatha about your age, I said, without looking at him. She’s not interested in books like me, he said. You’re not interested in books, you’re just always here, I said. I used to read like my ass was on fire, he said, it was the one thing I knew about myself and the world. The ends of his mouth sagged.
So did I, I said. But you can still read if you want, you just don’t want to, he accused me, raising his hands in irritation. I do want to, very much, I replied. Then why don’t you go inside, look around, he suggested. Those tall stacks bore down on me from all sides and my heart sank, tarantulas of shame and loss ran amok in my blood. Come on in, he urged me. I took a step forward into an aisle, unsure of what I was looking for. Go on, pick up a book, he said. On every side, walls of books threatened their collapse and my mind seized up at the prospect of all that would remain unreachable to me. I turned and ran outside, fleeing from the calls of the old Kannadiga uncle and what felt like the weight of the world or more likely, the weight of my own ambitions.
This essay is part of a quarterly art and design print newspaper called The Irregular Times. To subscribe to our newspaper, visit us here.
