Friday, January 13, 2012

Read to me...





















In the Iranian film 'Blackboards' by Samira Makhmalbaf, the scene you remember the most is of an old Kurdish shepherd grazing his sheep high up in the mountains, stopping the teacher and asking him if he can read a letter for him. He slowly pulls out a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket. His face opening up in a smile hearing that his son is doing well though he cannot visit him now. A face still smiling when the teacher continues on his way, suspecting the truth, that the son is perhaps in jail, like so many other young men from this region. (But kindness, more important than truth...)

You read about postmen in the Himalayas who walk long distances, climb up and down hills, cross rivers, to carry letters to remote villages. How they also serve as the reader and writer of letters to people there, and are much awaited, like family. A job you would’ve loved to do, a role you would’ve loved to play? Long moments of walking alone, and then connection and meaning, and words, and then a walking alone again. A pendulum of perfect balance.

The Reader’ was heartbreaking because it was all about reading and being read to. You walked around wounded for a long time after that.

So great was your need to read to someone once upon a time that you walk into an Old Age home one day, and ask the Mother Superior whether any of the inmates there would like to be read to. She says yes, but then they try not to let them interact too much with young people because that would make them remember the children who abandoned them a long time ago, and the carefully constructed living-in-the-present would come apart in mindless, endless grief.

While you are talking to her, an old man comes in to ask if his son’s money order has come. His son hasn’t sent anything in years, nor bothered to come to see his father or call him or write to him. But this is a ritual the old man follows every day to retain what is left of his 'sanity', and the kind nuns indulge him.

You walk out, old, abandoned and bent, you do not go around offering your reading anymore. You remember the teachers in 'Blackboards', traveling from place to place with knowledge that no one wants to learn. What is worse, having riches that no one wants, or having nothing to give?

And then one morning, you get "read to" by your three-year-old niece, and a whole new dimension of reading opens up before you :) 

You remember those sessions with storytellers/readers, and how you were in tears every single time even though the stories were of joy and belonging. You remember feeling that you were reliving a sacred ceremony from a very distant past. That if you reached out, a circle would form, and you would be part of it...

You would like to think that reading to another, is yet another form of giving. Listening, a gracious act of receiving. And the whole event, an ancient ritual of connection....

6 comments:

  1. Asha, you've opened so many memory doors by writing this wonderful piece. My mother was a great believer and lover of 'bedtime' stories and us three kids were avid listeners. Unlike many, I suspect, she would read three different stories to suit our ages and never tried to skimp by finding the common denominator.

    When my son was just a day old, my brother arrived in to see us. His present was a bundle of books and as he gave me a peck on the cheek and held my son's little hand, he just said, 'It's never too early to introduce the arts.' It isn't. I read those books to my son and many, many more until he got the hang of reading himself.

    I would say it's never too late to be read to either. I had the pleasure of reading poetry to both my parents in their final months, days and hours. When it seemed that both had gone beyond the point of being able to communicate, they would chime in with lines of poetry that had remained etched in their memories. At times, for example, thinking that my father was fast asleep and that I was reading aloud to myself, I would hear him join me in lines like:

    I remember, I remember
    The roses red and white,
    The violets and the lily cups-
    Those flowers made of light!
    The lilacs .....

    (Thomas Hood)

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  2. This is wonderfully writen Asha. I love to be read to. Once it got me into a terrible situation, but i was young, only my parents and people who loved me read to me, and i did not expect anything different. Unfortunately it was very different. But that has not lessened my love of stories, nor how good I feel when someone reads to me. For all the rest of my life I have experienced being read to as an act of love that i gratefully receive. I have not considered this before, but perhaps I love being read to because it erases, or heals, or counterbalances that long ago and violent betrayal. Words are sacred pieces of the ancient vessel of human existence and Yes, you are so right Asha, stories do embrace us and bring us into the circle.

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  3. Hey Asha,

    you write BEAUTIFULLY! the line, "What is worse, having riches that no one wants, or having nothing to give?" is guttingly good.

    I really do look forward to your posts.

    warmly
    arvind

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  4. Asha, what a beautiful beautiful piece! "Shakespeare in Love" had a scene involving reading. So did "Atonement". This reminds me of an impromptu storytelling session I did for a bunch of kids while the elders in the party were otherwise occupied. You should have heard the silence. They listened and imagined actively with me. Later, two of them took to reading. One of them is even pursuing literature. That makes me real happy, you know. Thank you! And absolutely love the pic. The composition is perfect.

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  5. I remember being read to, almost every bedtime, by my grandmother. Among all her grandchildren, I was her favorite, and being read by her was some of the best memories I have of her.

    Though, her storied were always Ramayan/Mahabharat (and she actually read from those books to me), and oft-repeated, I did not care. I made sure she did not skip any part when any story was retold. There was a period of time, when besides her, I was the most knowledgeable person in the family when it came to those epics - remembering every big/small characters and side-stories.

    Also, thanks to my parents, I had enough books to read while growing up. I was a fast reader, but they made sure I was never out of books. Fascinating books, Indian and foreign (a lot of Russian books with great stories and drawings).

    I could not have asked for a better childhood thanks to all of it - reading books myself and being read to by my grandmother. I miss her!

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  6. So profound! So beautiful! Building around the premise of reading, you have captured so many emotions. The Kurdish shepherd and the postman are going to stay with me.. for a long long while..

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