A nation throughout existence requires periods of utter disconnect in the trajectory of its life. When a nation raises citizens who know how to entertain themselves beyond a screen, it is raising rebels. Citizens who can think their own thoughts, develop their own ideas and above all know their own mind. Reading is an act of rebellion in a world that is increasing chaotic. In times like such, a nation must raise individuals who must be willing to disappear, become unavailable and unreachable. A nation witness’s growth in this period of isolation, provided that it strives to return sharper and better equipped with the strength of organic ideas. It must strive to develop individuals of taste who continue to read till their spines bend.
A nation through cultivation of the reading habit creates individuals who think globally and act locally. They absorb perspectives through books and keep themselves curious through the covers of these creatures. Men and women who guard their mornings with their books, who believe in the devotion to books. Such a nation encourages its citizens to choose stability in their readings but at the same time acknowledges people who are not afraid to read boldly. People who spend their nights with wild stories and silent tragedies. A nation that teaches its citizens to give away their books and ideas with generosity and to understand the pain of letting go of your cherished possessions and characters in life.
We must bring forth, the tale of this nation which accumulates knowledge, tests it through the prism of their rational minds and changing times. A nation which strives for depth in its ideas. It is a nation which realizes its identity every time it picks up a new book as if it is taking notes of its own wandering. A nation which helps its citizens to travel into the annals of history with the aid of books. Its citizens are although gentle with the paperbacks but they spend their time alone with the hardcovers. They are students of the many worlds through these books. We have found them reciting poetry in the evenings. Napoleon said;
“Show me a family of readers and I shall show you people who move the world.”
Napoleon
Here to the irony of our fates, we are destined to preach you about this “Nation of Readers”.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all miseries of the life. A nation that finds books to be its quietest and the most constant of friends shall reap the wisest of counsellors. Reading is essential for a nation that seeks to rise above the ordinary. We have normalized overconsumption and are constantly trying to fill the void. Books are offering us salvation and giving us a chance to redeem ourselves as a nation. Some believe, that’s how it is with books, they are never in a hurry, they will wait for you until you’re ready. A book becomes an axe for the frozen sea of intellect within a nation. The most dangerous nations are often the ones which nurture the quietest readers in their citizenry, their people sit with books in hand, re-writing the world in their heads.
Although reading is passive but for this nation, real growth starts when it grabs the idea, deconstructs it on a paper, and makes it work in their own world. The citizens of this nation have their nightstands filled with books. Perhaps they have understood this truth that accessibility beats discipline. Similarly, book collecting is a separate obsession for them, an occupation, perhaps a disease, an addiction, some fascination, an absurdity, or even fate. It is not a hobby; they must do it. For them it’s a feeling of ecstasy to get rid of every screen and this noise to go somewhere where they can just read. They believe in the compound effect of reading. A single book may not matter for them but a hundred books transforms their perspective altogether.
We have realized that for them reading is an act of civilization, it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the raw material of their minds and build castles of possibilities. Individuals of this nation are insanely obsessed with reading more books. They continuously read to escape reality and to understand it at the same time. They read to challenge what they have always believed to be the truth, to think better, to write better and to argue better. The yearning to know themselves as individuals and as a nation at large compels them to read more. They believe in this maxim
“A single book can transform your brain”.
Reading has changed their lives. Reading helped them escape the confines of a school and pursue their own education, through characters – the saints and the sinner- real or imagined, reading showed them how to be better human beings. They may linger on a part of a book for weeks and suddenly on a random night read through till the very end. At times for them the art of not reading is also an important one. It consists in not taking interest in whatever maybe engaging the general public at any particular time. When some political pamphlets, novel or poem is making great commotion throughout the world, they remember the golden rule that he who writes for fools, finds a large audience. We can write volumes about the citizens of this wonderful nation but the single sight which remained with us was when a book ends, its citizens just sit there mourning a world that never existed.
As we were strolling through the streets of this strange a nation reflecting at their citizens, each one of them indulged in a world of his own, perhaps with countless questions irritating their hearts. In this tranquillity, our hearts whispered a similar question to us. Perhaps, that’s the beauty of man, he may conquer all the books but lose to a single question whispered by his own mind. We were then contemplating the prospects of a similar reading culture in Pakistan when we stumbled outside a bookstore, upon an old man with a bent spine. Isn’t it strange that we always find the simplest answers for the most chaotic questions of life? The old man simply with a smile said “If you want to be a reader, then read”. Perhaps, readers recognize the psychology, pride, resentment, the refusal to surrender when the battle is being lost.