In Search of Stupidity: (De-Intellectualizing Myself)

Having born and brought up in a small town, and being the son of an honest lawyer (yes, though it sounds oxymoron or a joke, such species, however rare, do exist!), the only luxury we could afford (and desired) were books.So from very early days, we read. (There was, of course, another luxury: a walk in the evening with my father that often ended at the home of Maniram Dewan, a lawyer named N. Ahmed, whom we called by this moniker. I had a permit to go everywhere including the spot where his wife did her daily namaaz, and I knew quite a few secrets, real or imaginary, of his daughters, though I did not understand what those secrets mean (which were, by all means, quite innocent information, to keep the records straight). Some other times, I went with him to the market and so I knew each spot where he would stop and chat with his evening friends over cups of tea and snacks.)

I knew some of his tea friends and they knew me. Half of the town was his friends beginning with Mubarak, the neighborhood elephant driver, who used to bring a filtered cigarette for him, to the District Judicial Magistrate, who would explain to me why a judiciary-related job was nore satisfying than an executive one. I would know M. Dutta, a very honest magistrate, who inspite of being single, had to borrow money from his home, because he blew up most of his salary on books. As my mother would often lament, if my father went to buy a couple of items from the market at 6-00 PM, he would return only at maybe 9-00 PM, loaded with half a dozen cups of tea and a lot of stories and jokes.

However, it was him who encouraged us to read. At one point of time, we used to purchase 17 magazines each month. There was absolutely no restriction as to what to read and what not. We bought everything: from sleezy, detective magazines to film magazines to heavy, serious literary periodicals, and all of us read all of them, without ever raising the question of impropierity of the things contained. In that way, I had a very liberal upbringing (we also had another set of luxury: a bunch of domestic animals: cows, goats, ducks, pigeons, each with its own human name, and all of who were treated as family memebers, and a cat who ruled the home!). Actually, almost all my life, I always bnought a book in each city I visited.That is a holy ritual to me, in a sense.

I slowly started to getting attracted towards philosophy and psychology during my early teens, after I discovered a textbook on philosophy that my father had studied as a part of his B.A., which he did in Philosophy and Economics. By the time I would finish my undergraduate, I was quite capable of misinterpreting many a thing said by some renowned philosophers and I would often quote (or misquote) them. But I would continue to think that I learned a lot about philosophy.

Then when I started talking to HKN in Delhi, he told me that reading good novels actually gives much more information and insight about foreign, distant societies rather than trying to gain such knowledge by reading serious books. He suggested to me that Milan Kundera and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were two good authors to begin the journey with. I would remember his words, and though I often planned to buy the books by Kundera, I won't actually act upon his words until January, 1999.

Then a series of unfortunate events in my life during 1997-1998 pushed me to solitude, and I would decide to live away from everyone and indulge in only reading. It was a defense mechanism, but not only did it work out, but also it gave me the opportunity to read a lot of good books. I'm, in a way, thankful to all the people who deserted me and turned their back on me, because that was the truning point in my life, the point at which I seriously transitioned from Philosophy to Literature.

After reading a series of books quite voraciously, I felt really inadequate about my level of understanding. I felt that I was not smart enough to go to the depth of the books, and wrote to HKN asking if he too felt the same way. I don't remember what he said, but I remembered that he replied, and in each of the mail, I misspelled "inadequacy" as "inadequecy".

I would move out of India in 2001, and would meet SdV. It was he who would inroduce me to Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin, a vulgar version of Pratchett. I would resist, but then would give up. SdV would tell me how Dr.O, the torch-beating intellect of the group, had reacted equally negatively first, but later got convered to Terry. (When Dr. O. would leave after 6 months, SdV and I would go shopping for hid farewell gifts, and would gift him with a couple of Terry Pratchett books, among other things).

It would take me a year and half to find that it was Douglas Adams, whose style and rhythm both Pratchett and Ranking copied; but that is a personal opinion. Nevertheless, it was SdV, who made me read things I had detasted and considered "pulp"; it was he who made me watch movies such as Monty Pythin, which I would have considered junk. But thanks to his infleunce, my de-intellctualization had begun without my knowledge, and I would convert to a man, who now eagerly waits for Mad TV and enjoys movies such as "Soul Plane" or "Rush Hour II".

I still read serious stuff, I still watch serious movies and love them; but I no longer hold any negative feelings ot opinions reganring light, popular, pulp things.