Of good people -- and good books
09 Jun 2020 11:53:38
The revered leader, Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak, in company of books.
By Vijay Phanshikar :
Acchhi kitaben aur acchhe log ...!
(Good people and good books)
Turant samaz mein nahin aate,
(Can’t be understood immediately)
Pahale unhe acchhese padhnaa padtaa hai!
(They first need to be read thoroughly!)
-- Author Unascertained
Prose
NOTHING can be truer than this! Each word weighs in gold! Each word makes a terrific sense! For, good people and good books are truly like this -- beyond easy comprehension, too deep to be understood by the face value. And this is not an unnecessarily poetic expression; anybody can understand how complex, how tough it is to understand good people or good books. Both of those need to be read thoroughly before one can say that one understands those. But both of those -- good people and good books -- have an unspoken magnetism of their own. Just at first sight, they attract others towards them. Their faces or their eyes or their voice or their smile or their serious countenance make a different impression on others. Most people sense that some people are different -- good -- from others.
On many occasions, these people do not speak a word, or communicate with you in any manner. Yet, they have a magnetic quality -- beyond words. In case of books, too, one can have a similar unspoken sense of attraction. One senses the difference at first sight, thanks to the title, or to the cover-design or even the size, no matter how small or how big, how thin or how thick. Some books even have lost their cover with passage of time. Yet, an unspoken attraction works and one’s eye gets fixated on those personages in paper. Beyond that initial magnetism, such people and such books need a subsequent serious reading. One needs to unpeel the layers that surround their core, their substance, their quality. And that does not have to be just a superficial, cursory reading -- of persons or books.
There has be a deep, deliberate, determined reading -- of the persons and their moods and their ways and means, manners and methods. And of books, too -- of their pages and chapters and lines and words and hidden meanings and spiritual spaces between lines. That requires patience and persistence -- and in some cases prayers as well! These applications enable you to understand good people in their trueness, and good books in their fullness. And despite all that, on more occasions than not, one does not really get to understand good people in completeness and thoroughness.
One also may take countless readings of good books so as to be able to go deep down to their crux or core and character. Many times, each attempt to understand a good person unravels something new one has not fathomed before; or a new, silent dimension of a thought that a good -- or great -- book may contain and that one had not come across in the mental scan. Deep, deliberate, determined reading -- of good people or good books -- thus becomes an imperative in the search of something sensible, credible -- and even divine in import. That’s how human race has progressed -- through good people and good books!