Reading Habit

How many hours per day or per week do you spend on reading? Wait! before you start counting, because I am not talking about reading some course book or text that you have. I am not talking about reading the official documents nor am I talking about reading news on Radio or Television (if you are news reader). I am talking about reading those stuffs that are none of the compulsion and that make your brain size larger.

In western society, they read a lot. No matter if they are travelling or they are in toilet; they read and it seems as though they are enjoying reading it. They obviously are not reading those text books of Physics for entrance preparation or of Economics for their yearly examination. They will be reading novels, novels, magazines, articles or anything and there really don’t exist any type of age restrictions for it. An old man of 80’s or fresh teen of 16, they spend hours in reading and when it comes to us Nepalese we
are simply within the cage of our college or school studies. Student of management hardly bothers about the molecular formula of Hydrogen Sulphate and student of since hardly cares about the phases of business cycle. And no one actually bothers getting updated with the fact that if the entire property of Bill Gates was turned into the coin as a coin per dollar, it would be long enough to cover the distance from earth to moon for fourteen times. There definitely don’t exist any abnormal thing in it because we lack the proper source which presents these facts in interesting manner.

We are grown up in such an environment, where reading something extra has never been promoted. Not unless the family background is literary influenced, they bring Paulo Coelho’s edition to the home for their children to read. No one even thinks of gifting ‘Summer Love’ to their valentine on Valentine’s Day, and rarely do parents think about gifting their children ‘The Kite Runner’, on their birthday. Instead, movies are promoted. Parents take their child to movie when young, instead of making discussion over Palpasa Café’s story. Even, the various schemes or prizes would rather be free movie tickets instead of free book. Hence, book reading culture is rare case in Nepal after all.

However there are various stuffs that we can go through. Thoughts of those intellectuals are always good to read, and they are not costly either. We can get them in newspapers middle pages. But we rather prefer going through the entertainment pages and dedicate our time on reading horoscope. Ah! And yes, we love reading all the stupid stuffs in papers; because we want to stay updated whether Taylor Swift got her boy friend or not and if Messi went to new club or not. Talking locally, we really get excited if Sarukh Khan came up with the new movie, but we never care about the principles of
Maoist and hardly bother about the story of Mao while the westerns study how bikes are built, we get excited when we read that the new bike has launched. If The Beatles fan is made to talk about the band history, they rarely can explain in detail, but if they are said to sing the song, they certainly can make the fast forward thereby.

Newspaper obviously is not only the thing to read. There are novels to be gone through; however I face a tough time reading them. I always wanted to study novel but never had idea from which to start and when I get one and start reading, it really exceeds the limit of my boredom. Later, I came with the simple novels that did not stop me from turning the pages. However, I love reading the middle pages of papers where thoughts are expressed. It’s always good to read them; and I prefer studying non political expression, although political expressions make me feel okay, but makes me pessimistic.

We are really unaware regarding the thoughts presented by Maneka Gandhi, but we get excited when there appears something about porn stuffs coming into highlight. Let’s not reach up to there, almost all of my friends know that I write, but not a single one I found who really read my writings no matter
how much publicity I made of my blog. Now, I don’t mean that you need to carry the dictionary and start mugging up the words. Nor do I mean that you should run down to book store and purchase
piles of book to study. But search for your own interest which exists for sure. Oh! You might be interested in knowing the history of Hitler or maybe you want to go through a love story. Go! Get it! And study it in your free time, let that is at bathroom or at your sleeping time. Circulate after reading to your friends and broaden the narrow mind.



Published in The Rising Nepal's Friday supplement dated June  24 2013