Feature

Pleasure of reading a good novel

Nabeela M.

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” Jane Austen-I had, to my greatest amusement, come across such a person recently.

She got me thinking, would we be who we are, if we didn't have these paperbound wonders to shape our lives in some way or be intertwined in our memories in some intrinsic way?

My mother would constantly quote to us lines from a Bangla novel, “Iti tomar Ma” by Sanjib Chattopadhyay. Laugh you may, or moan like I had in my early teens (the woman swore by it). It apparently had all the message a child may need from his or her mother. I still remember the book turning up in the oddest of places (imagine finding it in your secret stash of cookies underneath your bed!) until I threw up my hands in defeat, and read it. Now, every time I do, it reminds me of the time when I had her close by and the nifty little messages scattered throughout the book doesn't disappoint either.

While rifling through the library at my grandparents' place I had come across “The Diary of a young girl” by Anne Frank. At 13, finding a semi-autobiography certainly wasn't my true intent that day, but I'm glad I did. On that memorable afternoon, I had tea with Anne, cried with her in that annex, laughed with her, and even fell in love with Peter a bit. Maybe I wasn't old enough to appreciate all the nuances in the book, but it had certainly affected me, as it had, I'm sure, a million others. The girl who died before she could live. It had made me think of my mortality. A little.

The two best friends a girl can have Mills & Boon. I had, through these clever little paperbacks, lived a thousand lives in a million different places, suffered heartbreaks, fallen in love, survived intrigues and foiled villainous plans - All from my little window-seat. If that didn't act as a character building exercise, then, I don't what had - all before my 16th birthday too!

Next came “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran. No, I was not in search of intellectual stimulants. A tongue-in-cheek reference to the book made by my uncle (which I still don't understand) spurred me to read it. The beauty of this book would be that with age the meaning of the verses change and every time I open the well-thumbed pages, a new line jumps out at me.

Would I be who I am if I hadn't travelled with Neil Gaiman to his lands untouched by reality in “Stardust”, bitten my nails to the quick reading Nora Roberts and seen the universe through the words of Douglas Adams? If I hadn't read Satyajit Ray's and Humayun Ahmed's works in the dark using my cell phone and found similarities with their characters and people I knew, would I have appreciated my language quite as much? Probably not.

And, my current favorite Like a diamond in the sky by Shazia Omar. A fast paced, welcome addition to literature by a Bangladeshi author. It's a piece everyone can relate to at some level. Omar's work would remind you of the rebellious lyrics of songs last heard in the nineties. While maybe slightly exaggerated (it is a novel), the plot will deeply draw you into her work I felt like she gave rise to a new genre of writing in our country, and thank God for that!

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life - A canny George Sand quote. Maybe she knew what she was talking about. Why not grab one, (a novel, not a life!) and go exploring the fabric of yours? Be sure to turn off the world while you're at it!