Don’t swallow everything, at least read ‘Between the Lines’…!
Unfortunately with the rapid growth of electronic technology the reading habit, particularly among the young is declining at an alarming rate and the decline in language skills, especially writing skills, is being reflected at all levels of society.
Serge Schmemann has said, the art of reading between the lines is as old as manipulated information.
Those who are fond of reading are so much involved in the characters of the story becoming so real, engrossed that you actually start to care about not only what happened to them at the end rather every moment. The reading gives you an opportunity to sometime laugh or cry according to the situation in the story and often when someone is sitting beside you and stare at you thing that you are an outrageous, foolish or lunatic.
In fact, reading habit for the sake of reading is dying its own death. There could be the number of reasons but a major one is the introduction of social media. No one has time to read the lengthy notes, stories and wants to know the end of each story with the blink of the eye.
The young generation is divided into two categories – one, who is really interested to acquire the academic qualification to join the competitions to get a suitable job to enjoy the rest of life and second, who are least bothered about the future. Such category of youth had already gone for the purchase of a novel, book or magazine of their taste.
The foremost reason behind this scenario is that the cost of the books is so high being out of the reach of the common man and thus decline in the reading habit.
I recollect an incident which my father told me that when he read the newspaper after borrowing from co-passenger, he refused to take back with an advice without any hesitation that if you have so much passion of reading habit, do read it by purchasing yourself. Since then our house is getting four newspapers and I have developed the habit of purchasing at least one book a month and reading not for bettering myself hut for the joy and keeping busy.
The book which is considered as a garden that can be taken along with you anywhere is confined to the shelves of the college, school libraries. Even the student’s visit to the library has gone considerably.
Frankly speaking, as said at the beginning, the reading habit is declining what to say of a book or novel even the newspapers. No one is interested to go through into the details of the news unless you are interested otherwise the majority of the readers go by the headline or second headline or at the most the introductory paragraph.
Really, I don’t want to preach or stress the readers of this write-up but I do believe that every child should inculcate the habit of enjoying a good read if we miss it in our childhood, we treat to make up for it in our adult lives.
What I feel is that if the people are not having the habit of reading the book on the particular topic of his interest, at least they may not swallow everything but must read the ‘between the lines’ or in the box known as the bottom line of the news to keep themselves updated as to what has happened around the world.
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HARISH MONGA DIDO – email: harishmongadido@gmail.com 9815087017
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