Ruchi Joshi answers...

How Literature has shaped me?

How literature shaped me?

Have you ever thought of a thing that has influenced you? If no, then think first. Your thinking will increase your interest in reading How am I shaped by literature. If I say books have been an essential part of my life since my childhood then this might be because of my tempering the memory by myself only, of course - unknowingly. So, before I start bombarding on destruction of literature which has shaped me, let's roller coaster over a few questions.

What is life? Ever thought? I tried to think and the evolution of thought eventually led me to the realization that just thoughts are not life! Not only that, what is life, what is the reason for living and all the turmoil took me to the literature. What role did literature play in my life? If I think about it, I realize that I should first think about when literature became a part of my life. Literature has been ingrained in me in one way or another way since childhood through the home. Due to my grandmother's insistence, in Sanskrit literature, religious texts and certain texts were memorized by me while listening to them but I must confess, the literature that has dismantled my shape by fragmenting it is another literature cake.

The craft of literature has really done the masonry work in my life and who can do this masonry? Literature means that if the pages of a book that is considered rubbish are the masonry of my life, then instead of masonry, only words can be said to have shaped my life.

When I say I love to read, I wonder which novel will be the first to be read! If you don't count the short stories, the first novel may have been read in Std. 6 or 8 by Kundanika Kapadia's 'Seven Steps in the Sky'.

Literature has done the most important job of breaking the secrets of me. Not only that, I have broken the values of becoming Arjun and Hanuman. Social orthodox traditions that always give advice to stay at one's feet have given way to ideas even beyond the walls. Literature has raised the question in front of me that if I have to work hard to become both Hanuman and Arjuna myself, why should I not become Rama and Krishna itself? Why don't I crave someone else's freedom with my own freedom rather than learning to be submissive?

Raghuveer Chaudhary's 'Amrita' taught me the importance of freedom in life, yet there is something beyond freedom that would be more important to humans. Although Amrita's main question has been choice, at the end the question becomes secondary, because when freedom arises to take someone's life, when the choice is ready to burn one's life, it raises question even to the freedom itself!

Whenever I think that a frightening situation has been created, that time is tormenting my head, then unknowingly my mind becomes overwhelmed with Aziz from Tughluq and becomes real in front of the family members. Whenever I feel like I have to get something under any circumstances, the Mobydick yells at me that whatever happened to you, whatever the other person did to you was subject to his nature. Will you take revenge for someone's nature and also for one's natural nature? My mind began to wander as to why I want to take revenge by going against my nature. At such times the question arises in my mind whether a man can really go against his nature. To what extent? In the second hour, it also happens that I am administering my intensity to other human beings. Somewhere in the name of freedom I do not cut anyone's freedom!

Perhaps I am born in a time where villains attract more attention than heroes. Iago and Othello, or Hamlet and Claudius, as the literature began to splash more and more, especially in English literature, the water began to fascinate me. The touch of it was pulling me more and more towards reading that still like this, still more than this where can I find something that is confusing me in this? Questions lead me to new books and books again to new questions. In this 21st century, there is probably no shortage of answers, but the question is just a lack of questions. But whenever I feel this lack, I rush to books and if I am not overwhelmed, my reading will be embarrassed! Ever since I came to know a little bit of literature, my mind has been constantly wandering to read what literature in not just one language but many other languages is saying. I took my primary course in Gujarati language and because of that Gujarati language inadvertently became more fluent. The Bengali language attracted me the most as I got closer to the literature of other languages. If you look at the dominance of literature, on the one hand, it is a pleasure to read books that cross the line of satisfaction (and this pleasure is not really joy, but anger, weeping, and terrible shock), then on the other hand, I will read literature in a language that I don't know. So there is a constant quest within for its original meaning that is not going to die somewhere! I am always confused when language finally becomes a medium and even more so when the medium itself is becoming unreliable. Do I really understand what is being written? The question also arises as to whether all this literature was really written for a specific purpose or if there was any silence for writing without a purpose. To get to the root of what might have happened there and what may have been happening in the origin, I am ready to go back to my origin!

Derrida gave me an adequate understanding of language questions in later years and provided me theoretical support in discussions with my unsupported arguments with friends. At that time, understanding was developed in a different way. Feminism also reached post feminism and the need for it as well as the reasons for its failure were understood. However, the fact that there is no need to put a basket of guilt on anyone's head has become so ingrained in the mind that now everything, the matter and the person can be seen automatically with four or five lenses and when viewed from different points of view, confusion with reconciliation is lessened yet it is foolish to think so each and every time!

Listening to the stories of Panchatantra itself, at least 4 to 5 years of life may have passed from my childhood, but Panchatantra was exposed in a new way in the form of an 'Animal Farm' novel.

I grew up hearing about the atrocities being perpetrated on women by the savage men of society who cover it in the name of civilization. Yeah it sounds pretty crap to me, definitely feel that I will not make the mistake of believing what I saw with my own eyes. I remember Pecola saying that when savagery and molestation goes awry, mother can't even climb into it or fails to help!

The question became more and more complex as the missing link in one book was found in another book and the mind became restless as if a spirit had arisen in the mind. Whose responsibility is it that Dave Saheb is to blame, who is beyond knowledge and is not ready to spark words even in the life of someone other than himself? Can there be any hope of philanthropy from Mr. Dave? The effect of "Angadno pag" is so strong that whenever I see a person full of ambition, Dave Saheb suddenly comes to my mind and starts inspiring me. I felt sorry for him. When I feel sorry for someone else, I get angry with myself now that I have to continue painting these slippers. For me, Shah Saheb is nothing but the peak of darkness, if the benefit of Gnani's knowledge is not going to happen to the personality around him. At the same time Marlowe's Doctor Faust seems closer to me, but there's no point in explaining anything to people in religious darkness who only believe that women are the cause of their downfall when it comes to mind that even my 21st century is also not out of the shallowness of this idea. Even today, apparently, women have reached the moon, but they have yet to reach the important administration of the house. Injustices against women are happening not only in books or movies or crime series but also in one way or another and not anywhere else but in my own home and also in the name of my safety.

Julian Bans asks if the character develops over time? I have no idea. But this question has made me think, what if a person really can't grow with time in life?

After reading all this, I have come to hate the male character. No matter how good a character is, my thoughts are stuck there or in the end it is a man! But if this thought had taken root in my mind, literature would have made me fail again and I would not have even known myself of my failure. In the process of reading the literature, I have come to realize that unless we accept a problem as a problem and find a solution to the problem, far from it if root cannot be reached. I reached out to a writer like Amrita Pritam in a society like Jungle of civilized society where I was burnt to ashes. I have read translations of many of her original books more than two or three times.

The friendship with a friend grew a little closer during college and the biggest impact it had on my reading. In the discussion with her, day by day the pleasure came more and more and the reading developed a little bit. The curiosity to know it also led me to new ideas and we used to go through many things to know one thing! At first I personally started blaming Sahir and in the end I and my friend have kept this discussion open thinking that it may not be his fault. In my spare time these characters always reach out to break my solitude. As I get to know Amrita Pritam's books and life, my desire to meet Imroz becomes more and more influential. The thing that strikes me most about Imroz is that he is more of a human than a man. If you go to see the character of Imroz as a man you might kill his personality. It would be surprising to know but this Imroz is still alive in Delhi or Mumbai! He lives but it is hard to understand how difficult it is to meet him in the society in which I grew up. But Herbert of Monkey's Paw suddenly knocks on the door and asks me if I am really the one you want to meet! The mind sits in the water by making its own grave.

Listening to my concept of male characters, you may have created new ideas somewhere in your mind, new lines may have been decided about me, but before you decide anything about me, without knowing anything about me, I must tell you that only male characters? No, I hate women from my distance. But Estragon and Vladimir have told me not to let hatred and behavior get in the way. My hatred for the male character may have diminished to some extent after reading Amrita Pritam, but because of the behavior of a social woman like this society, and because of the currency in this journey, I have no inner interest in her life and ultimately in my life. Jitesh Donga managed to break this and reject it for me through his novels. Mira and Swara, whom Margaret calls women of mystery, are women who fit the definition. The question of choice in Gujarati literature, the social question that has arisen in Amrita, breaks down here in Northpole and Vishwamanav and at the end, as Meera says, there is nothing else but just to live with passion! That's all!

I don't know if I liked anything else, but I can say for sure that literature taught me to read, to read more, Keep on discussing it, keep on learning new things and get lost somewhere in the life of discussions where getting lost is even stronger than finding myrself!

Thank You.

How Sense of an Ending has Shaped me?

Hello friends,

I’m just thinking of a thing that has influenced a life. If I talk personally, books have played very important part. The Sense of an Ending has terribly influenced me. There is a whole new level of slightly more complicated knowledge, a new chapter to my own book of learning. Probably I have to confess that literature hasn’t shaped me but it has reshaped me!

Listen this explanation from Ruchi Joshi's video and her learning outcome on 'The Sense of an Ending'.

It’s characters are as catchy as a glue stick, even if I try to remove- it can’t. It can never be removed as sometimes directly or sometimes indirectly, I’m the character of Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. If it seems exaggerated, it's a truth and I think this is the only truth of each human being (I would love to imitate the words of Tony as he quotes ‘I called up the only Veronica in my address book).

This is perhaps totally clashing with what I was believing throughout the last decade of my life. Earlier I used to believe what was said in history. With the passing of time I intensified my critical skill and started to believe in ‘not to believe even on what I see, listen and have learnt. Not to believe the surface and try to ponder deep down because this is what needs to be but reading of this text my province and my strong concern of knowing collapse and it thrills me till

the date.

Earlier I was of the opinion that there are no truths and lies but different truths or let me say three truths but I found an excellent abstraction that ‘Who has told the story even they must not be represented as liars but as survivors’!

Before I’d rounded off my reading of this novella, I was hankering to read Adrian’s diary and still, of course! I don’t want to be one of those secret spoilers and so I won’t ponder anything on that point to decrease your charm and glamour to read but probably I need to quote the words of ‘Daily Telegraph’ for the novella, ‘I would urge you to read and reread - The Sense of an ending’ and want to read Adrian’s diary again and again’. Adrian’s diary is one of those life’s strengths I want to reach yet I must not reach. The question remains still in front of the eyes and behind the mind,

‘What if I don’t even urge to read Adrian’s diary?’

‘I know that, I know very well that I can never be even the shadow of Adrian but what if I become Tony?'

Equally as the text even I have to wait for the unrest, great unrest and for the responsibility. Tony has everything in his life like comfort, retirement , marriage, children or we may say that we'll settle in life. Then the question arises Why at the sense of his end he thinks about his past?

Why ?

Is there any purpose ?

Why does he recall everything in his 60s?

Things don’t get settled down here but this leads us to think that Tony is a kind of character who keeps on swinging from his words or speaks a lie? At some of the extent Tony is honest to me, more honest to me or let me say, is he really a liar or unreliable? Because not to believe or say Tony’s unreliability has made patches on my mind that I wont be able to trust even Adrian.

Thus, without the character of Tony, I would remain just with the critical thinking that History is the lies of victor but the way it is revealed made a greater impact that without that I’ll certainly remain in the perfect frame of imperfection, yet I know what I don’t know and my journey is towards to be the honest to myself that ‘I must not know, what I don’t know’!

Thank you

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Ruchi Joshi answers...

What is literature ❓