So, I read a book

Waiting at an overpriced beverages counter in Bombay airport I heard my friend Srsquos voice ldquoI knew I would run into you at an airport some timerdquo Our extra delight at a routine coincidence may be related to the fact that we both see the world through somethingcoloured glasses through which coincidences look like movie scenes May our glamorous tribe increaseAlmost right away S began telling me with voluble excitement about a book he was reading I also got excited hearing about it Our ldquoacchasrdquo and ldquoyessrdquo rolled like peppercorns through the sludge of airport acoustics until overcome S thrust the book at me ldquoTake itrdquo ldquoBut yoursquore in the middle of itrdquo ldquoYa but I canrsquot wait for you to read it Irsquoll get anotherrdquo Convinced and pleased I took itPerhaps you share my difficulty Like many Irsquove struggled to actually read books for some time the mind frittered by digital life Had I not received the book in this delighting fashion like someone giving me half their truffle pasta I might not have started it right away And even so it may have languished halfread in my teetering toread pile But by a stroke of luck I fell sickUnable to work I lay in bed wrapped in a quilt wrapped in the cocoon of monsoon light wrapped up in the book At first I read fitfully I kept taking photos of lines I loved and sharing with friends or posting on Instagram Then the book faltered and my excitement with it But involved I kept reading In that committed relationship through marvelous and lesssuccessful parts I stopped thinking ldquoaboutrdquo it to others and started thinking along with the bookA friend and a viral infection helped return me to a sweeter rhythm To reading a book for no purpose to a solitude made luxurious with velvety silence Our solitude now is always noisy ndash not just with phone notifications but the jangle of predetermined meanings We are supposed to read and see something because it is ldquoimportantrdquo ldquobraverdquo or some such word of pompous significationBut so much of this is not coming from the individual criticrsquos sense of love and encounter with meaning It is based on the hierarchy of film festivals or the din or marketing or the dull duties of political worthiness Making us attend to it is more about maintaining those hierarchies and systems than pleasure for itself Itrsquos a kind of enslaved time pretending to be free time a ceaseless public intrusion into our private poetic lifePeople ask did you see or read such and such personrsquos film or book Then there is the predictable theatre of rendering opinion and the clatter of being judged or slotted accordingly People hardly ask ldquowhat are you reading nowadaysIf people are lonely itrsquos not because they are not with others That noise makes it impossible to hear yourself thinkmdash and if even you wonrsquot listen to yourself then could there be a lonelier lonelinessI touched down on Page 452 replete S had said ldquoIrsquove decided I wonrsquot talk about the book on social media only to friendsrdquo And so I too wonrsquot tell you the name of the book or recommend it today Yaniki I suggest why donrsquot you ask your friend to lend you a book they think yoursquoll loveParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom