As part of their preparation, students at the CAT coaching centre read, on my insistence, recent Indian novels to improve their reading and be up to speed with Indian writing in English. Since Arundhati Roy's Booker-winning turn with The God of Small Things, interest in English-language books has spawned a mass industry that has done wonders for publishers, if not for the quality of the output. Recommendations include Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.
Besides these, there are popular non-fiction titles by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb that, I hope, my students will take to. One may disagree with the premise of Gladwell's books and he may rightly be charged with oversimplification, but there is no denying his books' salutary effect on developing my students' argumentative skills.
My enthusiasm produces mixed results. There are those among my students who have never approached serious literature in any form. To them, the tragic life of Hassan in Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner or the trials of Miriam in A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author generate an abundance of riches that they are eager to imbibe. The sudden onset of breathing life within the folds of the pages opens up a miraculous world tinged with mystery, truth and pain.
Then they are those who can't, in spite of trying, bring themselves to make the effort. They have read their Chetan Bhagats and Paulo Coelhos and are happy to limit their reading experience to what is derisively called "genre fiction". Once I asked 10 different students in the course of a mock interview what their favourite book was, and nine of them said Chetan Bhagat. I don't wish to comment on the literary quality of Bhagat's writing, but it's a shame when students utter that despicable word: "Boring" for anything more taxing.
In The Art Instinct, Dennis Dutton draws attention to the evolutionary basis for human interest in art forms. Adam Kirsch, explaining Dutton's thesis in The New Republic, says: "Dutton's [own] fieldwork among the Sepik River people of New Guinea showed him that the Sepik carvers were automatically identifiable as artists even to an American who is the product of a wholly alien culture." In other words, "Sepik criteria of artistic excellence are in principle available to anyone with the time and the will to learn to perceive; they are not monadically sealed in Sepik culture."
If only my students bowed to such evolutionary niceties. I tell them it is important for them to look beyond their vapid insistence on escaping boredom and work on learning to spot good writing. Since MBA aspirants only ever understand something if it can be shown to benefit their quest for the Holy Grail - an IIM admission - I acquaint them with the importance of quick comprehension at B-schools and in corporate life where reams of data have to be scanned at Godspeed to ferret out the relevant bits.
It gets them interested, passably. When they read Inheritance, they say the novel's all over the place. When they read GOST they think it overly written. Only with White Tiger do they display any semblance of genuine likeness. They connect viscerally to the rags-to-riches story of Balram Halwai and write passionate summaries on his amoral character.
But mostly, it is exasperating. When I try to deconstruct my own interest in language and literature, I can trace it to a definitive urge to cultivate a certain nous that would entitle me to literary society and enlightened conversation. This may be because (a) I harboured literary ambitions, and (b) I needed something to call my own that would speak back to me in a way that "life" did not.
When I decided to decline Tata Consultancy Services' campus offer on emerging (fairly unscathed, I might add) from that deadening pursuit called engineering, I knew it was time to try my hand at journalism. I moved to Delhi and applied to different places and finally landed a job on the website of a news channel. It was dreary work - we merely posted online whatever ran on the bulletins - and within a year, I was out. Then I joined a business daily as sub-editor. I stayed there for a satisfying three years as I edited (a lot) and wrote (a little) and reported (much less) while I learnt the rigours of business and feature writing.
So it was my job, which, of course, sprang from my inclinations, that made me an ideal candidate for Dutton's Darwinian aesthetics. To effect real change in my students' attitudes, then, I think I should initiate a silent revolution enjoining them to break free of a careerist mindset and seek the glorious life of the tortured artist. Hmm. While my students might still take to the idea, I can visualise their parents storming the pearly gates of artistic bliss, clubs in their hands, baying for my blood.
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
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