It is a terrible loss that many youngsters and children nowadays do not enjoy the pleasure of reading, Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, has said.
He was delivering a lecture in memory of N.E. Balakrishna Marar, founder of Kozhikode-based Poorna Publications and Touring Book Stall or TBS, here on Saturday, at a two-day literature festival organised by the group.
“Not a day goes by these days without me being asked, mostly by young children, egged on by enthusiastic parents, what they must do to develop a formidable vocabulary. My answer is inevitably just a single word: read,” Mr. Tharoor said.
The well-known author, however, said he was worried that reading for so many children was no longer associated with pleasure.
“Reading, instead, is entwined with books, textbooks and studies confined to the drudgery of school obligations. So when it comes to pleasure, most youngsters nowadays prefer looking at a screen, their mobile phone, play station, or Nintendo,” Mr. Tharoor said.
It would not be wrong to say that the pandemic, when one was helplessly cloistered at home, exacerbated the menace of the screen.
“Of late, I have met too many children who have never read a book for pleasure or entertainment, but only for a classroom assignment. This is a terrible loss. And failing to convey the joy of reading is probably the biggest mistake that successive generations of parents and teachers have allowed themselves to make,” he said. There was still time to remedy the situation so long as the problem was recognised and rectified.
Talking about his writing, Mr. Tharoor said that most of his books were on India, a vast and complex country. “I write of an India of multiple truths and realities, an India that is greater that the sum of its parts. English expresses that diversity, better than any Indian language I know, precisely because it is not rooted in any one region of my vast country. At the same time, as an Indian, I remain conscious of and connected to my pre-urban and non-Anglophone antecedents,” he added.
Earlier, writer Sara Joseph presented Mr. Tharoor with a literary award named after Balakrishna Marar.
