AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET

AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET

The quality of readership is declining by the day. Anything subtle seems to elude common comprehension. Humour is no more dish digestible and sarcasm a sauce a bit too bitter. 

One cannot lower one's standard of self-expression to accommodate innocence of readers in the subtleties of language and must bide by time till generations evolve to more refined perception. If most cannot follow the drift of my posts, cannot fathom the depth but spray about the froth, then let language persist in its impersonal self without bothering to breathe the dusty air of roadside construction of blocks and squares without art or poetry. Culture must be preserved despite it all, despite its precipitous fall consequent on catering to communication with the commoner who is hardly kith and kin to deep thinking. 

The Buddha democratised communication by speaking in colloquial terms and forsook the classical language. The masses understood his message in their rustic way for a while before the neglect of Sanskrit took its cultural toll from which we are yet to recover. Thus, if most refuse to read in between lines the way the author intends his writings to be read, it is not for the author fearing readership loss to lower literary level but it is his call to his vocation to persist in the practice of his art irrespective of reader comprehension. 

Nature is an open book for the deepest thinkers to decipher its hieroglyphics and for the shallow to marvel at its surface beauty or not to bother at all, caring only to draw respiratory and digestive nourishment from it for survival at the organic animal level. But Nature does not budge or lower standards. Billions of years, millions pass before civilisation peeps in, peers into its secrets to set the ball rolling. But the fire thus ignited, the wheel thus set in motion can scarce move this mountainous mass called the masses who continue to roll in ignorance, spark off surface tensions and in general keep dancing to the ball of base desire and baser understanding. Does Nature accommodate? Must authors?

Written by Sugata Bose