Gowher Bhat
It begins softly. A single line. A whisper of a voice. A paragraph that lingers long after the page is turned. Sometimes it’s a story of a man trudging home through the snow, as in James Joyce’s The Dead, where Gabriel Conroy’s epiphany under a Dublin sky pierces the heart of human longing. Other times, it’s a woman folding clothes by a window, like the quiet domesticity in Virginia Woolf’s *Mrs. Dalloway*, where the ordinary hum of life reveals profound truths. These moments, so deceptively simple, burrow into you. They feel like your own life—too familiar, too raw.
That’s the alchemy of literature. It doesn’t always aim to unravel the world’s mysteries. It simply holds up a mirror, showing what’s already there—your town, your people, your unspoken regrets, your fleeting joys. In a line from Munshi Premchand’s *Godaan*, you hear your father’s stoic pride; in Jhumpa Lahiri’s *Interpreter of Maladies*, you catch your mother’s silent sacrifices. This is no mere ink on paper. This is truth, distilled.
Literature reflects society—not just its grand narratives of AI revolutions or globalized economies, but the small, human details. The half-drunk cup of chai on a cluttered table. The way a daughter hesitates before speaking. The flicker of doubt in a boy’s eyes as he navigates a new city. As Toni Morrison wrote in Beloved, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” Literature captures that ache—the pain and beauty of being human. Writers notice these moments. Readers rediscover them. And in that exchange, stories endure.
In India, the way we consume stories has transformed. The FICCI-EY report of 2024 notes that digital media now outpaces traditional television, contributing 32% to the media and entertainment sector’s revenue. Platforms like Kindle, Audible, and online literary journals have reshaped reading habits, bringing stories to smartphones and earbuds. Yet, it’s not the numbers that matter—it’s what those stories do. A short story by Saadat Hasan Manto, with its unflinching gaze on human frailty, can still unravel you. A novel by Arundhati Roy, rich with the rhythms of Kerala’s backwaters, sits with you like a friend. These works don’t shout. They simply stay.
Literature’s power lies in its truth, even when it’s fiction. Especially then. When I read Rabindranath Tagore’s *Gitanjali*, I hear my grandfather’s voice, weaving tales of our Kashmiri village—half-real, half-dreamed. I don’t know where fact ended and imagination began, but it didn’t matter. Those stories carried something fragile, something vital. They made me feel less alone. As Gabriel García Márquez once said, “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” Literature helps us remember what matters—youth’s reckless hope, age’s quiet wisdom, the ache of belonging or its absence.
In a world racing forward—digital, loud, relentless—literature remains slow, deliberate, tender. It’s the friend who listens when you can’t speak. It’s the shelter you seek when life feels heavy. George Saunders, the Man Booker Prize-winning author, spoke of this in his 2013 Syracuse University address: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” His stories, like those in *Tenth of December*, weave empathy into every line, urging us to see others more clearly. Science backs this up: a 2013 University of Toronto study in *Science* found that reading literary fiction sharpens social cognition, fostering empathy in a fractured world.
Consider Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog, where a fleeting affair reveals the weight of unfulfilled lives, or Premchand’s Kafan, where poverty strips away dignity yet exposes raw humanity. These stories don’t preach; they invite you to listen. They shift something inside you, quietly dismantling your certainties. In an age of endless opinions, that pause is revolutionary.
Every year, the Jaipur Literature Festival draws thousands—writers, readers, dreamers—united by words. It’s not about glamour or fame but connection. People gather to talk about books that made them laugh, cry, or feel less alone. I’ve never attended, but I understand its pull. It’s the same reason we return to Tolstoy’s *Anna Karenina* or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun—to find ourselves in others’ stories.
Literature doesn’t fix the world. It doesn’t offer blueprints or solutions. But it shows the cracks—grief, love, doubt—and how people live with them. As Virginia Woolf wrote, “The only advice… that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.” Literature trusts us to do that. It doesn’t demand agreement; it asks only that we notice.
Noticing is everything. The way your father leaves the porch light on, waiting. The way your mother packs lunch, even when exhausted. The way you look away when fear takes hold. Writers see these things. Readers feel them. In that shared recognition, literature becomes a mirror—quiet, clear, honest. It shows who we are. And, sometimes, who we might become.
(Note:Gowher Bhat is a published writer, freelance journalist, creative storyteller, and English instructor based in Kashmir.)
