By now a whole lot of good folks have written up about the banning of "Such a Long Journey" (this is being one of those) and of course the point of view of the author himself. Having read the book a bit in the past I decided to pick up a copy to read it again. And, of course try and figure what can make it into a ban-worthy object of political acrobatics. Turns out that the actual content is sparse and certainly isn't authored with an intent to actually be a forceful denunciation of the political organization. Guess this is just puerile tamasha that keeps on happening on and off.

Sadly enough it reminded me of Jatin Chakrabarty's famous tirade against the clubs at Park Street and, some of the "Hope" shows terming them as "aposanskriti". And, if one tries to look a bit more deeply from that time to now, the various instances of where political and quasi political/religious organizations have taken it upon themselves to be the "guardians of morality" and, the crusader for public conscience. The annoying part is that while this is a standard form of claiming an ounce of twisted political legitimacy, it does ensure that the books and content don't get read or become part of the discourse. There is a substantial disconnect between the reading habits of the youth of today (averaged across the nation) and, the youth of yesteryears. I used to smirk when I heard my parents lament about it. I guess it is my turn to do the lament.

The other part that is worrisome is the lack of reading habits around the classics. Especially in the local/regional languages. I wonder why it is so. It isn't that the books are not available or, they are outrageously priced. For example, it has always been a standing joke that a Bengali household needed a set of Tagore books (printed by who else but Viswa Bharati) to grace the shelves to give a sense of a household that reads. Add to that the collections from Saratchandra Chatterjee or, BankimChandra and, the mandatory Ramayana and Mahabharata and you'd have a fair idea about the bookshelf. This was when I was young and, it was somewhat tacitly encouraged to read all of these (it is another aspect that my personal reading habits in Bengali literature have been far to skewed and awkward to be part of a sample set). The same cannot be said now. And, this is during the time when the lifting of copyright restrictions on the works of various authors should have encouraged greater availability of their works. And, I don't even desire to wade into the waters of being unaware of the Greek classics.

Availability doesn't necessary equal consumption I guess. In the world of books.