"When asked to, I could pull off an act of reading without knowing how to read, with my finger moving over the right line and my mouth voicing it out clearly."
Great piece, Tanuj. I was struck by your comments about not being able to read for pleasure for a long time. Our trajectories are very different-- I only had access to English books. It took me a long time to realise the brown guy staring at me in the mirror was me.
I still find it difficult to read for pleasure. I'm always parsing, sort of. This happens with English more than Hindi, even though English is practically the language of all my work. But if I started writing in Hindi I think something similar might start to happen. So I guess this has to do with a writerly impulse to get inside language.
Great piece, Tanuj. I was struck by your comments about not being able to read for pleasure for a long time. Our trajectories are very different-- I only had access to English books. It took me a long time to realise the brown guy staring at me in the mirror was me.
Thank you, Anil :)
I still find it difficult to read for pleasure. I'm always parsing, sort of. This happens with English more than Hindi, even though English is practically the language of all my work. But if I started writing in Hindi I think something similar might start to happen. So I guess this has to do with a writerly impulse to get inside language.