KARACHI: Reading books helps us know about our culture and our classics. Unfortunately, we have stopped giving time to our children and telling them stories because of which reading habits are not being transferred to the younger generations.

This was said by eminent poet Zehra Nigah at an event held to celebrate the 16th anniversary of Readers Club on Thursday evening.

Ms Nigah said people often asked her how she read poetry so well. She would reply to them that she’d learnt that from her great-grandmother (per naani). Her great-grandmother used to tell stories to her grandchildren. She had a nice way of telling tales, but if a certain section in a tale carried a poetic device or a riddle, she would read it differently. This enabled her (Nigah) to understand the nuances of poetry.

Ms Nigah said these days we did not have the joint family system, and that’s where things started to change. We did not give enough time to our children; we did not share stories with them. Once one of her nieces requested Ms Nigah to help develop in her child an interest in Urdu and poetry, so while travelling with the child Ms Nigah tried to sing a song to her to which the child responded by singing her ‘Sheila ki jawani’. Ms Nigah asked her niece to spend as much time with the child as possible, and at least share stories with her on their way to school.

Ms Nigah said reading books helped us know about our culture and our classics. She was of the view that although the scenario was not that encouraging, efforts made by Readers Club were praiseworthy and made her optimistic.

Former senator and information minister Javed Jabbar raised the question whether the printed book had broken the oral tradition of communication or intensified and diversified it. In his opinion it had contributed to the tradition in expanding it. In a recent visit to the United States he read an interesting statistic in which it was mentioned that in 2015 there were more books published in America than Kindle subscriptions. So the urge to read was returning to the US.

Even in the Pakistani context, Mr Jabbar gave some examples which were positive. He said a publisher in Lahore had told him that he had published 40,000 copies of Noam Chomsky’s work. Even if the figure was exaggerated, he argued and, let’s say, they were 20,000 and not 40,000, it was a healthy sign. Another example: a medical doctor was getting 40 to 45 lakh rupees as royalty for writing a medical textbook.

Prof Dr Pirzada Qasim said reading books required an unconditional commitment. It was a journey from the unknown to the known. There was another kind of journey, from the known to the unknown, but that fell in the Sufi domain and required a different discussion.

Prof Qasim said as a child he did not have toys around him; all he had was books. Therefore, all such interests began from one’s home. When an older person in a family told tales, those (young ones) who listened to it look for examples from the tales in real life, which whetted their appetite for reading.

Educationist Mehtab Akbar Rashdi said her love for reading started from a very young age. Her father was a book reader, as were her sisters. To date, she hadn’t taken to technological advancements (iPads etc) and liked to hold books in her hands.

Ms Rashdi said as a young reader she started to read Quratulain Hyder’s novel Aag Ka Darya but couldn’t get it.

Only when after two or three years when she read it again she was able to comprehend the historical references in it.

Ms Rashdi lamented the fact that remarkable books written in Sindhi were not read by a wide section of readers bec­ause their translations were not available.

Earlier, chairperson of Readers Club Sabooha Khan welcomed the guests. She lauded the efforts of Azmat Khan for setting up the club and doing an invaluable job for the past 16 years. She told the audience that so far 768 books had been discussed during the weekly sessions of the club.

Rehana Alam, Prof M. Rafi and others also spoke.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2017