 Hello. Good evening. Yeah, let's well give a warm welcome to Professor Sudha Shastri. She is a multi-talented woman. She not only is a professor in English in the humanities and social sciences department. You know, she had been a star student. I just saw her profile. She is a gold medalist in her MA program and she is placed first in the state in her BA program and she also has a beautiful, you know, like a teaching award from IIT Bombay. So she has many things. Of course, we all don't like to talk about, you know, but more than that, you know, I just want to tell you that she is a great singer. She is an Hindustani classical singer. And then, what do you see? Dancer. Yeah, you should watch her YouTube videos. She is really good. So with that, we welcome her. We are very happy that she could, that's all, that she could take time to come here and hopefully by the end of her talk and after we receive some books that we have ordered for you when you read and make a book report sort of a thing, I think you'll appreciate literature because, you know, many of us as engineers think that that is all we need to know, you know. But literature and arts, they bring you another dimension to all the things that we see and do. So hopefully you will become very appreciative of literature after you hear her talk and we hope and we again thank her for coming even though it's raining and it's bad weather. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that very kind. I'm also getting to know them only now. How many interns today? Just put up your hands. We can do a count quickly, 12, about only 15 of them are here today. But we have a total of 29, right? And the ones in Bombay, I think, have not come or if they have come, they have disappeared because they want to go back home. And four or five of them have gone to visit their family. 21 or 22 only there? 20 interns. But today there are only, I could count only 15, 15, 17, yeah. We are taking attendance though, so we'll have a proper count at the end of this. And so they all come here as winners of our Yantra Robotics Competition, which is a national level competition from all across the country, from Bangalore to Delhi to Alhabad to, you know, all different places, from Shimoga, Karnataka. So, and they're getting to know each other and getting exposed to many interesting talks. So hopefully, you know, you will take the most advantage of all the things you hear and see today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Saraswati, for that very nice, very kind and very flattering introduction. I'm not sure. I can live up to everything that you have said about me. So this talk, why we read literature. We have a structured talk in place and that's my first confession to you. But I hope that as the sort of this thing progresses, that between us we'll be able to find some answers to this question of why we read literature. So I want this to be as interactive as possible. I hope that's all right with you. If I had a little more time, I would ask each one of you to introduce yourself and tell me your name. I think they may not be dying for that. So they want to stop at 6 o'clock. So we will, you know, maybe that will emerge as the talk progresses. So I saw a tentative abstract which was written next to my talk. Perhaps you saw it too. It said, why do we read literature? How do we read texts and what texts do we read? Why do we read? And also the problems of interpretation and so on. Can you hear me in the back? Can you hear me in the back? You can. If you can't hear me, just tell me because I can't hear myself very well. I teach English literature as Saraswati said to undergraduate students of engineering, BTEC students of this institute. And I am guessing your profile sort of matches their profile. And so it's possible that I have come here with certain preconceptions about engineering students and their attitudes towards literature coming from my own personal experience. They could be right. They could be wrong. So maybe that's a good sort of place from where to start today's lecture. Today's talk. So I am assuming that most of you think that reading literature is not relevant. That literature is not useful. That literature doesn't have much value. That you are willing to go as far as to say, yes, it's fun. I enjoy getting, you know, beguiled by a world which is very interesting. But it doesn't have actual utility value or use. Am I right? How many of you want to say yes? You can raise your hand. There are no penalties for saying literature is not... Only one person. Everybody else thinks that literature is a great thing. So I shouldn't even be giving this talk. You should be giving it. Why is it a great thing? What use is it? Why didn't you do a major in literature? Why are you learning engineering? No, obviously, right? If you think that... So somewhere you feel that it doesn't have a career value. You don't think or you think. It has a career value. Somebody else, why would you not want to invest in a career in literature? I am gradually moving my sort of talk in that direction. Why do you think that... I am assuming again, this is one of my assumptions. I am assuming that you think that it's good to read a book. It's fun to read a book. But it's not worth investing four years of your education time in majoring in reading books or specializing in reading books. Am I right? I am right. So why do you think it's not worthwhile? I have put up some stuff very randomly on the board. You can look at it and give me an answer if you like. But why do you think? Is that what you think? That you think that it's okay to read these books? But these books are not going to be meaningful in a materialistic fashion. It's not going to give you a career in the way being a software engineer would give you a career. Am I right? So shall I say that the way the educational system is framed today anywhere in the world? Reading literature is not equivalent to ensuring you a great career or good money or, you know, success or fame. Unless you want to be, you know, you are lucky enough to become a booker prize winner or something. Am I right? So that is what your general opinion is about literature. So you don't... So this question of why we read literature may not seem like to me. Probably is not a very important question for you. You have not probably engaged with it because you think you know the answer. Am I right? You think you know that there is no point reading literature beyond a certain passion. Am I right? Now if I try to convince you that there is value in reading literature and that it requires a certain readjustment of the way in which we define the word value, will you be able to accept what I say? Or do you want to give me an hours time and then decide at the end of the hour whether you agree with me or not? You agree already? No. Very good. I don't agree with people who agree with me immediately. All right. Okay. So I want to... Of course I can't give you any great miraculous answers about C, reading literature. I thought as much. I am not audible. So what can I do? I have a very good idea. Why don't you come here? Come, come, come. I don't think they are even listening to be honest. I saw them talking to each other. So... And I am not going to pressurize anyone to listening to me. You can come here and are you listening? You can hear me, right? You can't hear. You didn't say it so far. Okay. Can you hear me now? Why don't I do this simpler? So I am going to put to you certain ideas that I have which are not completely original ideas. Ideas for which I am indebted to friends like Deepa, students and also you know this whole experience of having taught for a very long time. Where is Pallas? Okay. So ideas that I am indebted to students and friends for, they are not original ideas but I am going to discuss these ideas here with you. And as I said, let this be an interactive session so that if you want to endorse what I am saying or you want to reject what I am saying, feel free to interrupt me. Is that all right? So we have begun with the assumption that there is no use in reading literature because literature doesn't guarantee anything in the real world. Before I go on to address this problem, I will define very quickly what I mean by literature because although we all vaguely sort of know what literature means, I will be more specific and say that by literature I mean imaginative writing. Fiction can be poetry, it can be drama, it can be plays, it can be anything. A text which deals with the world which is completely imagined, which may have some resemblance to the world that we live in. More or less resemblance, if it is a historical novel, it will have more resemblance. If it is a fantasy novel, it will probably have no resemblance. But it is a world which we know is not to be taken very seriously, is not to be taken as a real world because what happens in the real world, sorry, what happens in that world of imagination has no impact for you in the real world. Isn't that the way we generally understand reading literature? Yeah, it's good to read, maybe you learn something, maybe you get sort of hold of some values. But at the end of it, how does it make any meaningful change in the way you live your life or life works for you? That's probably the reservation that we have about reading literature. Now I'm going to suggest that this is not the way in which we have to look at literature. In several ways, I have put up some of those things here, why the role of the imagination is important and so on. But don't feel restricted by the points that I have put up for myself as a reminder to say in this talk that this is why I think literature is important. If you have, if you are willing to suspend your belief that literature is not important and consider that maybe it is very important, then you can also add to the talk that I'm going to keep up. So I think the first thing that I will challenge is this idea that literature has no real life implications. We are all agreed that there is an idea that it's a belief that literature has no real life implications. So that means I would say in defense of the fact that literature has real life implications, I would say that you are narrowing real life or you're reading the word real life in a very narrow way. If you think that if you read a novel, you can't be influenced by what that novel says to such an extent that you take a different look at the things that you have been looking at in a certain way so far. It means that you have not really understood the impact of fiction on yourself or the real world. Do you get what I'm saying? If you haven't, if you think that I speak too fast because many people do, I can repeat what I'm saying. I'm saying that you read a book, you read a novel, a completely imaginary piece of writing. Something about that story, something about some character in that story affected you so deeply or influenced you so much that that person or that character or that story, the way it ended, changed the way in which you looked at certain things in your real life. Now, will you agree that this is good enough and impact of literature on real life? At least individually, personally speaking, for you that book had meaning. It may not have influence in the way that, you know, learning a scientific fact has influence because everybody who learns that scientific fact learns it in the same way. Forgive me if I'm making a lot of generalizations about science because I left reading science in class 12. That's like many years ago. But what I am trying to say is that literature affects us or impacts us individually and I think that's why, I think that's the whole excitement of reading literature because no two people, no two readers need to take away the same thing from the same book that they read. I am sure you have been with me so far. Okay, now, even though you might not think literature is very relevant, I am sure everybody here has read novels of some kind or the other. So, will three or four of you just tell me what novels you read which made a lasting impact on you? Not the novels which you didn't bother to read. Would you like to say what novel you read, Pallash, which made a lasting impact on you? Very good. 1984 is a very good example. Is this anybody else here who can give me a more specific example of any book that she or he read which enabled her to do a rethink on what he or she believed? Yes, very good. The Kaitrana, okay, why? What did it make you think in a different way about? Can you speak up because I think I am not sure they can hear you in that corner? Okay, so first of all, I don't think it's the Middle East, I think it's Afghanistan. Okay, fine. But you know you are telling me, what you are telling me about the impact the novel had on you? Fair enough, but that is the same impact that a history book or a geography book, not geography, perhaps a documentary about Afghanistan would have had on you, right? So, in that case, the question remains why you read literature? Can you think of a better answer? Something that you know, what I mean is something that is so literature or imaginative writing specific that something that book a completely imaginary book or imagined book, not imaginary book, sorry, a book which is imagined, which deals with imaginary characters and people, et cetera has changed you in some fashion. Because I, I mean that's the crux of the question, right? That's a very interesting, yes, very good point. Also, we have had this whole tradition of discussion about how you can't imagine something unless you have been impacted by some real life. But I will tread very carefully there because that doesn't explain science fiction of fantasy in some ways. Because you know, how does, even you creating a completely fantastic world, it's not, it's a world which has no connection with your world, then it clearly hasn't been impacted by the real world, right? But yes, it's true that, it's true that there is, it, there are books especially, you know, historical novels for example, you have read a certain part of history, you want to rewrite that history or you want to, you know, fill in some gaps which you felt that historical record hasn't given you, you write a historical novel. But is there anybody here, I am disappointed, somebody should tell me about some novel, at least one novel that they read which made them think, or think differently about something they had been thinking about. Yours was good enough. My only worry is that it is not something that something other than a novel could not have done. That's why I'm a little worried. Okay, what did I tell you about how IIT students behave, is it? How you should perceive what? Give me an example, give me a good example. Okay. Has anyone read 1984? Maybe I will give the books now. Has anybody read 1984? No. Has anybody read to kill a mockingbird? Has anybody watched the film? Okay. You have. You have watched the film. Okay. Okay. Let's settle for a film rather than a novel. What did that film do to you that, did it, did it touch you in a meaningful way so that you felt you saw the world around you differently? What, what did it do? There is segregation in society. Okay. Did it make it like this? You read about segregation by race or ethnicity in to kill a mockingbird. Did it enable you to see more clearly, perceive how there is discrimination or segregation on the basis of other things like caste and gender in our society? Did it sort of make some kind of personal, were you able to correlate in some personal manner with it? Did it encourage you to see how biases operate? It did. Okay. I hope it did. I've sort of given you the answer myself. But anybody else? Cash-22 maybe. Cash-22? You have it. Cash-22. Come on. Cash-22 is such an exciting novel. What did it do? Yes. That's okay. Very good. Very, very good. That's a brilliant answer. Okay. So you've said already several things that I want to take ahead. The first thing you have said is that it problematizes this whole notion of patriotism because if you and please please read Cash-22 when you get a chance because what it does is to disturb you in a way that I think good novels should do. That's one of the things that I've put up as a requirement of why we read literature. Literature disturbs us. Cash-22 disturbs you because you know one of the things we never one of the ideals we never question is the ideal of patriotism. And that is precisely the ideal that Cash-22 meddles around with and makes you wonder about because the kind of people who are endorsing that patriotism in this novel are dubious people and then it makes you wonder whether patriotism itself has to be redefined in a certain way. But it's even more interesting. The second thing that you said was it enabled you to see the world around you. Okay, very good. Yes, that of course perspective. That is another thing that good fiction does. It gives you perspective. It enabled her to see how petty her own problems were in which case I think this was a very, very useful sort of time out for how it was. It gave her something it may not have given her a competence in the sense that learning something learning something more fact fill gives but it did help her to see her own problem in perspective and that's a very important thing. I believe you have been I believe there have been some novels which are going to be distributed to you and one of those novels I think is to kill a mockingbird. Now at the risk of this sounding completely new to you an alien to you because you've not read it I don't think many people here have read it. I'll still give a couple of examples from to kill a mockingbird you can later go back when you get the novel and look at it you know and see match what I'm saying to what you read in the book. So one of the things that literature does it promotes empathy because when you're reading a book or an imagined you know story especially a story which is written in the first person you know what it is what it is to be written in the first person when the character says I did this I went there I went here etc. Very soon you become the I because our reading habit enables us to identify so totally with the I that's how the first person pronoun works that you are very soon yourself in the shoes of the person who is living life in the page of the book. So what happens that person is in some sense happening to you in your imagination otherwise you couldn't really read a book you couldn't really read a book with a certain sense of distance between you and the protagonist so you are already the first step towards empathy has already happened when you are putting yourself in the shoes of somebody else what to kill a mockingbird does even though there is no first person narrator is narrated by a child and children have a very unbiased refreshing picture of the world around them so it's easier for you to get into the shoes of a child we have all been children not all of us have been women some of us have not been men etc. so gender is a problem but childhood is never a problem we have all been children so you can easily see what worries this child because she is a child she has not lost the innocence most of us is you to look again at the world around you at the hypocrisies around you at the institutions around you as if a child would look as if you would have looked at it as a child so it builds empathy in fact the biggest take away from this novel is the lesson that this child learns that you have to put yourself in somebody else's shoes in order to see the world that person sees and why is it important to empathize I mean just look around you I hope there is going to be no two views about there is intolerance everywhere are we a very tolerant bunch of people on this universe hardly I mean we are all so intolerant of everybody else because we have such strong opinions and our opinions are so strong that we can't give anybody else a right to hold a different opinion I don't think this is a good thing at all I try generally not to use birds like good and bad but this I will categorically say is not because it a middle class but a very very important virtue so I think that you can't tolerate difference and we have to tolerate difference because we are living with differences all the time and differences can end riches there is no need to be alienated by difference and you can't do that if you didn't have empathy so have I sold you the first reason for why you should read literature that it builds empathy shall I just go ahead yeah you have a question ask ask ask I like questions no don't have a question okay so yeah please ask which is very motivational you know sorry I am interrupting you I get your point but I don't think novels are meant to be motivational you know you have self-help books to be motivational I think what a novel should do and it's very difficult really on our lecture but what I for example this is why sorry I wouldn't call Ayn Rand's books novels did we discuss Ayn Rand in reading fiction yes we did so Ayn Rand can be seen either as motivational or non-motivational for example but a novel I don't think gives any one simple message I think what a novel will do is to throw you into a situation problematize a situation so there are no easy answers to whatever what I meant by empathy yeah I know I made the mistake perhaps of saying you empathize with the narrator you empathize but there are narrators you cannot empathize with as well if you have read I didn't I couldn't empathize with time and punishment but if you have read Clockwork Orange not a Clockwork Orange okay don't read it or even if you read it don't empathize with the narrator please because he loves violence so what I meant you know I mean I can't help it so what I mean by empathizing with a narrator I think the sense of tolerance is to recognize that there can be more than one view of looking at something that's what empathy does eventually isn't it I mean if I am a woman and I am empathizing with a man I have already realized what it is to be a man in a world which I think as a woman is a man's world may not be things like that that's what I meant so please take larger pictures of the ideas I am giving you and not the narrow pictures because literal ways of understanding so I am going to now give you a provocative idea here I have got this idea from a book called reading Lolita in Tehran I will give you a very brief background to that book and then I will tell you what she says the author is Azhar Nafisi I will tell you what she says about what fiction does coming from her own personal experience and then this is a little more provocative okay so reading I don't know if anybody here has read reading Lolita in Tehran nobody has read it okay so Lolita everybody knows what Lolita is or who wrote Lolita and what it is all about even though they have not read Lolita right who wrote Lolita they don't even know who wrote Lolita poor Nabokov is famous not because of him but because of Lolita okay Lolita has this greatly sensational sensationalist novel which came out at some point and it disappointed a lot of people that's what Nabokov says I am not making this up so this is actually a memoir I can't this is not really a novel okay but this is a memoir reading Lolita in Tehran written by Azhar Nafisi who was a university professor in Tehran who resigned her job resigned from her post after the Iranian Revolution because she could not I think my recollection is that she refused to wear the veil that's why she refuses that's why she resigns because she could not fall in line with the states dictate about how she should dress when she goes to university and so on what she does is and she is a professor of English literature what she does later is that she convenes on every Thursday a secret group of students sorry ex-students from her university who come to her house and then they read books and the books they read are fiction they read novels okay and recognizes this recognize here is that this is already a subversive act you know what subversive is what is subversion how subversion is opposing how is it different from confrontation yeah you are not doing it openly but you are basically subverting this so this is what the students and the professor are doing here they are subverting the rule which says that they should not read literature or whatever the rule was they are not confronting the state but they are subverting it and they are getting the better of the state this is Lolita now for those of you who don't somebody must have read Lolita quickly tell us what Lolita is about so can you hear him 12 year old nimfet hum it's not it's it's more of sexual desire and it's it's problem acting because the woman is just a girl is 12 years old and he is I think in mid 30s or mid 40s the entire novel is about the entire novel is about the novel is about how he claims that she is reducing him that's the whole point right so you get the point here it's very it's very difficult really and you also should take a while to admire the talent of a man like Nabokov who could make a man claiming to be innocent give away his culpability you see what I mean here is Nabokov sorry Humbert who says that girl is reducing me that girl is reducing me first of all it should occur to anybody who's got half a brain that she's 12 and he's 40 or 100 or whatever and how can she be seducing him but the fact is Nabokov makes Humbert himself reveal that he is the one who is sort of you know I don't even mention right I don't want to get on in this track but I want you to I want to leave you with this idea that perhaps this is not a very uncommon formula that you know somebody else is blamed for seducing me whereas he's the one who's after her now what happens so reading Lolita in Tehran starts with the group the study group reading Lolita how does this book reading this book help them in any way to encounter their own reality depressive oppressive regime there is no freedom there is nothing that they can do they are in the control of a tyrant and Nafisi puts this very imaginatively she says that their reality has already been scripted by the state so I want to now introduce you to this notion which is a slightly sort of philosophical quasi-philosophical and metaphorical notion that we construct our realities and we have a certain amount of freedom in choosing a living are you able to get what I'm saying or do you want to contest it or do you want me to elaborate on it supposing I say I mean obviously it's not true that I can choose to eat a cake right now in front of you and I if I want I can you know choose to construct that reality but it's not in that little fashion that I'm talking about reality supposing somebody to choose or construct your own reality right now what reading Lolita does to this group they read Lolita and they are able to empathize to come back to your question about empathy they are able to empathize with Lolita because they see the injustice of what is happening to Lolita and they are able to correlate it to the injustice that is happening to them I am suggesting to you and again it comes from Nafi see that perhaps if they have a sense of innovation may not have been elaborated or amplified in such a clear cut manner to them the fact that they were being their lives were being authored by a tyrant the state just as Lolita's profile is being authored you know univocally by this man Humbert is a common point of convergence between the states to give Humbert a name sorry give the state a name or give Humbert also a name tyrant because they see Humbert as no different from the state which is oppressing them they have already found ways of subverting this oppression and that is by reading so there are two things that I think you know reading literature has actually enabled them here to start of reading a little later but reading is a form of escapism many people read in order to escape I mean this reality is so unpleasant let me read a novel or let me read a poem or let me read something which is a fantasy which is happy where I have some control over what happens so essentially if you lose all control over the world that you live in the real world and that you can try you can laugh at the tyrant then the tyrant has already lost his power over you can you recognize this as an idea that you can or if you want me to repeat these I will repeat it did you get what I am saying that you have to you know you don't have to be crushed by a powerful opponent I think this is this idea is not developed to this happy what happens in 1984 a man who dares to think something that the state doesn't let him think is taken to the torture chamber and then he is sort of put on a bed I think and some pain you know pain is applied to him and this is what I mean by somebody who wants to control your reality the man's name is he tells him he shows him two fingers and he says how many fingers do you see and Winston initially says two sorry so the the jailer says no no I show you two but you are and I say it's four I show you two I say it's four you have to see four so Winston says why should I do that I have but when the pain gets unbearable Winston just to buy you know relief says I see two but you know what this man says and that's where the crux of this whole oppression power etc lies this man tells him I know you are saying that you are seeing two because it's painful I don't want you to say two I want you to see let's say two or four whatever it is I want you to imagine imagination is something that nobody can restrict Winston is being punished or you know tortured to such an extent that his mind will become a puppet of the mind of the man who is punishing him so that he can only see what that man asks him to see not pretend to see actually see that's so scary isn't it if you so literature I think enables you to ask the questions that can only come makes evident ok so read it at some point and then see how the way in which you go to reading a purely imagined work can enable you to cope with your reality to understand your reality I in fact have an even sort of a simpler kind of reason for why you should escape but before I get there I also want to give you this example from midnight's children because ok so in midnight's children doesn't matter in midnight's children many things happen but one of the things that happen in midnight's children is that Salim Sinai the narrator is contrasting India with Pakistan India midnight's children are the children of midnight and the midnight is the glorious midnight of a freedom 14th night of 14th of August a glorification of the value of democracy the freedom to be able to say what you want to say express your opinion etcetera etcetera so he says and he puts it in this way Salim Sinai says there's a difference between India and Pakistan the difference between India and Pakistan is that India is not actually a nation it's a collective dream that all Indians are dreaming of democracy but he says the reality of Pakistan is a state sponsored reality he gives an interesting example of the different India's in India by saying that you know if you open the newspaper you can he says you open the newspaper I haven't read a newspaper in a long time so spare me if you read a newspaper you can believe these things people do believe these things right I mean they have the freedom to believe it and believe is your belief is your reality are you able to see that to a large extent what you believe is what is real for you and a novel can make you sort of know yeah so this is what I wanted to say what's wrong with escapism so do you all read fantasy I mean I know again this is another simplification oversimplification all engineering students like fantasy am I right yes why do you read fantasy Pallas is game of thrones fantasy thank god why do you read fantasy who reads fantasy this has to be you know ok so why do you read harry potter do you think some profound truths about reality are hidden in harry potter they could be if you want but why do you read fantasy to escape from this world right it's the ultimate form of escape it's better than other kinds of novels there's nothing in the harry potter world except perhaps strict school masters but I don't know the school teachers are strict anymore so which can really remind you of this world you think there's something wrong with escapism this is my least sort of passionate defense of why we read literature but I think we should also sort of allow this reason to exist for why we read literature what is wrong with wanting to escape and you never know when you escape you might actually discover something something might trigger your imagination which might actually come back and help you look at the reality in a different way I mean I said it for the bias of a certain kind trains you to understand and recognize how bias can operate in your own context in your own society maybe not race but something else maybe it's gender maybe it's something else and recognition is always the first step towards changing the reality yes or no if you can't even see a problem in your reality then you wouldn't even be bothering to change it but perhaps change it but change is something that even literature can do if you open your imagination to why you read I want to I had given I had distributed this Saki short story to them I don't know if anybody has read it you didn't read it so those of you who have read you also read it the open window those of you of course you must have those of you who have read the open window do you want to sort of ask me anything about it if only why I asked you to read it you did read the open window it's amazing why did you read it I mean what did you feel after reading it why did I read it did you feel why did I read it you were curious why I selected this this was just to see if you have certain questions about that short story which might be very basic how many of you did read it here this now okay so I wanted to ask whether you think the people who came in at the end are really people or ghosts why are they not ghosts you know that Vera has said in the beginning that they are ghosts what has enabled you to conclude you all of you believe that they are not ghosts the last line very good anything else this is a good example of what I would call a ghost then later on the aunt would not have been surprised that why she was he was running away he she is also surprised and remember how dismissively she speaks about him he was talking about his own illnesses all the time and I found him very morbid or something okay anything else I see okay so you are saying that these people wanted to know so why would ghosts bother about who that man is okay and nowhere it doesn't take sure and we have seen the entire conversation between Vera and this Frampton but there is no place where she has told him about this Ganges and the sorry Banaras and the Hounds right so clearly she has been lying and if you also read a little carefully you will find that at the beginning she is making very sure that he knows nobody there she has said that you know do you know anybody yeah she asked him that you know do you know anybody and then having ensured that he knows nothing and nobody so that because if he knew then he would know that these people are real people and I think she at that point just couldn't resist telling that story about how of course it was also there is a certain amount of coincidence that day also they said the same words were uttered by the people who came in through the window but anyway we shouldn't ask too many uncomfortable one last question have you read heart times and if you haven't read I don't blame you at all it's a very difficult novel today it's a very boring novel but I'm going to use heart times to make two points one point I'm going to make through heart times about this very famous philosopher called Martha Nussbaum who has written this book called poetic justice she is a professor of philosophy who taught a language on law who taught a course on law and literature in the University of Chicago where she was actually making a case she should have come to give this talk about why literature she is making a case for why it's important for judges and lawyers to have read literature before they went into a court of law before they pronounced verdicts or gave judgements you must also have noticed or if you haven't you will know that I'm using the word literature as if we are all agreed about what are the good books to read and what are not the good books to read there are a lot of these questions which are you know are implicit now because they will just take away from the main topic like you know that was one of the things that occurred to me when you asked me about how can I empathize with you know and somebody said Chetan Bhagat so I personally wouldn't put Chetan Bhagat Bhagat in the same league as Charles Dickens but anyway so this is just to say that you have nothing but my word at this point in time for why some literature is good and some literature qualifies his literature and the others qualifies trash or whatever okay now so she says and so it's with this our general understanding of this is what constitutes literature and these things don't constitute literature that Martha Nassbaum decided to teach her students hard times they read hard times you can't teach the novel read hard times and felt that reading that novel was important just as another novel by Raal Felicin called the Invisible Man she read that also as part of that law course so that she felt that judges want to I don't want to use the word victims to the people they were judging so the important of emotion in public life and there is why or there is where she found a value for literature that literature was useful because reading literature sensitize them in a certain way it's like music it sensitizes you in a certain way so it probably makes you more human and where law is pushing you towards being objective there is a danger of being too objective where literature comes in and enables you to look at it this was the point that she made so poetic justice you probably know what poetic justice means poetic justice means so if you in a story or in a novel you have good characters being rewarded and bad characters being punished then it is believed that I mean you say that novel works on the principle of poetic justice so that's what she means by poetic justice so through introduction to hard times you can always read it later it's not showing on the screen I can see it here but it's not showing I'll give you a very brief introduction because I'm going to read excerpts from chapter 2 I'm just going to read excerpts so it's important let him do what he wants to do please listen to me then I'm going to read excerpts from chapter 2 and because they excerpts let me just briefly tell you what the context of this chapter is established a school called the grad grind school his name is Thomas grad grind he will figure in this chapter then there is a school master called Chokam Child can you guess he is Chokam Child he chokes children with facts that's why it's called Chokam Child those of you are familiar with Dickens style will know that the kind of names that he brings out are very telling and then they are addressing a class of students and this is something that you can just sort of just look at the way in which this class is happening and also remember once I finish reading this chapter it's a short chapter and I will only read excerpts so don't worry there is a bit that I will read about how Thomas grad grind is introduced in this first paragraph and please notice this title of the chapter it's called murdering the innocence he so what Dickens means by this fact he actually uses the verb filling them this man this teacher sees the children the students sitting in front of him as pictures jugs into which facts after fact after fact has to be crammed and that is where I find that I can slip in this idea of imaginative literature as a counter to these facts anyway so this is Thomas grad grind who runs the school for those of you who have heard of JS you don't know that's a philosophy that the greatest good of the greatest number who is utilitarian philosophy which is being very virulently caricatured and attacked by Charles Dickens in the characters here so look at this Thomas grad grind sir a man of realities notice that there is implicit condemnation of this man having no imagination a man of facts and calculations a man who proceeds upon the principle not to be talked into allowing for anything over don't tell me two and two I know but there could be situations where you could imagine that it could be something else Thomas grad grind sir with a rule and a pair of scales and the multiplication table always in his pockets ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to so here again I will say that where knowledge can be quantified the knowledge that you get from to read this novel this is what you will get out of it or this will change you into such and such person even that much guarantee I can't give you but it will familiarize you with context which you might not have imagined before which may actually happen come to happen in your life later on so then something that happens in your life may put you in mind of a book that you read and help you to understand what's happened to you if it's intangible I can't help you but that's how it works okay it's a mere question of figures it's a mere question of figures a case of simple arithmetic you might hope to get some other etc I'm going to read this now I'm going to leave this and now I will talk about how he addresses his students girl number 20 said Mr. grad grind squarely pointing with his square four finger Dickens is deliberately using the image of square to show that he has no corners or he has no rounded edges I don't know that girl who's that girl sissy jupe sir explain number 20 blushing standing up and curtsing sissy is not a name said Mr. grad grind don't call yourself sissy call yourself sissilia he doesn't approve of shortening his father has called me sissy sir return the young girl then he has no business to do it so this is a man again a caricature and a funny version of a tyrant alright now then you know what he does is he asks her to define to give a definition of a horse and if he comes to this because she says my father is a trainer of horses so he says ok you define what a horses and she is unable to define a horse and see here girl number 20 unable to define a horse said Mr. grad grind for the general behoof of all the little pictures the little pictures are the students into whom facts have to be thrown girl number 20 possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals some boy's definition of a horse bit sir yours now bit sir let's see how bit sir is described and I also want you to notice how something very natural and poetic like the sunlight is described with respect to these two characters so that you are encouraged to understand these two characters the way the author wants you to the square finger moving here and there lighted suddenly on bit sir perhaps because he chance to sit in the same ray of sunlight which darting face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies you are familiar with this kind of arrangement divided up the center by a narrow interval and sissy being at the corner of a row on the sunny side came in for the beginning of a sun beam of which bit sir being at the other end or the other corner of a row on the other side a few rows in advance caught the end you see what Dickens is doing is describing a sun beam yeah very good but whereas the girl was so dark contrast color from the sun when it shown upon her the boy was so light-eyed and light-headed the self-same rays appear to draw out of him what little color he ever possessed his cold eyes would hardly have been eyes but for the short ends of lashes which were bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves express their form so he's basically trying to show how this 40 teeth namely 24 grinders 4 eye teeth and 12 incisive sheds coats in the spring in Mashi countries sheds hooves too hooves hard but requiring to be short with iron age don't bear marks and mouth so this is the kind of answer that somebody who's so fact-driven like grad grind wants and gets from a model student of his school now this is the problem that grad grind now what is grad grind's policy one is to cram the children with facts and the others to make sure that they have no imagination at all because imagination is deadly to fact there is an implicit opposite here polarizing so he says girl number 20 will you carpet your room or your husband's room if you were a grown woman and had a husband with representations of flowers why you would put tables and chairs upon them and have people walking over them with heavy boots it wouldn't hurt them sir they wouldn't crush and wither if you please sir they would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant and I would fancy eye eye but you mustn't fancy quite elated by coming so happily to his point that's it you're never to fancy okay you can read the rest of it later that even if a carpet were to have flowers on it simply because they look nice he objects to it because he says in reality we don't walk on flowers okay carpets with flowers and later he talks about the wall papering of a room and she says I will wall paper it with something I think with animals and he says in real life you don't have animals walking over walls so how can you have dickens he always makes his point by exaggeration and ridicule which is what caricature does so I thought I'll end it this whole talk of why we need literature in the words of dickens and now you're you feel free to ask me whatever questions you want you want to go it's been a one hour long lecture I understand open window yeah yeah so basically you know that has always worried me deeply because I thought if that was the level of understanding of what literature is there's a real problem I mean then how do I tell you that no because you know then I have to find reasons I mean the most obvious reason why they can't be ghost is then where's the story that's a whole thing yes romance short notice people who read the entire thing and still fight about the fact that they are not ghost so I thought if we are going to have discussions on that level then there might be a different way of approaching this question of how do we understand that something is a story see essentially it's a story it's not a newspaper report which says that actually there were ghosts who came in and the point is if there were really ghosts then there would be no story value to it but we have to have an instinct for understanding why literature matters may not have any relevance if you read it maybe you wouldn't ask this question but alright ask I think your question is about what makes certain books great literature and why should they always be difficult to read you didn't say it in so many words but I think somewhere you are saying that why is it difficult reading I'm not saying that Sydney Sheldon is a bad writer although I haven't read Sydney Sheldon in a long time but I recently read at Geoffrey Archer which I quite like doesn't have anything great to tell me in terms of discovery discovery of life or myself or anything I wouldn't classify it as great literature so I read the first of those five things what was it where there's a will is it Geoffrey Archer where there's a will or something is it where there's a will no it's not where there's a will I can't remember the title unfortunately but so I didn't I could predict what was happening and I thought I felt when I read it I felt cheated at the end of that book this is not to say all Geoffrey Archer's cheat or that others who are in the same book should feel cheated in the same manner but I want to say two things I want to say one that actually people don't read much at all the last I think 10 or 20 years there's been so little reading happening on a general skill because there are other forms of entertainment in my childhood there wasn't even a television so there was nothing else to do after I came back from school except take a book and read but I don't seem difficult at all this is my experience because people of my generation who have not read who have not studied English will tell you the same thing they haven't found because you know reading was available it was easy and it took you into a different world now this question of the other question that you raised I think is a question of genre so you have thrillers you want to read thrillers I mean you're reading I'm sure you can learn something from the rage of angels rage of angels is a Sydney Sheldon novel you read rage of angels so I think if you read rage of angels I mean it will give you very good ideas about how and if you want to be a lawyer in fact I would put I would tell Martha Nussbaum to put rage of angels there so no there is a certain snob value attached with literature which I think is what you're saying I agree but I feel that lately especially with game of thrones and so on the snob value has there you say Charles Dickens oh you should read game of thrones I'm a caricature doing this or Neil Gaiman I think you should read Neil Gaiman fantasy and escapism because Neil Gaiman says he's a fantasy writer he says what's wrong with escapism he says we need we have this obligation to read an escap if you read great expectations I'm sorry interrupted you but the thought just came if you read great expectations because you know when we are readers we read the same book many times so the first time I read it maybe even I would have thought what pictures then I go back I come back but reading requires a lot of both patience and application and I again like to say that the great novels will take that patience and application from you because they have something really nice to give P.J. Woodhouse a different generation P.J. Woodhouse you read you laugh you forget great expectations I don't know about hard times because hard times is about trade unions and so on and so forth and I wasn't so impressed by hard times it's a difficult novel to read because it's quite boring but great expectations if you had it would have paid you if you had read till the end of it or if you go back and read it if you didn't if you hadn't left it midway and if you had looked at the way it amazingly ends it's a book that will make you want to reflect a lot and I think anything that encourages is a good thing that's a common problem but I think it's a multi-pronged problem people don't read anymore reading has gone out of fashion why should I read when I can watch a film and why do they write so in such a difficult way how dare they write like this so that you know they make it difficult for me to read so when the questions towards books have themselves changed so much so I can't give the old answers anymore all I can say is read and it's up to you to read or not to read and I can say this is good literature this is not good literature I think if you don't worry too much about whether you have understood it right and just jump into the novel you can read it and I am saying this because I recently have been offering for three or four semesters I have been offering a course on Shakespeare it's a Shakespearean adaptations course but because I am an English teacher and I like reading Shakespeare I insist that we read some Shakespeare you won't believe it and these are students of engineering and they have their usual reservations about literature and so on sorry but after I read the adaptations or watched the film they wanted to read Shakespeare because it's just the first two or three pages which are difficult once you get the hang of it you can't stop reading because reading works like that so they found Shakespeare far more interesting because he was saying interesting things in a very unusual way see so this pictures for example if you think about it this whole notion of cramming a picture with facts doesn't that explain a certain kind of education and beauty that's what literature does it's not about facts where you understand what's happening we all understand so many things but the way in which we understand I think is as important as what we understand because it determines what you understand and how much you remember what you understand and how much you apply what you understand to your own real life situations thank you for that question it was a very good question you have a question a question has been looking at me from you for a long time nobody's challenging you want to add to anything that has been discussed or so there's a problem I'll stop now with a problem of interpretation that why I said you know she says as an aphisy says a good work work of fiction should disturb you so I think that when you read a novel a really good novel and read it in the way it should be read you don't go back with very categorical answers to problems or issues but I think you go back with more questions you ask yourself in that respect I'm sure many of you have read Julius Caesar at least in school okay so alright so if you compare it to 1984 1984 is very ideological because it says that totalitarian states are bad I'm not going to contest that ideology but I think being ideological takes away from some of the multifacetedness of this if you look at Julius Caesar the story of Julius Caesar as written by Shakespeare how are you going to interpret the conspiracy and the assassination what does it tell you about Julius Caesar about totalitarianism does it say that if you are a totalitarian dictator you will get assassinated or does it tell you that or does it say that if you are a totalitarian dictator you should get assassinated or does it say that if you assassinate a dictator you can't get away by assassinating him there will be a mark Anthony what is it telling you it's telling you all of these things across different stages of the play right so this notion of problematizing something making it impossible to justify any understanding I think that's what literature thank you