Retirement - The Joy of Doing Nothing

As soon as I announced my intention to retire, people started asking me what I planned to do in retirement. This puzzled me because to me, the whole idea of retirement was not having to make plans. It made me vaguely uncomfortable as though I was entering some uncharted territory. Truth be told, I was already quite well-versed in the art of doing nothing and was looking forward to doing it full time. 

Jokes aside, I gave the question some thought. And I answered somewhat evasively that I had nothing specific planned but was thinking about a few things. I might start volunteering more, learn a new language, do more writing, etc. True, I have not really done much of these though I had every intention of doing them and still have. As you will have noticed, this blog itself has seen just a few new posts since my retirement.

The idea of suddenly finding a major part of your day suddenly becoming free may be unsettling. On an average work day, I must have dedicated around ten hours to my job. Wonder of wonders, I find that I am not exactly sitting twiddling my thumbs trying to decide what to do with all that free time. I seem to have seamlessly moved into retirement where the said hours have been swallowed up in my engaging in The Art of Doing Nothing. I am going to call this TADON. Nothing succeeds like acronyms, don't you agree? Or even better, Tadon which sounds like a legitimate philosophy. I should probably trademark this and start running seminars. It is a good plan but paradoxically it would mean doing something! 

Will doing nothing result in boredom?  Perhaps, but we should allow ourselves to be bored from time to time, argues Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Harvard. We normally do not like to be bored because there is something uncomfortable about being alone with ourselves. We are forced to face difficult questions that we have carefully tucked away and we would rather choose electric shock over that (See https://vulcanpost.com/896837/you-need-to-get-bored-more-harvard-business-review/). But if we stick with it patiently, “You’ll start digging into the biggest questions in your life—purpose, meaning, coherence, and significance. And who knows? You might just get happier”, says Brooks.

Let me hasten to add that doing nothing is not the same as experiencing boredom. Nor is the goal of retiring, to experience boredom. Being bored is having nothing to do and being uncomfortable with that. The art of doing nothing is to be at peace with it. Doing nothing sounds like a waste of time but it serves an important purpose. In fact, everyone should be able to comfortably sit doing nothing every now and then. Ironically, if you try hard to do nothing, it can be exhausting. It requires letting go of control and allowing us to just experience the moment without any effort from our part, without the fear of missing out on something. Peace just slips in at such times. 

I do not want to give the impression that I am enjoying some newfound peace. I am just enjoying not having a fixed office routine. Otherwise not much has changed. Occasionally, I feel a little guilty about not engaging in something productive. But I refuse to force myself to be busy just for the sake of it. Apart from the job, many of the other things that I did before continue to engage me and I am slowly increasing my involvement in them. I also manage to travel a little.

The biggest impediment to a tranquil life has been the increasing time spent on an increasingly larger smartphone. But the aging joints in my hands keep reminding me that I should reduce this. The greatest joy has been in going for walks with my better half and with friends. I have also managed to read more. Watching mystery shows on TV is a guilty pleasure indulged in without the guilt! And there are periods when I do nothing. With all these, I have also been able to avoid the long neglected chores around the house! All this is not to say that there are no challenges but life is definitely less hectic.

Retirement can mean different things to people. As the trajectories of our careers vary, so will our retirement paths. For some it may mean that they are fully occupied with new things e.g. volunteering full time; for others, it’s a time of relaxation and travel, and spending time with children and grandchildren. Some will continue to enjoy working in their field, writing books, conducting seminars, etc. and not really leave their vocations. Some even say they are busier after retiring than ever before!

Whatever be the path, I think retirement need not be uncomfortable if one remembers that a job does not define a person. At least I believe it in my case. Retiring from a job is just that. It is not retiring from life.

Metamorphosis

I seem to have planted unknowingly a couple of bushes in my backyard which bloom profusely and humming birds and bees are constant visitors for their nectar. I do see some butterflies too in my backyard including the occasional monarchs in their migration which will now and then land on these blooms and go on with their journey after a fill. 

A few years ago when I saw a passion flower vine (passiflora vitifolia) at the local nursery, described as 'butterfly attractor', I had to get it and plant it in my backyard. For about four years it grew steadily putting out foliage but it did not bloom, testing my patience. Needless to say no butterflies approached it. And then finally one summer day, a brilliant scarlet flower about 4 inches across appeared. 
Almost simultaneously a pair of orange winged butterflies appeared out of nowhere. How did they know? 

After a few days I noticed a couple of caterpillars feeding on the leaves of the plant but that seemed to be it. I think that year we got maybe a two or three flowers and just a little activity from the butterflies. We probably missed the rest of the life cycle of the butterfly. The following year we had more flowers and more activity from the passion butterflies. These live just for a few weeks yet the descendants of the previous visitors somehow managed to find their way into our yard a year later! 

The orange butterflies (which I found out were known as Passion Butterflies) were new to the yard and they came specifically for the passion flower vine. While I was expecting that the passion flowers attracted the creatures for the nectar, I had no idea that the passiflora vine is the host plant for the Gulf Fritillary aka passion butterflies which means that they lay their eggs on the vine. Once the eggs hatch, the black and orange caterpillars that emerge feed exclusively on the leaves of the vine. So soon after the appearance of the butterflies a few caterpillars emerged and started nipping away at the leaves. They fed voraciously and decimated the plant. A few days later I started noticing that they were hanging upside down from the pergola and slowly entered the pupae. 

The pupae were unremarkable and easy to mistake as dried leaves. They looked small and fragile but they hung on even in strong winds. We became fascinated by them wondering when the mature butterflies would emerge. For days we waited but we invariably missed the actual moment when they emerged. It was a long wait but we finally managed to see one that was just half way out. This was very exciting indeed.

As you might know (or not - I did not and  had to look it up) when it emerges from the chrysalis the butterfly pumps fluid into its folded wings to expand and dry them before it can fly. It is this process that we managed to witness. The butterfly finally opened its wings and took its maiden flight. The colours were simply magnificent. What had entered the chrysalis was a somewhat scary looking hairy caterpillar. What emerged was an elegant beauty. What a transformation!

I had followed the whole process with thrill - the caterpillar consuming the leaves and rapidly growing, then entering a phase of quiet meditation as it were and finally emerging transformed into a beautiful and free being. Throughout this period, the butterflies would appear mid-mornings when the sun was just beginning to feel warm and stay till mid-afternoon. Unlike the other butterflies which briefly paused to feed on the flowers, these sometimes as many as four would fly around the bush constantly providing a visual delight. I wondered where they rested for the night as butterflies do not seem to build nests. Apparently they just find a safe place in a tree, bush or crevice and simply doze. They are solar powered and need the warmth of the sun to move around so they become inactive at night. Life does not get simpler than that!

So for a few days, the butterflies danced around in the yard hovering over the now leafless vine or settling for a drink on one of the other bushes. Then one day they just left I know not where to. Since the vine did not survive the onslaught of the caterpillars, I do not expect they will return this year. I may also have contributed to the demise of the plant by neglecting to check the water line. Sigh. 

As I ponder the fascinating life of the butterfly, I think we too have the ability to enter the cocoon of withdrawal and contemplation and the potential to transform ourselves. Our scriptures actually prescribe four stages of life - student, householder, retiree, and renunciate*. That is, acquire life skills, lead a productive life earning wealth and contributing to society, then withdraw from active life, and finally renounce everything to pursue enlightenment. The Buddha is probably the most well-known example of one who entered a prolonged state of meditation and then emerged enlightened but there are plenty of stories of kings and commoners who followed this. Judging by the lifestyle around us it would seem that most of us are still in the stage of consumption but each one of us has the power to take the leap to the next stages. Something for us to munch on?

(*bramhacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha, and sannyasa are the four stages of life)

It's A Snap!

Remember the 110 camera? Look it up if you have forgotten or you are too young to have seen one. That was the first camera that I bought. It was compact and easy to use, consisting of basically a point-and-shoot mechanism. It even had a telephoto option and a small sliding cover for the lens. If you forgot to open that and took a picture, the result may look as though you had used a filter. Come to think of it, I wonder if that was the intended use of it. The cartridge held 24 frames and could be loaded or unloaded with ease. I would just aim the thing in the general direction of the scene I wanted to capture, and if I liked what I saw through the viewfinder, I would click. 

There was no telling how the pictures would turn out. I had to wait for the film to be developed and prints made. Given that I was no expert photographer, if 3 or 4 pictures out of 10 looked alright, I would be happy. There were some surprisingly good ones too every now and then. I created albums by curating the best shots. After a few years, the prints faded or acquired this strange orange haze maybe because of the materials used in the album, exposure to UV light, and so on. 

After I graduated to a 35 mm camera, I was able to take better pictures (I think!) but the camera came with so many controls that befuddled me. Usually, I ended using the automatic option which meant that the camera decided most of the settings like exposure. The quality of printing meanwhile got better and at the same time less expensive as a result of stiff competition. 

And so, the collection of photographs grew steadily and in inverse proportion to that, the enthusiasm to curate them into albums. The photos simply ended up in envelopes and the envelopes in shoe boxes. The job just became harder and harder as the collection grew. Gone by the wayside was even the discipline of preserving the negatives in any sensible way. Now, I am not a prolific shooter by any measure. I can only imagine what someone who snaps away constantly must be facing. But then, such a person may be more motivated and disciplined. 

Sifting through the collection has become an exciting adventure because you sort of rediscover the moments that you had captured long ago. That nagging voice that says I must sort them out however, continues to be ignored. How about scanning them and making digital copies, you say? Ah, that would require a serious triage to select only those that are worthy of preserving. Plus a commitment to sit for hours scanning, editing, and saving, though ultimately I may have to do this to archive and preserve the pictures.   

Digital photography has certainly proved to be a boon. I don't have to spend money on film or processing. I can even feel good about not wasting resources in printing the bad pictures. Easy uploading to a computer means storage is not a problem.The smartphone has made taking pictures simpler by an order of magnitude. Everyone can now aspire to be a photographer. You don't have to buy a camera and you are always ready to shoot. 

It is estimated that there are nearly five billion smartphone users in the world. Just think about that for a moment. With such a staggering number of people walking around with these devices, and the cheap availability of storage, no moment is too insignificant to save. So we click away merrily. The photos often get uploaded to the cloud. They are shared on social media with friends and families and they keep getting shared to a wider and wider circle often without the original poster knowing. It is scary how these spread out with nary a thought given to privacy issues. Also, I just shudder to think about the enormous amount of cloud storage all the trivia must be taking up and the associated cost. Any savings on film, developing, and printing may be trivial compared to that. 

Don't get me wrong. I fully appreciate the ease of using the phone as a camera (a very good one at that) and the ability to take my 'collection' with me everywhere. It is literally available at my fingertips to browse. But the problem of curating the collection has predictably become much worse with digital photos. The task is simply too enormous. Consider this. In the old days, the wedding photographer usually came back with a printed album within a short time after the event. Today, a wedding may result in a few thousand pictures to sort through. Who has the time to make a hard copy album or even a digital one? If we cannot handle one event, we can forget about scouring through years of digital images. Until you are reminded that you are running out of storage, it is a problem that is easy to ignore. At that point, you simply buy more storage!

I think there is something to be said for a hard copy album of photographs. Sitting down on the couch and thumbing through the pictures is pleasant nostalgic journey. If you wanted to show them to others, it is so much more practical to hand over the printed album or even just the prints than handing over your phone. Call me old-fashioned but scrolling through the pictures on your phone is not quite the same thing. With digital photography, capturing the moments is a breeze but recalling them, not so easy. And having thousands of pictures as opposed to a few hundreds seems to have devalued the pictures somehow (is a picture still worth a thousand words?).

One final point. No matter how good the camera, the way the lens captures certain scenes cannot compare to the way our eyes do. I find that I have to put away the phone sometimes and just enjoy the scene in front of me. There is something in the way we are able to look near and afar simultaneously. As a result, what is simply breathtaking to our eyes can end up looking ordinary on the screen. Sometimes, you have to stop and smell the rose or in this case, stop and enjoy the scene. Or to borrow a phrase, we have to 'stand and stare'.

The Pursuit of Happiness

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"  - Declaration of Independence

The authors of the declaration proclaim only our right to pursue happiness. They were perhaps skeptical whether happiness can actually be attained. I wonder also if they thought that the Creator who endowed us with this 'unalienable right' to pursue happiness, did not at the same time provide us with the means to attaining it. Is it left for individuals to discover the means since we differ in our temperaments and inclinations? Elusive or not, lasting happiness certainly seems to be our overarching goal. Anyone who is unhappy wants to be happy. One who is happy does not want that to change. The purpose of life then is to be happy. 

All of us expect to find our happiness in the world outside in objects, relationships, and so on. We go about this in our own different ways depending on our likes and dislikes. It is important to note that likes and dislikes, and not the world per se, determine whether we find the happiness we seek in the objects that we pursue. The world is the same but can seem different to each of us. We each have our own view of the objects and people surrounding us. We label them as desirable and undesirable and spend our life trying to accumulate the former and avoid the latter. Since the world is not under our control, and our tastes change over time, any happiness enjoyed is fleeting and our efforts generally fall short. Much of our life is spent working for a future attainment, struggling for sporadic occurrences of happiness. Pursuing happiness can thus be exhausting. 

There is another difficulty with finding happiness outside. If objects themselves are inherently capable of giving happiness, they must do so at all times and to all who acquire them. Neither of these is true as we can readily appreciate – one man’s meat is another man’s poison as the saying goes and an object may not even continue to produce happiness at all times to the person who desires it and acquires it. This is evident from the fact that we continue to pursue objects endlessly and find ourselves at the mercy of the world. 

Many years ago, I read 'The Conquest of Happiness' by Bertrand Russell. I was struck by the title. What does conquest mean here? And what do you do after you have conquered happiness? Is it an emotion like anger or fear to be overcome? Is it a trophy to be won? The book is mainly addressed to those who are free from problems like poverty and tries to make the case that in the absence of such privation, it should be possible to obtain happiness by expanding one's interests as wide as possible. Looking outward rather than inward seems to be the prescription, if I may be allowed some simplification. He also believes that the man of science is the happiest because he gets great intellectual satisfaction from his work. Russell states that scientists have no need of complex emotions as a result. They are not dependent on public opinion unlike artists and writers who are miserable because they are at the mercy of critics and the public. But he also adds, "Einstein is honoured while the best painters are left to starve in garrets, and Einstein is happy while the painters are unhappy" indicating that public approval is actually the measure of happiness. I think it is unfortunate to be at the mercy of something as fickle as public opinion for your happiness. 

Today it is the movie actors (or artists) and sports heroes that command public attention while scientists live in relative obscurity. But being the object of public adulation does not seem to bring happiness. It may even bring misery. Despite possessing great wealth or being highly accomplished, people can be unhappy inside. 

In 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, the focus is definitely inward. Training the mind is the key to happiness according to the Dalai Lama. Cultivating values such as compassion and affection are important to one's happiness. He says, "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion". Material things can provide sensory pleasure but that is transitory and does little to allay fear and anxiety. On the other hand, joy that comes from inside sustains itself. (You can read more in this article:The purpose of life is to be happy)

Is trying to attain lasting happiness a realistic goal? We saw earlier that objects are not inherently possessed of happiness. Yet we seem to gain a measure of happiness when we acquire an object we desire. So where does this happiness originate? If the object is not the source, then by elimination, it stands to reason that we must be the source. How then do objects make us happy? 

It seems that contact with objects of our desire makes us happy. Conversely, when we desire something and do not possess it, we are unhappy. We are agitated and we put forth effort to obtain that object. Upon getting possession of the object, the agitations are quelled momentarily and we experience peace and joy which stem from inside us. But this is only fleeting because our minds are constantly running after objects – desires will always keep bubbling up, no matter how many are fulfilled and it seems that we are destined to be in a state of agitation forever. The intensity of agitations may rise and fall, but they are never absent. As long as the they continue, we will not experience lasting happiness. 

Some spiritual traditions hold that lasting happiness is to be found inside of us and only inside. Happiness is in fact our very nature. Being ignorant of this, we seek it outside. Instead, we must turn our gaze inside. Only by knowing 'our true selves', can we be free of the endless struggle to find happiness. 'One who knows the Self crosses over grief (tarati shokam aatmavit)', as the Chandogya Upanishad (7.1.3) declares. How does one come to 'know' the Self? That's a topic for another day! 

 

No Two Persons

"No two persons read the same book" (Edmund Wilson). This implies that each reader derives a unique experience from a book. And why not? Taste and temperament vary from one individual to another. Our life experiences further accentuate such differences. The book 'No Two Persons' by Erica Bauermeister, which I read recently, is a novel about the impact a particular book has on several individuals. It was very absorbing and left me with a desire to read the book which had a transformative effect on different individuals but in entirely different ways. No two persons read the same book after all. 

One can say that each of us perceives the world uniquely. When we say the sky is blue, does every one of us have the exact same image on the retina? Our biological bodies have enough in common that we have evolved a consensus regarding the world around us. The question of unique images or sounds would seem less important. 

What about our thoughts and emotions? How we react to stories, art, or music? How unique are we in these? I think it is easy to exaggerate the differences but the fact we have popular books, movies, music and art suggests that we are more alike than different at least within a geographical area or a cultural unit.  There is also our tendency to be influenced by trends. When we travel and interact with different cultures, the differences do surface. But with the world becoming increasingly connected, the boundaries are becoming blurred.

Our likes and dislikes and our opinions may be shaped by the culture or society where we live. There is also a lot that we learn as we grow up. We go through school and college and are exposed to diverse ideas. We are actually taught to think about things in specific ways. While this is undoubtedly useful, does this condition us and make us more predictable and less unique? Do we lose the spontaneity that we had as children? Why do I need courses on 'Literary Appreciation', 'Film Appreciation' and on  theories that are trying tell me how to think about art and literature? If a particular work does not make an impression on me does that mean I somehow lack the ability and therefore must strive to understand it? 

I read books, listen to music or watch movies for entertainment or information. Sometimes I am provoked to think about the subject. But then there are books and films that leave me wondering what they mean. I can look for reviews and such to learn their supposed import. While these may deepen my understanding and even add to my appreciation, I may not be motivated to try if the work does not have an impact on its own to start with. 

This brings me back to the quote I started with. One of the exercises many of us have gone through in school or college is to write a book report. There are sometimes questions regarding what the author meant by certain book or a poem. How are we to know the author's intent? If we accept that each person will have a unique take on the book or the poem, this question should really be about my opinions, never mind the author's. How should the response be evaluated? It strikes me that the instructor's own biases will heavily influence this. If I am unimpressed by a famous literary work (gasp!), the professor may not take kindly to that. I may even be considered a person with poor tastes. If I merely reproduce a scholarly opinion and state that I concur with it, I may get into trouble for plagiarizing. 

It would seem that once a book is published, it is really up to the readers to interpret it after that. The author cedes control of the narrative to some extent. Of course with promotional tours and appearances in talk shows, the authors can guide the process. But they cannot reveal too much at this stage so as to keep the readers interested. I wonder if authors receive reactions for their books entirely different from what they expected. And what role does the publisher play? After all they judge whether a given book will be successful. So how many books do not reach the readers because no editor liked it? All this makes me really appreciate the plight of those who produce original works. 

It must be gratifying to authors to have a book received exactly the way they intended. There are books that resonate particularly well with me. I would like to think that these are perhaps books where the author and I are of one mind. Is it possible to refine one's sensibilities to such an extent that one can mind meld with different authors in this manner? Be a true connoisseur and critic?

Personally, it is hard enough for me to churn out a few paragraphs every once in a while on my pet peeves let alone anything creative. I am very grateful for the friends and family who indulge me and encourage me in this. On the strength of that, I shall keep writing as time permits or ideas occur. I hope that my readers find my views resonating with theirs more often than not. In the meantime, I hope to keep reading and find more books to enjoy, more authors to resonate with. When I go to the library I don't try to borrow the latest bestseller. I browse the new books section and try to pick up works by authors I have not read before with some help from the jacket notes. This way I have found some that I really enjoyed but also some that I found boring or left me in a fog. Well, you can't judge a book by its cover after all! 

Spam, Sham and Scams

I have a confession to make: I miss junk mail sometimes. I have previously written about how the mail is generally filled with unwanted stuff - offers for credit cards or loans, marketing flyers, etc. There is the occasional gem that provides some entertainment. I refer you to my post on this: Free and Pre-Paid. But over the last few years, I guess businesses have come to realize that mailers offer ever diminishing returns in today's digital world. Even spamming us via email is not very effective as smart filters can keep the unwanted stuff away. Newer ways to target us keep coming up as a result. Social media, anyone? 

In the midst of all this, I have noticed a steady decline in the volume of printed flyers and such reaching my mailbox. While not exactly unhappy about this, I still trek to the curbside mailbox every day to fetch the mail with a trace of anticipation. More out of ingrained habit, I think. Having signed up for electronic delivery of all documents with utility companies, banks and others, the task is pretty much just to pick up whatever is there and deposit it in the trash. But now that I am retired and have some time on my hands, I occasionally peruse the mail. And occasionally something or the other catches my eye. Sometimes the mail does deliver.

The other day, 'Digital Coupon Event', announced one colourful flyer. If it is a digital coupon, why are they sending it by snail mail? I moved to the next one and on a whim, decided to open the envelope. The letter inside had a Post-It stuck on it with this message (I am not making this up!): 'This is from my manager. He wants your vehicle'. I was puzzled. Is this some kind of a shake down? What could explain this peremptory demand? I read the actual letter and it turned out that the car dealership wanted to purchase my car. And would like to sell me a new car. The whole thing had shades of a mob deal ('An offer you cannot refuse').

Spam comes to you in many ways including mail and door-to-door. Door-to-door salesmen may be the original spammers. To be fair, I should not call them spammers as they are not trying to defraud people. Sales reps used to knock on doors trying to sell say, encyclopaedia or vacuum cleaners (As an aside, here's a hilarious account of a salesman who got the two mixed up). For major services and products like solar panels, companies still employ people to canvass the neighbourhood. I do feel somewhat sorry for these people as they have to face a lot of rejection, sometimes rude. But they are very persistent. If you do let them in, be prepared to forgo an hour or more of your time with potential follow up visits. 

Phone campaigns used to be big too but with land lines becoming obsolete, they may not offer good returns. I remember the time when so many calls turned out to be from telemarketers. You can put your number on a Do Not Call registry but some organizations are exempt from this. There are political and other organizations seeking contributions that continue to employ phone campaigns. I once picked up such a call (this was many many years ago) and was surprised  to hear the caller say, "Howdy, I am calling from the sheriff's department'. This was a call asking for a donation for the Policemen's Welfare Fund or something like that. Slightly alarmed at being contacted by the police, I ended up donating to the fund. One must not antagonize the local police after all. Looking back though, I think he must have said 'for the Sheriff's department'. I learned later that fund raising is delegated to professionals who receive a percentage of the collection as compensation for their efforts. Some of these callers are, how shall I put it, more enthusiastic than others.

Moving on, as I said before, the volume of mailers has reduced to a trickle now. The action has moved online and to text messages. Since we are more or less inseparable from our phones, we are subject to all sorts of nuisance calls and texts. There is this compulsion to check the message and emails as soon as they arrive since the phone is now pretty much an extension of your body. It takes a lot of discipline to resist the urge. 

While emails can be filtered for spam fairly effectively, text messages manage to get through. The US Postal Service is waiting to deliver my package and needs a confirmation of details if one text is to be believed. Or it is a job offer stating that my skills and experience are a perfect match for an unspecified job. Or asking me to sell a house I do not own. Other messages merely say 'Hey' or 'Hello'. Still others maintain that somehow the sender has you in their contact list but they cannot remember who you are. One even demanded to know why I hadn't called! 

These messages may seem harmless and are easy to ignore. Others set off alarm bells claiming that your PayPal account has been charged for something or that you are facing imminent arrest, for example. But replying to them or clicking on suggested links or calling the number given can take you for a long ride down a rabbit hole. Typically, those who fall victims to these end up in long tortuous phone calls that play on their fears. The callers seem to have the amazing ability to make the victim turn over all sorts of data and actually hand over tidy amounts of cash in some instances. 

There is only one response to all unwanted texts. Delete and report junk. Don't entertain any curiosity, not even for a split second! Be ruthless. Ceaseless vigilance must be exercised. Perhaps now you can understand my longing for the good old days when the spam was politely and unobtrusively left in your mailbox waiting for you to pick up at your leisure.

Stories Retold

The new season of a series had just been released. All ten episodes were available to stream. Streaming is certainly a convenient way to watch your favorite programs. No more recording the program when it airs and no danger of forgetting to record it either. You can now watch it at your convenience. And of course there is also the opportunity to watch the entire series without waiting, in other words, for binge watching. 

Waiting for a week between episodes had its own thrill but that is becoming a thing of the past. With all episodes being dumped online at the same time, there is a fear that someone will spoil the suspense and so one may feel the need to watch all of the episodes as quickly as possible. Or negative opinions from those who have already watched may put one off. Besides, at the end of each episode, the streaming app automatically and conveniently plays the next one. You don't even have to pick up the remote. Who can resist that? 

I must confess that I indulged in binge watching every now and then. Recently when I was confined to the bedroom with Covid, I watched three seasons of a show over as many days. But I then switched to reading and managed to read five books over the next few days. I will say that the latter was more satisfying and certainly more relaxing.

The viewing public has been switching to streaming platforms for quite some time now. Given the intense competition for market share, the longer a viewer can be kept engaged on a platform, the better. If they waited to stream one chapter at a time, who knows if the viewers will return? They may get distracted in this age of short attention spans. So online articles scream at you with headings like 'Why you absolutely must watch the new season now!'. Producers and cast get themselves invited to talk about the serial on radio/TV talk shows to create a buzz that drives viewers to the streaming channels. 

The first time I heard the phrase - binge watching, it was jarring. I don't know why. I mean how is it different from reading a book at one sitting? The book was unputdownable just like the TV remote in the case of binge watching. But the word 'binge' has an unsavoury connotation. Binging is associated with eating or drinking without control and now with watching TV. You do not associate it with reading. You may end up being called a bookworm, but you can possibly wear that epithet as a badge of honor. 

Many studies have shown that reading a book is better than watching TV (It is even better than reading the book on a device). But the idea of watching an entire series by bingeing as opposed to one episode or chapter at a time takes this to another level. Sitting for long hours in front of the TV screen is surely detrimental to one's physical and mental health. While we can and often read a book in one go, that may not be suitable for all types of stories. Some books deserve a slower pace of reading. But reading for long stretches of time is not something to get worried about as far as I know. 

There was a time when new novels would often be serialized in a weekly magazine before being published as a book. Saturday Evening Post used to publish novels as serials. Some of the best novels in Tamil appeared as serials in popular weeklies first. When I was young, this was actually the only way most people got to read a new story. I feel this one installment per week (per month in some cases) format made us savour the book in a different way. We wondered what was coming next as we waited for a fresh serving every week. We discussed the story every time a new chapter came out, sometimes passionately. It is even possible that some of the readers' feedback influenced the course of a novel.

Old issues of the magazines were not thrown out but preserved. It was a common practice to cull out the chapters of the novels from each week and then bind the whole thing together so that one had the entire book in a convenient volume at the end. If the story was a long one - some novels ran for years - then there could be multiple volumes. I was able to read some stories written years before I was born as they had been collected in this fashion -  illustrations and the advertisements included. Some of the magazines had a larger paper size and the illustrations looked gorgeous. 

I am tempted to say that the TV screen and online streaming services have usurped the reading habit but new books are coming out constantly. Bestseller lists are still being compiled. Are there really so many new stories? How many are rehashes of old ones? I think that question is immaterial when you consider this. No matter how many murder mysteries have been written, it seems that there is room for more. Similarly, other stories too are being churned out constantly.

Whether there is something new or whether old themes are being recycled is irrelevant. Human beings have been telling stories to one another for a very long time. And we never tire of listening to them. The earliest cave paintings may actually represent stories. Over the ages, stories like Panchatantra and Hitopadesha, folk tales, and fairy tales have been used to instruct and to entertain the young. Even when the story is old and well-known, it can be retold to a new generation. Take the epics and puranas of India. From time immemorial, these have been told to audiences in many different forms - lecture, songs, and drama. The original versions themselves were written as stories narrated by someone to an audience. And they continue to be performed even today. They have also been made into TV serials and when they were broadcast, the entire country took a break from everything else and watched.  

In other cases, old themes may be updated to the present (or future) time period, appealing to newer audiences. The best science-fiction and fantasy stories do this particularly well. It can be said confidently that no one watches Star Trek for the technology shown there. And  whether a book is set in a hospital or a police precinct or in a space ship, it is not the medical or crime stories but the human drama around the doctors, nurses, detectives and others that audiences find compelling. "It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory" as the song goes, but made new in some way. 

 

Today we have access to an astounding collection of stories from every corner of the world from every era past and this repository is continuously growing. Each generation leaves its mark on the collection. We can read one chapter at a time or an entire book in one sitting, but we will never run out of reading material. Between surfing the web and streaming movies and serials, whether we will continue to read books is an entirely different question. Which reminds me. Time to get off the computer and head to the library.