The scroll and the shelf

I asked a student of mine a simple question yesterday. Nothing fancy. Just "are you reading anything these days?"

She looked at me the way you look at someone asking about something that has gone extinct. Then she told me that she had tried reading "Pather Panchali" and given up after 20 pages. "I got bored," she said.

Because it had no drama, no hook, nothing to scroll towards.

That reminded me, is the young generation really walking away from books or are they just walking towards different ones? Perhaps manga or webtoons?

Many young readers today discover stories through wattpad, fanfiction and web novels. They are used to chapters that end on cliffhangers and plots that reveal themselves almost immediately.

Classics ask for something else. They ask for patience. Perhaps the classics never stood a chance against a phone that buzzes every 90 seconds.

To me, this debate is less about the inability or lack of desire to read classic novels, instead more about the pedestal that classic literature is put on.

Many people steer clear of them because they assume the books will be too dense and difficult, better suited to academics or serious readers, or should be saved for when you're older and can perhaps understand it better.

This feeling of intimidation leaves people with uncertainty about how to approach the classics, especially if you never read or studied the classics in school or have only read a few.

But since we are in an era of brain rot and fragmented attention spans, surely now is the time to read books that we find challenging.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with reading for enjoyment and escapism, but making space for different types of reading is what will make you a better, more critical reader in the long run.

When we're so used to constant scrolling and instant gratification, taking the time to slow down and read something which requires a tighter focus surely takes effort.

We cannot talk about Bengali reading habits without talking about Humayun Ahmed. Few writers understood ordinary life the way he did.

His characters never felt larger than life. They felt like people you had already met. They lived on familiar streets, worried about familiar things and carried the same joys and disappointments you face everyday.

His people wander through our own neighbourhoods. They could be your cousins. They could be the family two houses down.

He wrote with a kind of warmth that wraps the whole page like a blanket and once you are in it, you do not want to leave.

Take "Shonkhonil Karagar" for instance. You feel a small ache you cannot quite name.

Or take Himu. He first showed up in 1990 in a novel called "Moyurakkhi," five years after Ahmed had already given us the sharp, rational Misir Ali.

Himu is Misir Ali's opposite in every way. He has no logic and no plan. He walks barefoot at midnight in a yellow panjabi and calls it a philosophy.

Thousands of young Bengalis, on both sides of the border and scattered across the world, have secretly wished to live like him for at least one day.

Then there is Shuvro, the quiet, brilliant boy from "Daruchini Dwip." Without his glasses, the world turns into chaos for him. 

When Shuvro and his friends finally set off for Saint Martins, it becomes about growing up while your family watches, half-terrified, half-proud.

And Misir Ali introduces a locked chest that hums with the sound of anklets. A man who conjures fruit out of thin air, fruit that no fly will ever touch. A goldfish that vanishes and reappears at will.

Humayun Ahmed never explained these mysteries away completely.

If Humayun Ahmed taught me the beauty of familiarity, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay taught me the value of patience.

"Pather Panchali" was Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's first novel, published in 1929 and it never really stopped being read. It follows Harihar and Sarbajaya's family in the village of Nishchindipur, then later in Varanasi.

Their daughter Durga steals fruits sometimes. Their son Apu grows curious about a world beyond the fields. Their old aunt Indir Thakrun dies alone after being turned out of the house, a small tragedy folded into a much bigger one.

I read it so long ago, but I can still feel something between joy and grief, the way winter light looks through a shut window. Like the first sip of ginger tea on a cold winter day.

Those of us who grew up in cities never really lived Apu and Durga's childhood. We only borrowed it from the novel.

Reading their story now feels like stepping into a time machine set for a greener, slower world. Our life now runs on schedules and screens. Something softer keeps slipping through the cracks. Pages like these are where I go looking for it again.

'Kalbela' surprised me in a different way. I expected a political novel. Instead, I found one of Bengali literature's most enduring love stories.

Samaresh Majumdar wrote it as the second book of his Animesh quartet, serialised through 1981 and 1982.

Animesh arrives in Calcutta from the tea gardens of Jalpaiguri and is shot within his first day in the city, caught between police and protesters. He drifts into Naxalite politics.

Madhabilata, a fellow student from a wealthy family, falls for him completely and never really looks back. The novel does not flinch from what the movement cost.

Animesh is tortured in custody and comes out of prison unable to walk properly. Yet Madhabilata never leaves his side. She builds a home with him anyway, poverty and disability and all, and their bond becomes the real spine of the story.

I would not call 'Kalbela' a political novel, even though politics fills nearly every chapter. I would call it a novel about a woman who becomes fully herself through love without ever losing herself in it.

Majumdar shows the rot of factional politics in unflinching detail, yet he never explains how West Bengal let so much promise curdle into bloodshed.

Maybe that question was never his to answer.

And then there are Satyajit Ray's detective Feluda, his cousin Topshe and the endearingly clueless novelist Jatayu. Satyajit Ray showed me that curiosity can have its own adventure.

In "Joy Baba Felunath," the trio travels to Varanasi purely for a Durga Puja break. A wealthy businessman named Umanath Ghoshal draws them into a case anyway: his family's gold Ganesh idol has gone missing right before the festival.

Ray made places feel as memorable as people.

His own illustrations scattered throughout the books only deepened that experience. I still remember the ache of finishing the whole Feluda collection.

Ray sketched little illustrations through the books and I used to fall asleep with those images still moving behind my eyes.

So are we really done reading? You are certainly missing out if you don't give these a try.

I do not think Gen Z has abandoned books. I think they have found faster ones. A generation raised on scroll speed will always find Bibhutibhushan's pacing slow at first glance.

But if you start reading, Durga stops being a stranger. Himu stops being a gimmick. Animesh's Calcutta stops being someone else's history and starts feeling oddly close to home.

Maybe that is the whole point of a classic novel. It does not compete for your attention. It waits for you to grow into it.

Classics quietly wait  on a shelf until the right moment in a reader's life. Years later, we return to the same pages and discover that the book has not changed. We have.