Novels

Originally written for my sister's eloqution preparation Aug 1994

Respected …. and my dear friends, have you ever read that passionate creation by Jane Austen, her novel “Pride and Prejudice” and seen the TV serial Trishna based on the same? Or have you had the pleasure of enjoying the moving stories of the great Hindi writer Premchandra and watched the dramatised version of the same on TV?

Respected …. and my dear friends, the topic for today’s debate is “Television has made novel-reading superfluous.” I am totally against the motion, I would go on to say that the topic itself is superfluous, in fact preposterous and I feel sorry that a full-fledged debate is needed to refute the statement. As an English(H) student and as a connoisseur of good books, I dread the time when such a statement would become truth.

I am not going to criticize or condemn television, I myself like watching TV and respect it as a media to provide infotainment. However, I am not going to accept that it has surpassed the qualities of books and can replace the books. The expansion of satellite communication has certainly provided us with an opportunity to sit glued to television day and night and choose among various available channels, but that does not undermine the importance of books. Give me a good book and I am sure to shut off the TV. In a lighter vein, that saves electricity.

A supporter of the topic of debate may ask, “What have novels and books to offer over and above TV?”. I ask, “What not?” Prof. Basu was telling us in class that there are four styles of introducing comedy in a plot. One, make some character comic. Second, make the dialogue comic. Third, create comic situations. Fourth, make your language comic. The first three can be created in a play or film or TV serial but the fourth, the language of the book or the style of the writer, if you prefer, can never be achieved anywhere else except the book. And it is so not only with the comedy but also with every other emotion or though conceivable, be it a tragedy, love, horror or anything.

Any number of examples can be cited to verify this. One just has to read a literary piece and then watch its dramatised version to realise the shortcomings of TV serials. Read RK Narayan and see the televised version of his stories. Read PG Wodehouse and watch the serial Jeeves and Wooster on Star Plus. Even Sherlock Holmes looks better in print than on screen. Read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and then, watch the serialised version on television. And in case you have missed these books/serials, read Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the serialised version of which is soon to appear on TV. In all cases, you will find that the TV does not grip you as the book did, you may even find that what is being shown in TV is not exactly the picture you had in mind for the plot.

Any connoisseur of good taste, anyone who wants thoughtful entertainment and not just pass the time, anyone who feels good to become involved with, to be a part of the plot and not simply watch it as a third person would never leave books, novels for TV. Tell me the name of any TV serial and I would immediately tell you at least ten books which would make you, or at least me, drop the very idea of TV.

The advent of new technology, my dear friends, should not and has never removed what is good in the existing society. In fact, technology has only supplemented and helped the existing. There is an increasing tendency in the western countries, especially USA, to have books, novels on computer floppies instead of printed paper for the ease of transportation and reading.

What you get in a book, you never can get on TV screen. A novel is you in solace, you identify yourself with it, in fact, it momentarily takes you out of this world and gives you a new identity. Books change a man, not to mould him into something new, but just in the way every thought changes him. Do you know what is the greatest invention of mankind? It is language. And a novel is the best example of the heights of beauty that the written form of this invention can attain.

Let us look around the world. If TV had been able to make novel reading superfluous, there would have been no publications in the UK or the US, who have had a large number of TV channels for years. In fact, not only the contemporary novels, people are going back to the older times and the 15th to 19th century novels are considered as classics, not only in English but in other languages also.

The only objection to novel reading that is acceptable is that you need time, preferably continuous time, to complete a novel while a TV serial or a TV programme takes but a small time. But I honestly tell you, once you develop the pleasurable habit of reading good novels, you will tend to go for novels which take more time, because only that time would help you to get involved with the novel and experience, not just appreciate, the true beauty of the written word.

In the end, I would only say that till the time when humans will think, till the time when humans would want thought not only in their work but also in entertainment, till the time when humans would appreciate beauty and would appreciate a work of art and till the time when humans would remain humans and not become machines, nothing, leave aside television, will be able to remove the Novel from the rightful place that it has in the society.