Did you start Reading first or Writing?

Who or what came first – Hen or egg? Oh yeah! What an idiotic question? Egg and hen. How did they even qualify to have few words dedicated to them in a write-up cleverly woven around reading and writing, let alone starting this post? Is the title just a bait to catch your attention, you all fishes, who are minding your own business in that pond? “Oh! Come on. Don’t beat around the bush. Say it or we are going to get to the other side of the pond where there is real, actual food” – must be one of your thoughts.

Okay. Okay. I am coming down there. In fact I am almost there.

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Unlike few questions whose answers have been answered or discovered by humans, this dogma – hen or egg – is still a mystery. But are we here to resolve the most complicated mystery of this world? (pun intended). Of course, not! Let us just do what we are capable of doing, which of course is…. Any guesses? Yes! Absolutely. You people have definitely been getting better with it, with guessing work. “Reading”. One declares. “Writing” counters the other one.

Now, what came first – Reading or writing? Tough one? Absolutely not. We all know how we can read anything unless it is written. There is no way that reading could over-shadow writing. Writing is the ruler, the queen of the kingdom. But if there is a queen, there must be a king too. No. No. No. Don’t take me as “How chauvinist! Can’t a queen rule a kingdom? Why does she need a man beside her?” She can and she will. But in this case, let us consider we have a king too. Who knows they further might have adorable princes and princesses too. Just who knows? Do you? Don’t worry! Neither do I, not at least till this point of time.

But you know and I know that we definitely have to have a king here and that king is none other than ‘Reading’. And once I break the ice, which I think I should do now or you will definitely get to the other side of the pond, we will get to know that a kingdom can be ruled, neither by a king nor by a queen, alone. A kingdom to flourish, needs both these positions to be ruled over by wisdom and intelligence.

Back to the question – Reading before Writing? King before Queen? Or the other way around?

Well, my apologies to the ones who were in the favor of Queen, as Reading has to be before Writing. Let me expound it.

The early-man age, when the language was in its inception stage, when the clothes were yet to be declared as the way of judging one’s character (Oh! Did I say too much?), that was not the age when Hindi, English, Spanish, or French came into existence. And definitely neither the one when humans started to write. Gradually modernization started sailing its ship in the ocean of human civilization, and humans started boarding the ship, unaware of what their future held for them. And eventually landed upon an island where they had books all around them.

Whenever someone asks a question about writing, or expresses his/her wish of becoming a writer (though not many have asked me such questions yet), I tend to ask a simple thing – Have you done your homework? What homework, they would ask. Reading, I would say. Of course, until and unless we haven’t looked over the pool we are going to swim in, how can we dive into it? Before we get to learn to write, we ought to learn to read. Read as much as we can, as long as we can. Not some casual reading, but artful reading. Yes, reading  is an art too, and if you can master this art, the probability of mastering the art of writing increases manifolds.

Don’t believe me? It’s alright.

Have you ever seen an aspiring dancer getting directly onto the stage and showing his amazing moves? You might answer positively for this question and yes, you are right. There are such people. But no one ever took over the world without practicing what they are masters of. But what did they practice? How did they know that this is what that will work for them and the other thing won’t? First of all, by learning about what they are going to get into. What is dance? What are the technicalities? Who are the current masters? How did they master this dance form?

Unless we don’t know what we are going to write, how can we write it? When we read, read the bad reads, we get into the dilemma, a bad one.  “Is this what am I going to write?” is what we might ask with a twisted face. And afterwards when we read the good reads, we get wonderstruck and often into a pressure zone that how can we ever write this good.

Both feelings are important, as good cannot be relished  if we haven’t tasted bad. And once we get to realize the difference between both-the good and the bad, our journey gets simplified, simplified in a way that we don’t spend our time simply by reading anything but by reading good (mostly).

If you will read good, learn good, you definitely will write good, eventually. Having an aim is important, but as important is to study the already-masters in that domain.

Did you notice that ‘Hen or egg’ was the bait to get you to ‘read or write’? Also, the birth of prince and princess is yet to be figured out. Their giggles and laughter might linger around the room after quite some time, not now.

But does anybody know who or what came first-Hen or egg?😛

IF YOU ARE A FIRST- TIME VISITOR OF MY BLOG, DO REFER ‘First-Timers‘. IT WOULD HELP YOU IN EXPLORING THE PLACE.

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