My Journey with Books

 Javed Chaudhry is a Pakistani columnist, YouTuber, and journalist who has been hosting the Kal Tak show on Express News since 2008. He also writes Urdu columns on various topics in his Zero Point series in the Daily Express.

Disclaimer:

Today, I found a very interesting and motivational article written by Javed Chaudhry in the Express newspaper. Javed Chaudhry is very famous in Pakistan for his unique writing skills and features. He creates stories that resonate with all of us and often align with our daily routines or government policies. We all enjoy reading his new stories daily. This is the main reason I translated his column into English and shared it with you, dedicating it to the esteemed writer, Mr. Javed Chaudhry.

I tolerated this mockery for a few weeks at FC College, but when my courage gave out, I left the college and started preparing for the exam privately. Allah had chosen another path for me, so I completed my BA with first class.

After the BA, I got admission in Law at Punjab University. During this period, a friend of mine got admission in the Journalism Department at Bahawalpur University.

I went to Bahawalpur to drop him off, attended the first class with him, and then got admission in journalism myself.

Believe it or not, there were 22 students in my class, and only one classmate, Khalid Wakeel, had a passion for poetry. He had read Faiz Ahmed Faiz, N. M. Rashid, and Ahmad Faraz thoroughly, and he recited their poetry excellently.

Besides him, Qudratullah loved reading books, and his reading speed was impressive. He later got recruited into DGPR and became a part of the bureaucracy.

Another classmate, Mirza Idrees, liked novels and stories, and his writing was fluent and engaging. No one else went to the library, bought books, or made the mistake of reading them.

Even our teachers did not make this mistake, believing that Allah had bestowed knowledge upon them directly, so they didn’t need to dirty their hands with books. During that time, I endured a lot of humiliation and mockery.

After university, practical life began. I joined journalism. On our desk, there were only two people who had a passion for reading books, and both had to bear the consequences of this incompetence daily. They were embarrassed every day, while everyone else’s reading was limited to newspapers.

At that time, these people seemed strange to us, but today, when young people are deprived even of newspaper reading, and despite being media students or professionals, they don’t read newspapers, my era seems very scholarly and intellectual.

Our seniors were also away from books, but they read newspapers in detail. They had read extensively during their childhood and youth but grew tired of reading as they reached their forties and fifties, or perhaps the books of that time were beneath their standards.

Whatever the reason, they had limited themselves to news and columns. When I look back at my 32-year journalistic career, I find that, besides three or four journalists, no one read extensively.

In the political elite, I found only two people whom we could call well-read: Ahsan Iqbal and Khurram Dastgir. Apart from them, I did not see anyone with a love for reading books. Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and Afnanullah also seem to have a passion for reading. Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan and Raza Rabbani are senior and mostly retired politicians who also used to read. PTI is an educated party, but it is mostly filled with intellectuals like Usman Buzdar.

The books that Imran Khan is reading in jail these days and boasting about are the ones, we read and digested ten to twenty years ago, and many of their theories have already been proven wrong.

In the civil bureaucracy, I met two people whose knowledge and reading I genuinely envied:

Customs Officer Irfan Javed and SSP Omar Riaz.

They are both bookworms, and every new and amazing book becomes part of their reading diet. We should also mention the Pakistan Armed Forces here. The trend of reading still prevails in the army; reading is a part of the military routine, so they read more compared to ordinary people.

If we divide the world into developed and underdeveloped, civilized and uncivilized, and peaceful and chaotic, we must admit that in all peaceful, civilized, and developed societies, books are as important as bread, clothing, and shelter.

In some societies, books are considered even more important than these basic needs. The only difference between developed and underdeveloped countries is the distance from books. The day underdeveloped, chaotic, and uncivilized people and societies connect with books, their DNA begins to change, and no power in the world can stop them from becoming successful and developed.

Even today, if you collect global reading data, you will find that every book-reading society is developed, and the countries where books are hated are backward, chaotic, extremist, and poor.

Remember, reading is a habit, and like other habits, it is developed through effort. Just as we teach children to brush their teeth, wash their hands, eat three meals a day, respect elders, and observe prayers, we can also instill the habit of reading from childhood. This habit gradually solidifies. However, in our society, there is no habit of reading at any level.

If you research educational institutions, you will be surprised to find that 90% of them do not have libraries. Where there are libraries, there are no books, and if there are books, they are meaningless and purposeless, and no one reads them.

When I go to universities to give lectures, I am amazed to see that even professors and vice-chancellors avoid books.

In practical life, books are a forbidden fruit for us. In cities, you will find hundreds of shops selling food and drink, but only a handful of bookshops, and even their sales are dominated by stationery and syllabus materials. This trend was somewhat tolerable, but in our society, even those who read books are not liked.

From the Presidential Palace to the streets, people who read books are ridiculed, humiliated, and pushed into a pit of inferiority. Many boys and girls who studied with me were far more capable and intelligent than me. Had they continued their reading habit, they would have held important positions today.

However, due to the mockery, humiliation, and beatings from some uncle Zaman, Master Muhammad Khan, or Professor Latif, they were excluded from the race for progress. They ended up as ruined bricks of a ruined society.

I request you, even if you hate books and do not read yourself, please do not insult the few people who do read.

Do not humiliate them. Even if they are nerds, bookworms, or professors, they are still humans. You may consider them inferior, but do not crush their self-esteem, do not mock them.

People like me somehow crawl forward, but by the time we reach here, our souls and minds have been scarred and rubbed so much that we cannot live a normal life.

Believe me, I am so scared within myself that I still cannot read a book in front of people. No one has ever seen me walking around with books or reading in a public place. I still take the book to my bedroom and read behind closed doors, and if someone comes in during that time, I get flustered and put the book aside first. The fear of childhood and youth has settled so deeply within me, and this situation is not limited to me. There must be thousands of others like me. Isn’t this sad?

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to meet a powerful person in the country who was well-read. When I praised his reading habit, he replied, ‘Please do not mention this to anyone outside. I am a career officer, and people want to see me as a professional. If they find out about this “habit,” they will start calling me a poet or writer, which is not a good title in our service.’

Similarly, a few years ago, when I went to interview the Prime Minister, the Press Secretary at the time was well-read. He had a library full of biographies from around the world. Any book I mentioned was not only in his library, but he had read it too. I praised him heartily.

As I was about to enter the Prime Minister’s office, he said pleadingly, ‘Please do not mention my reading habit to the Prime Minister; my transfer will be ordered.

The Prime Minister wants a media manager, not a professor.’ I laughed and went inside. See the tragedy: the entire bureaucracy sarcastically calls this Press Secretary a professor, and I am lamenting myself while federal secretaries are being humiliated because of their reading habits. (The End).