Most people have clear junctures in their lives, defining moments if you will, which mark turning points in their lives. In retrospect, I have several very clear ones. Even though I did not know at the time, had my choices been different at any of those moments, I would not be sitting here writing. To be fair, they were neither good nor bad and at no stage would I have chosen otherwise. Of course, not all of them were choices, some were just circumstances without alternatives but they exist just the same. Practical philosophy!
One of them was many years ago when I was a teen. I had read a short story by a Russian author Anton Chekhov called The Bet. I did not know at the time but this story was going to launch my reading habit and empower my imagination. Of all other influences, this short story has been instrumental in inculcating my love of books. When I first read it, it was just another story, not even particularly well written by current standards. Maybe that was lost in translation. Even then, I knew there was something the book was trying to tell me but it took several readings to figure out the message that the author meant for me.
There are so many pearls in such small amount of text. Sacrifice vs. wisdom, confinement vs. freedom, denial vs. indulgence; I am sure there are more. There is also a warning for the light-hearted; wisdom’s price may not be payable by everyone. But one thing I got was clear. Each book is a universe onto itself. Each book is a locked piece of space and time captured forever in words for eternity. But unlike the implication it is not static. Every reader discovers his own universe when he reads a book, each unique and expansive according to the his own imagination guided by the author.
Words are powerful objects. They have a life of their own. I don’t care what the statisticians say, even a whole planet full of monkeys cannot type out Shakespeare’s works on a million typewriters. This story illustrates why. The monkeys have no concept of sacrifice for the celestial. I have never understood the points of the banker in the story but each action of the lawyer makes perfect sense to me. And I have tried to look at the story from the banker’s point of view. I really tried.
Now we have movies, computers, TV and AI; and as a result our imagination has been forced to take a back seat. We are so acclimatized to being spoon fed with audio-visual extravaganzas that we seldom take the time to turn off these senses and let our minds go places at will. Our bodies are like a battery and everything we do takes a bit of power to run. Because we never bother to recharge it, we end up with dead senses pretty soon. The main protagonist, the lawyer, turns off all power consumers by allowing himself to be locked up for fifteen years! The locking up is a metaphor but the message is clear.
I think it’s a must read for anyone interested in books. Since its an old story, The Bet is in the public domain and royalty free as far as I know. Many websites host it on their servers. This is just a random pick from the first page of a Google search for it.
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