Imagine!

Imagine there’s no heaven….

Imagine there’s no countries…

Imagine all the people living life in peace….

goes a yesteryears’ song by John Lennon of the Beatles.

After decades since the song was first sung, it’s harder than ever to imagine such a situation in our planet as conflict and violence continue to escalate in our own country and the rest of the world. Yet even then, and perhaps even now, there are probably some who can imagine and aspire for such a world:

… You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you will join us

And the world will be as one…

For most of us, it’s difficult to join this group of ‘imaginers,’ right? However, imagination is a super precious gift given to mankind by the Creator. Without it, Sir Isaac Newton wouldn’t have discovered the laws of gravity, the Wright brothers wouldn’t have invented the airplane, and most scientific progress and its beneficial results would not have been possible. Besides – a matter of serious concern for lovers of literature – we would have been bereft of the great works that have come down to us from ancient times. Wouldn’t the world be much poorer without The Iliad, The Mahabharata, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, et al? What a loss it would have been if William Shakespeare had not written!

Imagination is the golden currency circulating in the realm of all art forms, including literature.

Among these, my present preference is imaginative writing of all sorts – poetry, play, and prose fiction of all lengths. A while ago, I picked up a history book but couldn’t go far with all the facts and information presented in a dry manner. So, I turned back to a novel.

One thing really fascinating about imaginative literature is, though made up in the writer’s head and some may call it a lie in that sense, it is a wonderful vehicle for conveying truths. Deeper truths beyond facts. Who can ignore the truths and life lessons in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or RL Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? I first read the latter as a young adult and remember the goose bumps of horror it gave me. A close relative I deeply cared about was in the process of becoming an alcoholic at the time. Thankfully, Dr Jekyll won the day in this case.

In Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, a novel I’m currently reading, one of the main characters is about to join college. His mother wants him to take up the medical line, but he wishes to study literature. In defending his point, he says, “when I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time, I’ve lived for three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school. Ahab, Queequeg, Ophelia and other characters die on the page so that we might live better lives.”

So much wisdom in this observation! We do learn a lot about life, society and the human mind through Crime and Punishment, To Kill a Mockingbird, The god of small things and others. Good fiction enhances our awareness of life and invites us to look into what is important and valuable, depending on the author’s world view and intention.

This holds true of fantasy too, including fairy tales. Improbable tales with large helpings of magic, they still teach us about life and convey truths. Who dares undermine the value of ‘The Nightingale,’ ‘The Ugly Duckling’ or ‘The Snow Queen’ of Andersen’s stories?  The struggles of Frodo the hobbit in The Lord of the Rings, or the issues faced by the magician Harry Potter are as real as the sufferings of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, or of Ammu in The god of small things.

It feels good that writers today are going on creating literature for our delight and education.

Let’s close with the words of another dreamer – poet and academic Jaydeep Sarangi:

If you need a band of active

Peace Army, I bet for poets….

For peace of the land and mind…. 

(The Trusted Army).

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