The Comfort of Classics

My dedicatedly found copy of Shirley, wish I had one of 'Wuthering Heights' too

There's comfort in following the ways of the world. Tiring, tedious, and troubling too, at times, but satisfactory in milder, tamer ways more often than not. Those of us, mostly those of us without privilege, who have ventured out on their own know how dangerous the world is, dancing in a polarity of cruelty and random goodness.

I've often questioned what I would do without these opportunities and chances. But I don't think that's why I was given all that I've been given, through chance or fate, choose what you will. I know I was given all this to question it in a reasonable way to understand where I am and to use it as best as I can, instead of trying to demean myself every now and then and question, stupidly, why I have what I have and why other people who maybe are just as deserving or more don’t. All I can do? Is make the best of what I have here. These questions often spiral in and out of my head. Sometimes, these doubts are as solid as the earth and sometimes they’re as soft as smoke, easily dissipated into open space.

It is because of these things that I have to choose when to rebel against the world and when to let it turn about without any consideration of my opinion or feeling. I have so much to say but I feel like no one wants to listen, and I’m not saying this because I want more people to read what I write… It’s because I know even if they read it… It doesn’t affect them like it affects me. Words don’t make everyone feel the same way exactly… and what I write here aren’t cohesive stories really. It’s all just jumbled thoughts I get every now and then, sprinkled aplenty with my opinion. I guess that’s why I like a lot of classics and I never really finish them, because I don’t want them to end and I know the authors are dead, so I won’t be getting any more of those stories.

My friend Rutu gave me this out of the blue, because she knew I loved the Brontës. Kindness blooms in her dil T_T

And the more we have, to read? The less we are reading. Aren’t we sort of back to the basics? Aren’t we back to the past? The forms of story have changed dramatically but there were always varied forms of art available for the public, what I mean is… People don’t really listen. I know this because I’m sure as hell guilty of it too. People don’t truly listen, not like we used to anyway. And I’m not cribbing about wanting to go back to the past, I’m very happy in this century, even with the crippling sadness this pandemic has brought. We have grown and also magnified our problems with us, and I guess that is okay because what century or thing doesn’t come with a few knick knacks of stupidity? We’ve been uniquely corrupt in new ways each century ever since civilisation has thrived to the point of a city.

People who read classics are often seen as pompous holier than thou brats but are they really that? Am I that?

I’m not saying one is better than the other! But I feel like people who enjoy classics just…. Miss. They miss that feeling of wanting everything they know they’ll be missing out. The chance at love, a new environment, where even though so many characters are so restricted, and we right now are so free… Somehow it stinks of the same stench of restriction. Only their kind has changed. Of feeling like a fly headed for a spider web, unable to change course of flight… Only growing more intensely worried as it gets closer to the web. Classics give me comfort for that very reason. So many, who thought they were headed for the web, didn’t. They bloomed and blossomed into more powerful creatures… Into dragonflies.

But really, I guess reading so much of classic literature, both English and Urdu makes me miss a time I was never a part of. I mean, there is no point in wishing I belonged to another era when I am lucky enough to be here.

I think what I mostly mean to say is, that it is complicated, being a human being, and I seem to find new ways to say that, just like most of literature. "We're complicatedly unique and similarly doused with an otherness that we can all relate to... All of us, separately and together." I guess that is an echoed sentiment through all the literature of the world.

I just want to know, if they thought like I did sometimes? Whether they wondered about the future? Whether they felt lonely like I did? Did they wonder?

But then again I do know. I know because their characters and stories take that direction, the direction of hope, of decided wants and desires. I take comfort in the knowing direction the stories take sometimes, as I read through line after line. I know it’s weird to love them so much when I haven’t even finished them, and though I have finished a few, I haven’t read my favourite ones fully, my favourite unfinished one being Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’.

It’s too close to my heart for me to finish it, because even though rereading is fun, there’s nothing better than a new combination of wordy sentences bejewelling the page as your eyes roam across the pages. A new delight, a new surprise. I guess this reasoning is absurd in a way… But I don’t think it’s very different from having the experience of being a human being.

And so, I always have a few pages saved for me, to always come back to... To know that home is only a few words away, I've been there too many times to miss it.