Death of Hindi Literature!

Recently my mom had come to visit my place for few days and unfortunately some days out of those three weeks were very hectic professionally for both me and my husband. So, we were not able to take her out or spend much time with her during weekdays. I thought of arranging some entertainment activities for my mom so that she doesn’t get bored at home and considering my mom’s hobbies, the two most obvious choices were movies and books, with books having higher preference. Well, books and movies by term look so simple to arrange but nah it’s not that easy to arrange these stuffs for my mom. Well, she definitely loves to read but not the kind of books which me or my husband read, rather she likes to read those very old classics of Hindi and English literature. I thought of ordering some books of her choice from some popular online shops as generally they offer good discounts on books. Well, my mom’s wish-list consisted of some very old hindi classics by writers like Shivani, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Jayashankar Prasad etc. And when I told her the benefits of ordering online, she was all excited and gave me a list of 7 names to be order immediately.

Since these books were quite popular titles and so I very conveniently assumed that these would be available in almost all book stores. And then my hunt started, first site, second site, third site…ohhh little did I know then that it’s gonna be such a difficult task to find those famous old hindi classics online. Well, none of the popular stores were having those titles…so tired of net surfing, I thought I will stop at landmark (a very popular book store at Bangalore) tomorrow while coming back from office as it would be easier to find it there. With all hopes I reached Landmark next day only to be disappointed to find that only 1 of those titles were available…having no other option, I took that one book and with lots of difficulties managed to find another one in an online store. Mom was ok to get atleast two books of her choice but was damn amazed to realize that these books are not available in most of the stores online as well as offline, she surprisingly said, “lagta hai logo ne hindi ki kitabein padhni band kar di hai, tabhi itni famous kitabein bhi nahi mil rahi hai”.

I also felt the same that maybe people in India have stopped reading hindi novels and books and hence its not easy to find those in regular shops or e-stores. But well my hypothesis didn’t last for long as last weekend I was surfing some US specific e-commerce sites. One of the popular sites was having section of books by Indian writers. Out of curiosity I entered the titles suggested by my mom and lo’ all the books were available in that book store with even reviews and author profiles completed! Felt surprised as well as sad – I was not getting those books here and all these are available in a US site as best rated classics! Stunning!

Though Hindi is our mother tongue but I hardly know of anyone from today’s generation who reads hindi books these days. Honestly speaking even I have not read lots of hindi books but yes I have definitely read some of the very popular ones and have really liked those a lot. Reading as a habit was seeded in me by my mom and she used to suggest me all good novels irrespective of the language be it English, Hindi or translated version of very famous regional books. So, as a child I have read variety of books including real good hindi classics as well. But guess with lots of other things getting lost in rut of life, I lost touch with hindi literature as well…Though I love books by Indian writers but almost all the current books released by Indian writers are written originally in English and so that’s what I read mostly these days. I wonder about current generation as in younger people who are currently in schools, I doubt if most of them are even aware of hindi classics or treasure hidden in our own literature…Do they even know that these books are rated as best classics from India globally? I wonder if Hindi literature is on its way to extinction in India!