This Diwali - Make a Resolution to Read
Why make a resolution only on New Years? Make one on Diwali. Also, for Gujaratis like me, it's a New Year anyway. To tell you the exact science, according to the hindu calendar (one of the many), Aso month ends with Diwali, and Kartik starts, and the first day of Kartik, is the first day of a new year.
I was tempted to make a video for Diwali, to be precise "Post Diwali Hangover". It was supposed to tell you how you feel after Diwali. When I started writing the script for it, I realised I was only writing the titles of it, instead of the whole script. I was running the scenes in my mind. By far, the videos that have turned out to be my worst videos had been shot without a script. They were shot based on an Idea. The best of my videos, my favourites, like "Things Siblings do to Annoy Each other" and "Things I do in a Luxury Hotel",were well thought and with well written scripts. Although most of it was non-vocal acting, they were well planned, every single move written in my notes. Some of my vocal videos are well scripted as well. The reason, I figured of my inability to write the whole thing today is nothing but laziness.
You see, the advent of social media and video streaming sites is so bad that we are craving for more and more entertainment in the format of little bites. That's the reason Vine had 7 second videos and it was so successful. That's also the reason why SnapChat stories are a huge success. So, we are becoming a hungry breed of humans who always want to gobble on to the easily available and shortest of all the videos. That's our Bite, literally. Hence, we avoid big videos, we avoid reading something, we avoid newspapers, and blogposts. We just want our entertainment in short doses, no hard work. This is making us lazy.
In Leyman's terms, your brain is getting used to focussing on a different thing every few seconds, thereby bringing your concentration levels to a record low. It's scary. If you want to know how bad you are at concentrating on things, try to watch this 18 min long video. But, there is always a solution. The solution is reading. For some, reading is the most boring form of entertainment, but trust me on this, it's worth it. I took 8 months to finish a novel "Shantaram", and when I did finish it today, I was thrilled and relieved. I don't think I will pick up a novel for a month now, but eventually I will, and that will keep my brain working. You don't have to be a voracious reader, just read as much as you like and leave it. Take it up next time.
When I did the film "A Blueprint for disaster", the cast had the toughest time when we started dubbing their dialogues. They had improvised on the shoot and then could not repeat the dialogue with the same vocal strength and energy for dubbing. This happened because they didn't read the script fully and remembered it. That happened because I was too lenient, and I did not understand the true value of reading and memorising the script until we faced all the issues with dubbing. Reading is important, any kind of reading.
Let's not forget this important exercise of reading and keeping our mind active. It's necessary to keep reading from time to time. Therefore, this Diwali, make a resolution to read. Decide what is it that you would like to read, and for how long. Then get on with it. I am sure you can do it. I will do it too, with you. Satire is a good genre to start with, I recommend the book "A Bogus Read" from my friend Divyamaan.
Happy Diwali and a very Happy New Year from me, my friends and my family.
-Naimish Sanghvi
P.S. if you think I am slacking from making video this Monday, you are wrong, because I already did one video on Sunday. Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajz6jXKneOw