Meet Desh Deepak. He is an ideal boy. But what kind of a reader is he? This line of inquiry started with my reading of the responses on Twitter to my piece in the Times of India. I wrote this piece and also others as a way of posing questions in the current, somewhat toxic, in some cases fatal, debate on nationalism in India. My investigation of the issue is from the viewpoint of a writer, a position that some will automatically call anti-national. When I first thought of Desh Deepak, I was in search of a theory of reading. I posted on Twitter a set of questions about reading for those who were angry about my piece in the Times of India–and these questions still remain very urgent for me:
Rules for reading: 1. Do you always think it’s a fight? 2. Do you always cite the same examples? 3. Are you blind?
