Why Literature Still Matters

I chose literature as my degree, masters, and for profession. People often ask me what is the use of literature, when I read people ask why you are wasting time. When I write, people ask me who is going to read this crap? When I analyse a film, people ask why this is important?

We need to know we are not alone. - William Nicholson

Before I learned to write my name, I learned how to feel through stories. The bedtime tales my father told were not just distractions - they were windows into worlds I hadn't seen, but somehow knew. Even now, long after I have grown up and moved through different cities, roles, and realities, literature continues to be the one constant that listens, speaks and says.

In a world that moves fast, where screens flicker endlessly and news changes by the minute, it's tempting to ask: Is literature still relevant?

The answer is: more than ever.

Literature is not just about reading novels, poetry or even watching a movie. It is the act of slowing down and truly seeing. It is the rebellion of feeling deeply in an age of detachment. It is the sacred space where imagination meets intellect.

Whether it's a poem that says what you never dared to say aloud, or a novel that puts you in the shoes of someone oceans apart, literature bridges the impossible gaps of human experience.

A Mirror, A Window, A Door

The writer Chimamanda Adichie once said that literature can be a mirror, a window, and a door. Through it we:

• See ourselves reflected in characters, struggles, and desires.
• Enter the lives of those who are nothing like us- different cultures, timelines, and truths.
• Open doors to empathy, curiosity and change.

In reading Khaled Hosseini, we feel the tremble of history, it's heartbreak, resilience and longing. In reading Madhavikutty (Kamala Das), we walk through the raw, intimate realities of womanhood, desire, and identity. in reading Rumi, we remember the language of the soul, where love is both wound and cure.

Literature and Healing

There are days when life is overwhelming. On those days, it is literature that whispers: You are not alone. A single line in a poem or a paragraph in a novel has the power to comfort, confront, or completely change how you see things.

I will share my favourites here:

Make up a story. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light.

- Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture in Literature 

 This call to storytelling becomes a revolutionary act of survival and transformation.

If you ask me what Mayyazhi is, I'll say it's a wound that never healed.

                                                                             -M. Mukundan, Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil

 This line turns a lost homeland into a living metaphor, showing how memory and loss can transform identity forever. 

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

 - Rabindrananth Tagore

A quiet reminder that hope exists even before the world gives us a reason to hope.

Why do we fall, sir?So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.

 - Batman Begins (2005)

These are only few, if you like to explore more you can read here from 40 rules of love & books I love.

When we don't know how to speak our pain, literature speaks it for us.

Literature vs. The AI

In the age of AI, bite-sized content, algorithmic thinking, literature resists the flattening of experience. It teaches us to interpret nuance, embrace ambiguity, and honour the unsaid. It doesn't just give us answers- it gives us questions. 

It reminds us that humanity is complex, layered, and worth exploring deeply.

Why I Write /Read - and Why You Might,Too

As I said in the beginning of the blog, people dare to question the use of literature. They often tag it as a way for lazy people, without scope, and irrelevant.

To read, not just for fun, but for feeling. To write, not just for expression, but for connection.

You don't have to be an academic to love literature. You just have to be human.

So I ask you-dear reader:

Why do you read ? What book/ movie changed the way you see the world.

Tell me in the comments below.