As a content writer working in an IT-based company, I have
never met a colleague in the same stream. I will always have to sail alone in
the boat. I am packed inside a horde of engineers – even SEO analysts and
marketing leads are usually underlying engineers.
After popping out of college, I have never met a literature
guy. Other school buddies, cousins and acquaintances will also be some sort of
engineers.
The discrepancy arises right from the basics. While
languages are Tamil, French, Latin, Sanskrit and a form of art to us, languages
are Java, Bootstrap, PHP, Python and form of code scripts to you.
Someday, you casually ask what I did over my literature
course and how things work there. When I try to fill you in, think of my
situation when trying to explain the metaphorical stances, oxymoron, metaphysics
and Zeugma (oru potut pannmozhi, if
you know Tamil).
And engineers never, ever, ever, read between the lines. The
concept of reading between the lines makes them excited when explained, but
they never sense a spark reading between the lines. Lit grads, don’t try to be
poetic with them, spit it out in plain terms.
And most engineers think we read and write stories
academically. Nope, that’s not it. We read a story, get into it, cry and laugh
with characters, spot them out in the real world, dissect the novel into bits
and make a thesis on what happens in a character’s mind when he leaves a pause,
why he thinks so, how destiny plays role, the metaphysics and all those
decoding stuff, at times even more than what the writer had thought.
Well, cinema is a visual form of literature. I am happy that
engineers do enjoy cult films and gold-rated films, but they always turn down
the classics. It is always the innovation, exuberance and conceptualization
that stun them in films, but never the characterization, metaphors and
catharsis.
We gleam in the sight of engineers at least once along the
way – mostly when they need to write an e-mail. Mails, profiles, birthday
quotes, invitation content and notifications – that’s what we do with all the
brilliance earned from the masterpieces of Byron, Shakespeare and Milton. And
at this, they feel like they have leveraged our skills efficiently. However, I
am really happy to help you, but these are not even close to literature!
Literature is far more than language. We don’t read grammar
and alphabets. We dive into deep literature (like Kambaramayanam and
Silapadhigaram, if you know Tamil).
Each person we see, even you, we have a relatable character
from Britain, Russian or Tamil fiction. We can better understand the pulse of
your emotional and behavioural patterns. We mostly seem insensitive, because we
have seen it all, already.
When you look at how the instrument works, we look at how
the music works. Every perception, comprehension and expectation from life
differ for literature dwellers and engineers. We know how to slow down and
penetrate through time, you know how to time travel. We walk on the roads you
build and work on the software you design, and you need us for bed time stories
to read to your kids. You become us when only you fall in love!
It is fairly acceptable that you miss out on the mild music
of life and literature, when you run the design, implement, test and deploy
marathon. Like how you can’t get into our world, codes are also far from reach
to us and need experts to get the world up and running. But, we are here to
document everything, put your excellence and its impact into paper, with all
the aesthetic essences, as intellectual and artistic resource for the readers
of the next 100 years.
So, if you
are a hard core engineer, yet inclined on books and literature, let me know
that you exist. (I know some exist, I’m not a literature stereotype)
x
