When Books Compete With Reels, We Risk Losing Memory

THERE IS A CURIOUS chaos in our timelines. Never before have we had more access to knowledge, yet never before have we skimmed so shallowly across its surface.

- Srinath Sridharan

For example, in our culture, where epics once passed through generations by oral tradition and then by the printed verses and later pages, the sanctity of longform thought is now under siege - not by illiteracy but by a glut of digital brevity. The book is not dead, but it is gasping for breath in a room crowded with reels, bingeworthy series, and dopamine-drenched distractions.

Even books have not been spared the pull of the digital vortex. We now read them on screens, swipe pages as if they were Instagram stories, and still expect the richness of human thought to come packaged in 30-second sound bites. But knowledge is not a hack and wisdom is not a headline. You cannot microwave insight. The pursuit of understanding takes time - time to read, time to reflect, time to be challenged and changed. It is not just the consumption of ideas, but the digestion and internal reckoning with them, that matters. A book does not simply fill you up. It stretches you.

Consumed by Content