Why the quality of cognitive patience is important

For the last couple of years, I have been maintaining a reading log. Nothing fancy, just a list of books I complete each month. Like most people nowadays, I don’t read as much as I would like to. Though I try to read every day, I feel I should read a lot more. Keeping a log not only serves as a reminder of the books I’ve read, but it also motivates me to keep reading. Browsing my reading list, I noticed that I had read two massive tomes in the past six months. What was particularly striking was the quality of attention that each one demanded.

Differing novels

The first was the novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai. From the word go, this book pulled me in like a magnet. I breezed through its pages, which were pacy yet rich with descriptive detail. As the characters zigzagged across countries and continents, my attentive gaze shadowed them.

In contrast, I initially struggled to get through Middlemarch by George Eliot. Interestingly, psychologist Maryanne Wolf notes in Reader, Come Home that she too found it difficult to plough through this book. Like Wolf, I had also read Middlemarch in my younger days when digital devices didn’t exist and it was not uncommon for people to read uninterrupted for long periods of time. But this time was different and I couldn’t help comparing it with my experience of reading Desai’s book.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is set mainly in India and the United States, two countries that I know intimately and at a time, the 1990s, when I too came of age. I relate to the protagonists and their worldviews. Further, the novel crisscrosses many cities — Allahabad, New Delhi, Goa, Vermont, New York and Venice — giving momentum to the book, literally and figuratively, as the protagonists trace different arcs. On the other hand, Middlemarch is set in a fictional English town in the 1830s, a historical period that feels remote and unfamiliar to me. Further, the book revolves around a single town and lacks the momentum that characterises Desai’s novel.

Staying on course

But something made me stick with it. As I plodded on, the book gradually grew on me like a vine that initially creeps upwards but gradually covers an entire wall. By the time I was midway through the book, I was sufficiently enmeshed in the characters’ lives that I had to find out how their individual trajectories unfolded. Though I had read the book earlier, I didn’t remember the plot or subplots and the book ended up holding me in its grip.

However, if I hadn’t persisted through the early pages, I would have been robbed of this penetrating study of human nature. Despite inhabiting a different cultural and historical period, the characters are very relatable as they navigate marriage, ambition, social hierarchies and familial dynamics. To mine the riches this book had to offer, I had to cultivate delayed gratification.

It is this quality of attention — the slow-to-form variety — that is practically being erased from human experience. Perhaps it’s not just attention but also cognitive patience, a willingness to allow a world to unfold before us. Not at a frenetic pace or even one that we control or decide upon.

As we are surfeited with a glut of information, our attention has become scattered, shallow and fragmented. In fact, Wolf asks a poignant question: what will happen if the “language of books” doesn’t align with the “culture’s cognitive style”? This loss is not limited to what we glean from books. An ability to wait and watch, to observe patterns as they unfold and to stay the course when the going gets tough are endemic facets of a reflective and resilient life.

The writer is visiting faculty at the School of Education, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and the co-author of Bee-Witched.