By Hira Rafique Rao

“There’s no room for fairy tales and clichéd love stories when you have an engineering degree to
concentrate on,” is something a concerned, stereotypical parent might say to their child growing up in a competitive and digital world. By and large, it is something that anyone would say who has not let thei
r bigoted mind to roam and discover the fact that Literature is not a field to be taken lightly.
Certainly, the sciences are vital in explaining the phenomenaof the universe e.g. black holes, a simple opening and closing of a door and rain however, what explains melancholy or an immediate change in one’s heart? Getting a ruler and weighing scale out simply won’t do it. That’s where Literature comes in handy: elaborating what is analogue and incomprehensible by formulas.
It isan honest form of art and takes people to a higher truth to the extent of possessing profundity in thought. They say a person is blessed with a single life and the best way to make use of it is by reading through the eyes of thousands of characters from numerous places. It really is not worth missing out on such an accessible opportunity. This cannot happen with numbers and chemical reactions since they can’t be something that we can relate to on a personal level.

According to P. Matthijis and Martijn Veltkamp, an investigation’s results stated that fiction reading does influence empathy with emotional transportation. Moreover, psychologists believe that a slight balance of EQ (empathy-quotient: deals with emotions) and SQ (systemizing quotient: handles the logical side) in the human mind is preferable, meaning it is only healthy to increase the empathetic side of someone who deals with facts and figures most of the time.

Likewise, it’s convenient in social life when it comes to connecting with peers and trying to have a decent conversation with them. What worries the youth, or any other person, these days is their relationship with their mind and following actions. It produces liberal readers, ready to accept human diversity and unique cultural heritages. Literature helps us decipher our complex emotions and save us from a void of existential crises.
My point of discussion is not to shame or throw off anyone who is interested in science, but only as a piece of encouragement to those who are reluctant to explore outside science. In other words, Literature should be viewed in the same respectful manner as Science and efforts ought to be made to break the boundaries between these two subjects.

(The writer is an A-Level student and can be reached at: [email protected])