Write and Left

It disturbs me greatly that I have not read a book since November last year. I am still struggling with The Tin Drum. I remember being rapturous while reading the first 200-odd pages. Like with people, instant chemistry with books is seldom sustainable. I now trudge through the book, hoping to get to the finish line soon. A hundred pages have never seemed so formidable.

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In recent times, I have contemplated suing my parents for a botched-up upbringing. They never bothered to inculcate a love for sports or singing or dancing in me- it seems that my legacy was limited to a love of books and food alone. I started reading at the age of five. My parents, reassured and relieved that the unusually curly-haired kid was indeed theirs (and not swapped at birth), showered me with books to mark their joy. Twenty volumes of abridged classics, which ensured that I had something to read for the next two years.

Writing happened thereafter. Somewhere between ‘A visit to the garden’ and ‘My favourite festival’, I discovered the joy of writing. Writing discovered me much later. It was 1997 or 1998. I decided to start working on my first novel, which I soon realized had absolutely no hope of seeing the light of the day. This frustration was compounded by the rumour that a young Indian writer had been offered a million-dollar advance for her debut novel (Yes, I was a precocious ambitious delusional teenager). Soon, this nasty nebulous rumour acquired a name: Arundhati Roy. The book? The God of Small Things. Consumed by jealousy and curiosity, I made my father buy me the rather pricey hardback version. One chapter and I was mesmerized. I didn’t even know you could make words do such tricks. Words could sing, dance, swim, hop, make love, everything that I could not, at my beck and call.
For the next two weeks, my state of mind vacillated between fascination, shock and denial, finally settling for acceptance: I had to swallow my pride and accept that Eklavya had found his teacher Dronacharya. Owing partly to my poor sculpting skills and partly to the limited portability of clay statues of curly-haired women, I took Roy’s picture on the cover of GOST as my teacher. What exactly did taking a picture as your guru entail? Not much, just seeking the picture’s blessings before every writing event was respectful enough. Call it superstition, faith or talent (but certainly not modesty), I won every writing competition I took part in under Ms. Roy’s tutelage.

This went on for five years, till her essay The End of Imagination happened. I had read the essay already, just after it came out, but that was but a cursory read -I was just overjoyed that she had written again, I didn’t care what. The second time, however, it struck me like a slap across the face: my guruji, my inspiration, my Guiding Star was one of them: she was a leftist intellectual.

That was the time when I had nothing but contempt for this breed called leftist intellectuals. They deftly juggled big words and small ideas. I was (and still am) irked by their constant need to espouse the fight of the marginal by belittling and battling the mainstream, their failure to comprehend that different is not opposite, their refusal to see shades anywhere except on khadi.

My philosophy was simple: Left is seldom right.

With time, I have realized that the same problems plague any extreme position. The difference is perhaps in the articulation of this opinion: leftists seem to prefer words and rightists in India sometimes let their sticks and stones do the talking. This maturity aside, a slight feeling of disdain still remains.

Anyway, how did I get here? The point is, as my copy of GOST lay on the shelf, dissed and dusty, I almost stopped writing. It’s been two years since I wrote, and this struck me last night.

Maybe, letting go is not always a good thing. When is one really too old for a security blanket? Or a lucky charm? Or a make-believe teacher? Well, not at 23. Guruji has been summoned from India. Yes, DHL delivers inspiration too.