When you think of the word ‘destiny’, you tend to think of the word ‘write’. You could have thought of something else like paint or carve or sketch or something else. But no, only writing sounds like the perfect fit. This despite the fact that until a few decades ago, the majority of the population, at any given point of time, tended to be illiterate, having no idea how to hold a pencil right, let alone draw alphabets.
And yet, writing meant a lot.
This might be so because it is one of the greatest skills our species acquired over a long course of time. Our opposable thumbs nudged us towards noting stuff down for posterity. Before settling down on pages, and ultimately on our screens, humankind went through a series of experimentations with different materials worth writing on. Yes, it’s been a rather long journey, and the invention of the printing press worked as a turbo booster.
In the 21st century, a writer stands several professional niches, depending on the requirements of the market. However, what makes a writer a genuine writer is the creative freedom she manages to allot herself.
That’s it.
With too many constraints, there is no way literature can blossom. Writing can be a personal pursuit, encapsulated within that tiny space of a breath between the nib and the paper. Nobody else gets to interfere. Which also makes a writer’s world pretty lonely, confined to her room with a window that poses too many questions and provides too few answers. Still, irrespective of all these spatial challenges, writing is a noble endeavour. It’s a sacred pact between one’s thoughts and being. What is written down shall never mean more to the readers than the writer. Why? Because the one who wrote had no choice but to write whereas the reader exercises the choice to read or not.
Without a reader, a writer is incomplete. However, what sets a great writer apart from the crowd is the timelessness of her words. Chances are nobody reads her work and she dies assuming to be an utter failure, only to be discovered posthumously and celebrated for her genius.
You never know.
The idea is to outlast yourself, outlive your assumptions and most importantly, destroy expectations on all fronts. A good writer must aim to become a better writer and a better writer has to take a leap towards greatness. That fourth wall will break eventually as readers hear the writer speak to them. That is when all the endless days of solitude a writer went through amount to something: an ultimate connection in the most silent way possible. So, yes, writing can be complemented only by reading. I can’t think of a bigger transaction that is dealt solely in the currency of time and attention.
However, at the end of the dusk and discussion, a writer writes for herself. She is not answerable to any soul on the planet. Her allegiance rests only with her conscience, and nothing else. If somebody smiles while reading her prose, so be it. If somebody tears up while reading her poetry, so be it. If somebody is enraged reading her jibes, so be it. If somebody is disturbed by the state of her literary world, so be it. All the reactions, not to forget, exaggerated claims, fester at the other end of the table. The writer moves on while the readers stay behind. And that’s the unwritten deal of literature.
Yes, there might be instances where somebody or something—a person or an idea or a physical construct—gets attacked through your words. Worse still, they are mocked, reasonably so through the weaponry of jokes. During such occurrences, one would notice how quickly the sentimental creatures amongst us lose their composure.
It’s easy to understand why this happens though: a sense of humour can’t be faked.
When somebody or something means a lot to you, you fail to see anything funny about it. Nobody is really at fault here; that’s just the way emotional creatures behave. In my experience, the writer has every right to write what she feels like writing and her detractors have every right to express their anguish.
In an ideal world, the offendees would express their scorn in written form—a suitable tit for tat, please?—but we don’t live in an ideal world, so we’ll have to make do with shabby expressions of disgust and disdain on the streets. But if you are Salman Rushdie, your books and effigies are most likely to be burned, and there will be a target on your head. One day, after changing your address 57 times and escaping 20 assassination attempts over a period of three decades, when you least expected it, your 75-year-old body would be stabbed 10 times by a man less than one-third your age, who most probably never even read your book. And that, in a nutshell, is the worst order of a relationship between a (published) writer and a (potential) reader.
On the brighter side, writers will continue to write. Some will be terrible at it, while some will achieve reasonable merit, while others will push the boundaries of complacency and bolt ahead of time. As long as writers stay true to themselves and share their creative output sincerely, there is nothing to fear. The problem with the world we live in is, we don’t know anymore where to draw the line between fiction and non-fiction, between awe and hatred, between criticism and malice. Something that can be corrected only if the pursuit of writing stays personal.
It's a pleasure when someone writes everything that you feel, reading those words, that force between the pen and paper turning to the force between the reader and writer. Thank you for this one. It was a delighting read.