Topic started by SriRangarajan (@ 203.199.224.98) on Fri May 31 20:32:46 .
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Writing
SriRangarajan

Becoming a writer was a childhood dream of Raghavan. Since he was unsure of himself like he had always been in every single aspect of his life, his writing aspirations were nurtured rather secretively. In all these years, he wrote nothing except for a two page Tamil story that appeared in his college magazine while he was in his last year of graduation. Sura* was the editor of the college magazine that year and he had to goad Raghavan using a variety of techniques then to get him write for the magazine. Careless as he was, Raghavan could never trace the magazine thereafter, though he knew that it was somewhere within his household. Coming to know of Raghavan's writing talent from Sura in a family get-together immediately after their marriage, Radha was keenly looking for the magazine since then.

During one of their residence shifting mela, Bharu found a copy of the college magazine that carried Raghavan's story from a sack of a of non-descript books and needless to say, the entire household suddenly wore a festive outlook the whole day from then on, forcing even the shifting activities to spill over to the next day, much to the delight of the packers and movers who were to be paid on time and materials basis. Grabbing the magazine ferociously, Radha was the first to read the story and she read it many a time again and again continuously. The last couple of readings were quite dramatic, as she would move from one room to another exactly as the previous generation Tamil heroines used to do when they received letters from their beloved. But, unlike those heroines who would also see their beloved at the centre of the letter and delightedly would listen to them speak, Radha was herself reading the story loudly simply for the sake of Bharu and Deepu who could not read and write in Tamil by choice**.

Raghavan could vividly remember his story. In his considered opinion, It was pretty ordinary and eminently forgettable, deliberately written with considerable difficulty in the then prevalent Tamil literary "little magazine" style that mandated the usage of only common nouns and third person narrative where the narrative itself should be passive to the core weaving a bafflingly complex web in the process, that would at once make reading the story itself highly difficult and understanding it simply impossible. It was about a student, (the protagonist!) travelling on footboard, the bus conductor getting upset with him and their eventual rapprochement at the end. Even in those days when the magazine was published, none of his fellow students could even remotely fathom as to what he was saying, but the narrative was so painstakingly contrived and unnatural, that they agreed with Sura who categorically certified that Raghavan through his unique narrative style had taken the story to a different plane altogether in a graceful way, whatever it meant.

Raghavan was embarrassed by the euphoria the finding of his college writing had created, as everyone went berserk but he could do nothing about it. He was the only one left out in the celebrations, as even the packers were one with Radha. Raghavan was passively enjoying Radha's antics, till Radha started to move out into the neighbourhood rather unexpectedly.
Suddenly, Raghavan was alarmed. Radha was quickly on her way out and Raghavan instantly knew as to what was coming. He desperately sprang to the front door, seriously risking multiple hip fractures. Fortunately, he landed on his feet in balance and immediately spread his hands wide, effectively blocking Radha's way out. Radha was truly annoyed and whatever Raghavan said could hardly convince Radha. What was wrong in sharing her joy with the neighbourhood, she asked. While she agreed that even she did not understand much, she was very clear in her mind that seeing the story, reading it and understanding it were all three distinctly different activities. When Deepu sheepishly opined that the hallmark of any great Tamil writing was the unavoidable need for a simpler translation, Radha garlanded him with a motherly hug and spontaneously granted a dinner with the menu of his choice for his friends. Raghavan realised that things were getting out of his hands.

Thankfully, Radha was willing to strike a deal with Raghavan. If he promised to Radha that he would start writing again, she would not venture into the neighbourhood. Raghavan had no choice but to agree. The agreement was that Raghavan should write atleast a minimum of 10 pages of prose, poetry or anything of his choice in Tamil or English every month and Radha must be the first reader cum critic.

Becoming a budding amateur writer starting late in life, Raghavan was always seen reading something and taking notes. He was also, side-by-side, writing poetry, prose, prose-poetry etc in Tamil. A couple of wooden almirahs were faithfully holding these notes and his writings. Other intending writers with similar almirahs in their homes would visit him on Sundays to exchange opinions and giggle within themselves in realising that they wrote better. His initial Tamil experimentations were not as complicated as he expected them to be since he had totally lost touch with the Tamil literary world in the mean time. His pieces included a lot of what he called long poetry that were flat and prosaic and some prose that appeared poetic. His first reader and critic, Radha read each piece many-a-time and with each reading her conviction that Raghavan was a class by himself got reinforced stronger and stronger. It was time he got them published, Radha opined.

Sura suggested that he should try them only in little literary magazines as his writings lacked the stupid naiveté of the popular genre. Carefully introducing some complications here and there in the form of bizarre images of the imported variety and deliberately taking the reader to a different plane altogether atleast once in each page, his writings would merit publishing in the literary ones. Raghavan was quite pleased at the prospect of seeing his writings in print. But, he did not know that those little literary magazines had to operate under a totally different commercial ethos. They were invariably started with borrowed money from provident fund of somebody, run by gusty, enterprising writers who were mostly job-seeking bachelors. Obviously, heavy cross-funding through mutual subscriptions by such editor-writers' amongst themselves was very necessary for the magazines' subsistence. As a corollary, all the published pieces other than editorials and letters columns were usually cross-obligatory.

Pages were reserved for subscribers and larger the number of years of subscription, more the number of pages. Smarter writers reserved specific pages by becoming life subscribers. Invariably, each magazine had a favourite flavour such as magical realism, meta-fiction, cubism, virtual reality etc, carrying atleast one translation of the chosen genre.

Sura gave Raghavan two options; either he started a little literary magazine himself or he reserved pages in others. The first option immensely appealed to Raghavan as he could not only have as many pages as he wanted for himself, but also get his own third party letters published in them praising his literary contribution. In fact, that was one more of his childhood dreams. Nothing could be more intoxicating to a writer than sitting on judgement of the others. He had even a name for his magazine. "Summa", which more or less meant, "nothing".

Sura cautioned him to choose carefully as the editors of such small literary magazines also carried another major, inescapable responsibility on their shoulders. Atleast once a quarter, the had to either start or respond, but definitely and choicelessly sustain atleast one rather nasty, highly personal and a despicable fight between any two established literary figures, invariably without their concurrence. The editors should ensure that such fights started in a gentle manner, by publishing either an innocuous book review or a generic critique on writing style, with a deceptively paraphrased footnote in italics initiating a friendly, issue-centred, literary debate. Such debates were always on issues that usually required quoting extensively from Latin American and Central African literary sources and their writers whose names would be simply unpronounceable with vowels splintered all around such as Theau Reduei Janeiuu.

The editor himself would be the moderator in all these debates. Moderating undoubtedly called for certain unique skills in keeping equidistance from both the warring parties and also appearing to be so, as otherwise he would be dragged in as one of the fighters in some other magazine, where his very private opinions, so private that he had not even revealed them to himself would be completely exposed, to his extreme discomfort. It was also the onerous duty of the editor to put an end to a debate turned fight of his magazine at an appropriate time just before somebody appeared to win or lose, carefully inviting the attention of the readers to another one surreptitiously started elsewhere in the same issue.

Raghavan could instantly feel the chillness in his spine. He humbly chose the second option and selectively became an annual subscriber to three of the little literary magazines. His writings started seeing the light of the day, with 'thought provoking if provoked' abstract line drawings, printed alongside. Deepu was quite impressed by these line drawings, drew some and got them published in a couple of magazines where Raghavan had converted his status as a life-subscriber, a la patron. Radha diligently collected magazine copies that carried Raghavan's writings and Deepu's drawings, neatly filed them and kept them in their visitors' room. Visitors were expected to take a look at the collection and shower praises on Raghavan and Deepu. Raghavan had mastered the art of his type writing, thanks to Sura.
Like the golden rules of accountancy that simply encompassed everything in accounting, Sura's third theorem of literary writing classified literary writings into four categories, viz.,


1. The writer understands, The reader understands. The popular genre, such as the eminently readable types, that simply and honestly reflected the real world happenings.

2. The writer understands, The reader does not understand. An emerging genre,such as virtual reality, where the readers lacked adequate exposure through translations from the Latin-America.

3. The writer does not understand, The reader understands. An established genre,such as magical realism, where a large number of translations from Latin-America already existed.

4. The writer does not understand, The reader does not understand. a new genre,that the writer had stumbled upon rather accidentally, making waves within himself and yet to be aptly named.


Raghavan's poems and stories were showing many facets and perspectives even to the same reader, if read again and again. Any literary piece that simply made no sense to the writer himself, appearing to surely enhance his confusion levels, if he were to read it again and again, simply fitted the bill, Raghavan knew like the back of his hand. Alongside, Raghavan was always paranoid that somebody would understand something that he understood nothing about; and the prospect of an ensuing discussion under such situations gave him jitters.

Literary magazines would abruptly cease operations as and when the editors found something more interesting in life, such as getting married to a rich girl with a businessman father-in-law, getting a cushy job, getting transferred to another state etc. Raghavan's little magazine expenses started shooting up, as he understood to his utter dismay that on average, the life of a little magazine was just two years or seven issues whichever occurred earlier.

If the editors would eventually find something more interesting, what about the writers, asked Bharu once that set Raghavan thinking. Sura suggested that Raghavan did two things simultaneously, viz, change the language to English and start writing humorous prose instead. He also presented him with a book, 'The oxford book of humorous prose', a brilliant collection humorous prose over 500 years. Collection of jokes was not humour, Sura cautioned him sternly. He further opined that the best of humour were subtle, decent, did not hurt anybody and always reflected real life experiences deliberated exaggerated for the effect. He was also considerate in giving Raghavan a very important piece of advice, that as a finance professional, he must be vary of one critical issue. i.e., his financial statements should not become humorous and his humour pieces should not be as boring as annual reports. With that Raghavan started his journey in humour. It was to stand him in good stead in life, he knew.

*Suresh alias Sura, a shorter version of his nick name, 'Encyclopaedia Suranica' had been a bosom friend of Raghavan with the "I-Know-Everything" attitude very prominently displayed in his aura. While many in their circle avoided Sura like plague, Raghavan eagerly sought his help whenever he was in doubt for he sincerely believed right from his school days that Sura knew almost everything about almost everything, somehow. Sura would also describe in elaborate detail every issue posed to him for clarification with standard dictionary definitions, examples, anecdotes and his own related theories.

**Bharathi alias Bharu and Deepak alias Deepu were the beloved children of Raghavan and Radha. Bharu, their 19-year-old daughter was doing some vague degree in environmental protection in a dust-filled and smelly Madras University building that had not seen broomsticks for more than a century. Preserving history, Bharu would say with nostalgia. Whenever she was not breathing, eating or sleeping, she spent her time in passionately sermonising anybody and everybody around whether they were listening or not, on nature, pollution, ozone depletion, global warming, vegetarianism etc. Surprisingly, she was willingly tolerated, as she was innately likeable. The elders in the family felt that she would become all right in a few years as if she was suffering from a disease.

Deepu, their 17-year-old son was of the normal type. He spent his time watching pirated cassettes of the latest Tamil films that always had English titles such as Thrill, Rhythm, King etc. with his friends. They would always be seen agitatedly talking to each other only on roads without switching off their mobikes, in Thanglish of the Madras type. For hobby, he attended to tuitions for the various subjects in his plus two studies right through morning till night.

Bharu and Deepu were the products of the PC-generation that began in the mid-eighties, where Tamil was almost barred from most of the schools in Chennai and elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, not only as the medium of communication but also as the second language. While Bharu was quite indifferent as she called herself a world citizen, Deepu desperately wanted to take up Tamil as his second language in his school days. But the fear that he would incur the wrath of his headmistress, Mrs.Thamilarasi made him drop the idea to his extreme sadness. Madam TML, as she was fearfully referred to, was a true representative of her genre, coming down heavily on anything relating to Tamil in curriculum. Even speaking in Tamil within the school premises would be frowned upon and fined heavily. Madam apart, it was also the considered opinion of the entire middle class Tamil intelligentsia cutting across caste and creed that only the unintelligent and the incapable opted for Tamil as their main language.

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