I peg away a living from consulting. This brings food on the table for the family and pays the bills. However, I write in my ‘me time’ and during personal flashes of what I consider to be creativity.
Such ‘me times’ have given rise to a best seller on Kindle in the genre of crime and detection. The heightened sales have brought an offer from Amazon to sell the same book as a paperback. This has brought me much happiness and also drudgery.
Along with congratulations, this success has spread the word that my scribblings on Facebook every now and then are not just flashes in the rusted middle class pan but revealings of a greater being – that mutated animal called a ‘writer’ who writes to earn a living.
No amount of explanation that I am a total unfit for that borrowed robe will convince the hey sayers that I am not he of the purple raiment, the golden goose of pen craft or the poet laureate of pot roast.
The hobbies I pursue immediately give them grist for their mill and they enquire solicitously as to why I do not write about my regular visits to the forests and tiger or bird sightings.
My lunches with friends where I can smell a spoonful of broth and declare whether the cinnamon used is fake or real is suddenly a reason why I should not chase an editor for a fortnight to fill a single column of four inches height after six sessions for corrections.
It is difficult to persuade such well-wishers that I have better things to do with my clients’ time and anything, which does not fill the coffers or brush the cowper’s is useless for a menial like me who has to strain his back to earn a living till he is declared to be in a pitiable state.
Even my penchant for chatting with taxi drivers and street food vendors is not spared if I am accompanied by a peer. Between appreciative chomps on the double egg double mutton roll that I treat them with, they declare, “You are so egalitarian and find out about the lives of poor people in a trice. I say, you should write about it.”
I keep to myself the feeling that I would rather write his dirge after braining him on the spot and burying him at my own expense.
Lately, there have been times when I get the feeling that I have been rid of that quazi-secular, partly educated community, which wants me to write about everything just to satisfy their urges to placate.
It has been sometime since I heard someone asking me to write about it.
When I drive to forests and pass small towns in the process, I seldom hear anybody saying to anyone else that he or she ought to write about it. Rather, that feeling is right aborted as that refrain is silent.
Sitting for a quiet lunch on my way to Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan at the Kesroli Resort, I pause taking in the smell of the fresh spices, herbs and condiments the cook must have used to prepare the buffet. They are so heady to an urban city slicker like me that I shut my eyes and chew lightly.
“Do you like the food, sir?” I am jolted from my reverie with this question close to my ear.
I gulp some water and reply, “yes, very much. Thank you.”
It was the portly manager trying to make a loyal customer feel wanted. “Well sir,” he said, “we have our book of testimonials over there. Please write about it.”
I gave up.
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