Wordathon Writer

The strangest thing about this unusual journey is that it began with a word.

I am the word

Living in a world of lexicon

I breathe the word air

I eat the word food

I am void without the word.

I began my journey as a writer and wrote the first micro fiction “Shataabdee.”

“He failed in the interview once again. He had missed the bus. He walked towards the railway track. He knew that Shataabdee always runs on time.”

My cousin sent my first ‘wow.’ It was in October 2018 my wife and I had taken a brief holiday at Sundarbans organised by a very committed group based out of Kolkatta. The novel “Hungry Tide” had made a deep impression in mind, and Sundarbans was in the bucket list. Having spent a good deal of work in the area of conservation during my career, I was inclined to write out a story on this topic, and Sundarbans lent itself out. I wrote an account of about 1200 words based on Sundarbaans about how a small fisherman lost his life due to an unseasonal cyclone attributed to global warming. My friend had aptly titled it as “Erroneous Billing.” He also remarked that my writing is characterised by doom. I had to prove him wrong so that I could bloom.

Elections were around the corner, and I took to satirizing. One of the candidates Mrs Unni in Kerala had chosen chaddi as the election symbol. I wrote a story titled “Chaddi Campaign.” An excerpt follows below

“When I met her she asked me the following riddle: Caste no bar; sex no bar; age no bar; religion no bar; party affiliation no bar; color no bar; size no bar; rich or poor no bar; everybody owns this; you found this in every house; you do not feel complete without it; you may not step outside your home without it; offered basic coverage, needed all through the year. So, what was it?”

 I suppose you can guess the answer. This story has been better viewed and better-liked among my several stories. The portal selected me as the “Author of the week” for the Chaddi Campaign. I soon realized that this story portal was trying to expand their reach piggy riding on my social network. Depending on the number of likes I could get by asking my social network to vote for me, I could become the winner of the “Author of the week.” I am not a socially networked person, and the ‘game of likes’ was not something I could win.

The portal has announced a month-long campaign in May using a picture as a daily prompt. I took part in this as a challenge as one could submit either a story or a poem. I never thought of myself as capable of writing poetry. But then I came across free verse as a genre of poem too. I did not win any of these contests for the fact of being a socially recluse person, but I got my surprise when the portal sent me a certificate anointing me as one of the “Literary Colonel” for both the viewership and likes from general readers and not to mention the profligacy. My classmates, too, called me a wordsmith in response to my postings in the WhatsApp group. To prove I am title worthy, I wrote a poem called “Wordsmith.”

In the anvil of the mind

The smithy strikes at the keys

Words get honed

And formed into prose or poetry.

Yet again in the smithy's workshop

Thoughts forge ahead

Words like sparks fly

Conjugating into something meaningful

Entertaining or evoking.

As a writer, I often faced existential questions concerning the reader’s response. Does a writer exist without a reader? If the reader reads but doesn’t review the story or the poem, what happens? I got my answer as follows:

Writer writes

Some readers read

Some will applaud

Some care two hoots

But the writer continues to write.

I continued to write, for I found writing to be a catharsis as well. One thing I noticed about myself in the metamorphosis as a writer is that I got tuned to events happening outside and the reaction inside me. Like in 2014, the elections in 2019 was about one leader standing tall. Either it was total admiration or dislike; there was no question of any shades of grey one felt towards this leader whom I anointed as Avatar and began a series called the “Exploits of Avatar.” Here is an excerpt

“Somewhere in the cosmos, Early 2014 AD

All the Hindu gods had assembled. The omnipotent Shiva was there with his consort Parvati. The protector and the Dasavathar Vishnu were there too. The creator Brahma was there perched on the lotus sticking out from the navel of Vishnu. It seemed to be an emergency meeting called to discuss the state of the ancient land. Sixty- seven years of misrule has sent this ancient land to the dark ages. Someone said no Asura rule was ever so bad. They all looked at Vishnu as if to say, that there was need for the eleventh Avatar, not the Hollywood type but Make in India type. Since the urgency was there, the Avatar has to descend right away. The opportunity was there as the country was going for elections. The Avatar could take part in the polls and could lead the country from darkness unto light. Immediately a resolution was passed to this effect with no opposition.”

Although I did not intend it to be a series, I got encouraged by friends who liked the character Avatar. So it became a ten-part series, and I got I published it as my first e-book in Amazon Kindle. One part of this book contains poems, as well. I offer a few select verses to give an idea

Justice has gone into hiding. While Justices are forever deciding.

It was a party with a difference. It had the cake and ate it too.

On the 5th August, a historic moment in the country, Shiva was left alone in his abode. What if a devotee left behind his mobile in a panic to leave the place? That was what had happened. Shiva did feel isolated and picked up the phone and called a random number. It happened to be my phone number, and the conversation started. I wrote another but a more broad-based satire series titled “Conversation with Shiva.” As Shiva once told me, he too is having an identity crisis without Aadhaar.

As I got grooving into writing, my laptop became my world. I wrote

My world is but my laptop

With 26 letters of the alphabet

With some added numbers and a caps lock

All the keys to everything I need.

How could I miss this holy cow found everywhere not only on the streets I criss-cross everywhere but on the newspaper too. I wrote a haiku

Gentle swaying hips

Your eyes stay riveted, heart

Goes upbeat, holy cow!

With the title “Literary Colonel” serving my ego well, I undertook a journey in June by the sleeper class train to and from Bangalore to Howrah armed with a black pocketbook to jot down things. I wrote a travelogue, my first attempt in this genre. India has declared herself as an open defecation free country based on a challengeable claim of the success of the Swachch Bharat. How sach (true) is the claim, one can easily verify by looking out from a train in the morning hours. The land beside the railway track, I could see as a dumping yard for all kinds of wastes both from the railway passengers but as well as the communities who live across the track. It was during the return journey from Howrah that I got the meat to chew about the travelogue.

I called it the “Refugee Train.” I was in for a shock as I boarded the compartment as I saw the aisle strewn with bodies of sleeping people and hardly any space for putting one’s foot down. I tip-toed like a ballet dancer and reached my berth to find it occupied by two sleeping youths whom I woke up. Luckily, they vacated the berth, and I crawled into the middle berth. The morning call of the vendors selling tea woke me up from my slumber, and the one youth sitting under my berth with the neck bent forward called out to me ‘Dada, why don’t you freshen up’ while we put the berth down. I nodded to him and snaked my way to the toilet, where I found a big queue standing. I came back to my seat and thought about what would be the state of the loo if and when I get to use it. About 1 hr later, when I again ventured out, I was able to use a western (good no one preferred this style) toilet and found to my surprise the toilet seat bone dry. Now that I was relieved, some cheer came back as I sipped my tea and contemplated how do I begin my travelogue.

Then I started a conversation with Mustafa. He works as a laborer in Bangalore and six months since he has been working there. He introduced me to his friend Tibrun who works as a fitter and been at Bangalore for seven years. I was shocked to learn he had never been to school and the reason was his parents had died early. Tibrun looked barely in his twenties but married, and his wife was due for delivery. Another youth walked in, and he got introduced as don’t worry Mustafa, who is also a seasoned hand in Bangalore. This Mustafa was even married, and he had a two- year old child too. He barely looked out of school with his lean muscular frame. Both Tibrun and don’t worry Mustafa were teasing the other Mustafa and said he wouldn’t be able to get married as he was seen to be old. This bunch of boys were from Malda district in Bengal and were from neighboring villages. They, too, informed me that they get Rs 500 per day of work with accommodation. They showed me pictures of their work. They were doing glass fitting in office buildings and wore a yellow helmet. I asked Tibrun whether he has picked up any Kannada.

He said no. I asked was it fair that he doesn’t know the local language and stay aloof in their Bengali clique. As I was observing them their comradeship was heart touching. They laughed together, huddled together, they were sharing a tobacco mix which one of them would prepare. One after another they found some sleeping place to make up for loss of sleep. They have left behind, their young wives and their children and traveling some 2000 km to eke out a living, traveling in such condition as refugees. I felt that IRCTC was looting us all. I had paid Rs 750 for a confirmed ticket, and they too had paid for a casual ticket Rs468 and an excess fare of Rs 340. We were traveling like refugees. I did notice that cleaning contractors during the journey had cleaned the toilet once and filled up the tanks with water with what avail? IRCTC was deliberately following the policy of overcrowding. I did register a formal complaint in their portal and also in a private consumer portal against this monopoly practice. I wondered what would get reported should a train accident occur? Would anybody admit to the overloaded passengers on the train? Of- course, IRCTC was also running a Doronto express and charging double the rate for the same journey, and as my friend Mustafa informed that nobody without a reservation could enter Doronto. But why these superfast trains have become free for all?

I wondered if this was how the New India should treat the youth of the country. As I deboarded the train at Bangalore, I saw a news flash about the death of immigrant workers who had fallen in a building under construction. I was thinking of the youths I had met in my journey who had migrated to Bangalore for a livelihood.

I got an opportunity to write a different travelogue when I went down the memory lane of a Chola spy trail of the 12th century. The trail’s route followed the spy from the famous novel “Ponniyin Selvan” in Tamil by Kalki. As we began the trail from the famous Veeranarayan lake, I wrote

“The distant sound of the trot of the horse

It is our otran (spy)Vandhiyadevan on course

On a new adventure with us he is yet to make

Beginning on the banks of the Veeranarayan lake.”

History I realized was one of bloodsheds. So I wrote

“Reigns of kings have always left a blood trail

Of the common soldiers

Widows and fatherless children.

Yet the kings make high note in history

And the commoners not even a footnote.”

I also found I could take to puns easily. So I became the Pannalal who wrote a Panacea for Life, studied in the University of Punslyvania, and did his thesis on “Pun o graphy” incognito, not to mention his favorite snack as pun and tea.

Just a few weeks ago, as a writer, when I went on a trip to Kerala, which I had visited many times, I discovered new things. I had visited a place called Kodungalur, where Saint Thomas had put his foot in India in 52 AD, where the first of the Juma Masjid called the Cheramon Juma Masjid got built-in 14th century, behest of the Chera King and the town boasted of an old Bhagwati temple as well.

God’s own country goes the tagline

Temple, mosques, church dot the landscape; it’s a good sign

I often felt the outside events seep into me and provoke me to write. When the Nobel prize equivalent got awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, I felt angry with some adverse reactions from the bhakts I keyed in the following lines of a poem titled “Diamond and a Lotus.”

The diamond stays one even if covered with dirt

The lotus blooms amid the pond full of squalor

Eagle soars high, what a sight when it flies.

I don’t know where does this journey as a writer into the world of lexicon would take me. But as I had read somewhere, this journey is like driving a car in the night where I can see as far as the headlight reaches. But this journey is no more strange; I have become best friend with words.

I have evolved in this world

And now, I revolve around the words.

Sometimes they hide, and I seek them.

At times when I am at sea

They come after me wave after wave.

It is all about co-existence

Without them I am tense

With them around I am intense

Sometimes when I am present, the words go past

For they know, I cannot catch up with the past.

Words don’t make any pretense

Of liking or un-liking me

Even though I remain faithful to them.

When I put them in a sentence

Words tense between past, present, and future.

At times when I am having

pun with them

Readers join too and enjoy the fun.

All in all, I thank the words for without them

The world will not be.

As I get more into writing, I realize that it is more like running, which I do daily. Both require limbs and originate in the mind. As I cover distances and tell myself miles to go so in my writing, I have themes to go before I sleep.