To Write or Not to Write

The right to express oneself is an undeniable freedom. But isn’t the freedom not to write about what the markets, literary establishments and general Joes demand an equally enshrined liberty?

Imagine you are a writer presenting your latest book to a small but dedicated audience in one of the country’s dwindling cultural institutions. A newspaper editor or some media personality has been dragged in to ask intelligent questions about your book. You sit on sofas and face each other. The desired effect is to create the aura of a private conversation between two well-meaning friends, on which the audience is allowed to eavesdrop. A passage of suitable length is read aloud to reassure readers that your prose really is mesmerising. There will be some amount of chit-chat interspersed with laughter, revelations about your writing process and universal declarations about the role of literature. Finally, after adequate back and forth, a trapdoor is lifted, and the audience is invited to a Q&A session.

One person will be relied upon to begin. Usually, this falls to the Stalwart in the group, a veteran book-launch goer. Attempts to avoid this situation have led to the author planting a friend or mother in the audience with a stupendously lucid opening question. But Mama will be no match for the Stalwart, who will not even wait for the microphone to launch into his preamble. He will be followed by others who pose unanswerable questions, statements, concerns, discrepancies and insights you could never have predicted. On occasion, someone might even pull out a newspaper clipping from his pocket and proceed to read excerpts of a stonkingly negative review of your book and ask you to respond. At some point in the dialogue, unfailingly, there will be a question about why you didn’t write about something else.

“Sir, you write excellently about the morale and mindset of the soldiers, but why not a single mention about the First Indo-China war?”

Er, because this is a book about the First Afghan war…

Or, “In your book you make great metaphorical connections between cricket and embroidery, but why not between cricket and miniature painting?”

Er, say what?

Or, and this is a personal favourite: “You know, why don’t you just write a poem about a really good fuck?”

Some of these questions will make you seriously consider your professional options, others will give you ideas for future poems. But the validity of the question remains. Why the hell did you write about the things you wrote about and not about the gazillion other things you could have written about?

THE DILEMMA: What about the freedom not to?

Let us assume the freedom to write, express and publish, is a given. Let us assume that rationally and ideologically, it is a good thing to protect writers who live in despotic lands, under threats of surveillance, slaughter, disappearance, imprisonment and censorship. Let us go so far as to say that it wouldn’t kill us to extend a similar kindness to those writers who’ve never suffered any of the above listed extreme threats, but who have probably suffered the tyranny of the blank page and the shackles of their own tortured uncertainties.

At a recent dinner party, I was privy to an interesting conversation about the failure of American novelists to respond to a post 9/11 world. The consensus was that Americans weren’t doing enough to question their government’s role in the war on terror, that fiction writers had relinquished all moral authority to non- fiction writers, with the notable exceptions of Don DeLillo, Dave Eggers, Kevin Powers, Amy Waldman and a few others. The underlying tenor of the argument, as I understood it, was: why would you want to continue writing about the terror of suburban American life when you have drones and the NSA to work with?

This is the Stalwart’s bristle. The eternal complaint: why did you choose this, not that?

Expectations from readers, publishers and writers themselves form an unspoken bulwark of censorship. There are categories that define writers—ethnicity, gender, race, language, geographical location, genre—and each of these categories bears a certain weight. Expectations coo in your ear. Asian writer, take note: family sagas are out, unless they are pinned to a magisterial historical backdrop, preferably something that can shed light on a contemporary issue such as Islamist militancy. American writers, listen up, in theory you can continue writing about Minnesota or Brooklyn or wherever it is you live because your books are the most translated in the world. Chinese writers, what do you mean by not criticising your government’s wayward ways? Latin Americans, don’t even think magic realism. Jhumpa Lahiri, are you really going to write another book about Bengali immigrants? And so on and so forth.

A writer’s right to express herself is an undeniable freedom. But isn’t the freedom not to write about what the markets, literary establishments and general Joes demand of you an equally enshrined liberty?

THE OMNIPRESENT AXE OF UTILITARIANISM: How is this useful to anyone?

I recently began writing a poem with the title, While the War in Syria Rages, I Sleep, which could work with several permutations: While the War in Gaza/ Libya/ Sierra Leone Rages, I Eat/ Plant Seeds/ Talk on the Phone.

One of my concerns as a writer has been this question of involvement, of bearing witness. And as much as I hate the word ‘usefulness’, I have to admit, it has snuck up on me with the regularity of a Tamil Nadu power cut. I could blame my Protestant-Gujju genes, which often push me into thinking I should pursue more practical options in life—like becoming a Sleep Guru or a Cement Paint Baroness. But I think it’s normal for writers to wonder about the futility of their craft. Who is going to read it? What’s the point of writing it? What impact will your work have? Or is even thinking about these lofty questions utterly fantastical because everyone knows that most books are going to end up at the bottom of an abyss called ‘Gaming Has Taken Over The World, Dodo’? In other words: why bother?

Joseph Brodsky, a man who ranks high in my pantheon of poet gods, was 24 when he was held on trial in Leningrad for being a parasite, or more precisely, for being a ‘literary drone’, who wrote poetry of all things. This was 1964. His sentence: five years exile on a collective farm where he would have to clock in daily hours of physical labour. His crime: not having a ‘real’ job and therefore being a parasite, sucking on the righteous arteries of society.

He went on to serve only 18 months of his sentence, and in 1972 was forcibly exiled to the United States, but throughout his career he strove to resist the ‘dissident poet’ label. He remained indifferent to the Soviet regime, and in his poetics, insisted on steering away from the political. He had been prophetic as a 24-year-old. “I’m no parasite,” he said, calmly standing in the dock. “I’m a poet, who will bring honour and glory to his country.”

Not all of us can be Brodskys. There will be poets who choose different paths. Poets like Neruda, who after writing about what spring does to cherry trees, would turn intensely political because of the events of the Spanish Civil War. ‘And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry/ speak of dreams and leaves/ and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets…’

And then there are poets who are simply immobilised by the futility of having to go through ordinary life while parts of the world are burning. Poets who wonder what the point of writing is unless they deal explicitly with environmental degradation, world hunger, the seasonal deadly epidemic, when all they really want to write about is sex, love and death.

AUTHENTICITY: But your body language is not Indian!

One of the greatest insults I’ve received was delivered by a stranger in a snack bar (although I’m convinced she didn’t intend to be cruel). I was telling her that I worked with an Indian dance company and she blurted out, somewhat aghast, “But your body language is not Indian!” It’s an insult that carries almost the same level of hostility, as: “Oh, but that novel is totally autobiographical.” Both insinuations imply a basic lack of authenticity.

As a writer battling for various freedoms, there’s a good chance you’ll be called upon to defend your authenticity at some stage. Top authenticity failures include defecting from the motherland, defecting from the mother tongue, writing about a place/religion/culture other than your own unless you happen to be Caucasian and working for an important Western publication (but there’s been serious backlash here), writing about being a woman when you’re a man or vice versa, writing as an autistic person when you’re not, daring to write about the danger of big dams without a PhD in mechanical engineering… And yet, if there’s the slightest hint that you’re espousing that famous dictum supposedly attributed to Mark Twain, immortalised in creative writing syllabi across the world—‘Write what you know’—you will be accused of shamelessly robbing the stories of your friends, family and paltry life in order to recycle them as fiction.

Should writers develop the skin of a sperm whale and just get on with it? Undoubtedly. Could their sense of freedom be somewhat enlarged if they didn’t get struck by a harpoon every time they lifted their weary heads out of the ocean of literature for a breather? Probably.

IT’S SO LOUD IN HERE: Must I have an opinion on everything?

Despite being hacked by a Facebook freak and bullied by a Twitter impersonator who had the levity of an earthworm and the meanness of three disgruntled teenagers put together, I remain optimistic about the internet. I don’t buy Jonathan Franzen-style lambasts about the evils of the web, but believe instead, that the democratic platform of the internet has made the world a significantly more open place for writers, corporations and child-molesters alike.

No discussion of a writer’s liberties can be complete without taking into account technological advances, which essentially hope to eliminate the need for libraries, publishers or ever having to meet a human or humanoid again. Bliss, for the solitary writer. Besides, with the unstoppable proliferation of social platforms, networks, blogs, soapboxes et al, and the internet skies thundering with diverse invitations from voyeurs, trolls, lovely ladies from a book club in Chandigarh, it’s no exaggeration to say that the 21st century writer is experiencing freedom at its peak. So much freedom in fact, that she may not have the time, inclination or headspace to write any of the things she will later be held accountable for.

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