THE CANDID CRITIC

I have never pursued writing as a career. In fact I would hardly call myself a full-fledged academician or an artist. When my duties as a daughter, a wife and a mother were discharged and time offered a gaping hole in the dark, I thought I’d better fill it with something meaningful. And that something happened to be my first book.

When I first started to write, it was with a very selfish attitude. I wrote because this was the only way I was eloquent with my thoughts. I wrote because I wanted to record my feelings. But as I continued to progress, I realized something. Apart from airing out their mental expressions, writers have certain obligations too. If one is not politically, socially or morally committed, then the art is irrelevant. I also realized that good writing is not about ‘I’, ‘Me’ and ‘Myself’. It is about people- about their ideas, their emotions and their ordinary lives. I then started to get into people’s minds and feelings but by the time this realization had dawned on me, my first book was almost in its setting stages and there was nothing much I could do. In fact I did not even pay heed to the call of brevity and my memoir snowballed into a whopping five hundred something pages.

My next aim was to somehow get it published- not for fame but for posterity. No mainstream publisher wanted to even have a look at it. And being a complete novice in this ruthless domain, I did not know whom to turn to. Minerva, an International but joint publication firm, agreed to publish it but I was a bit wary. Among the writer’s circle, Minerva was more popularly known as the ‘Vanity Publishers’. Moreover, for my upright husband, money had never proved to be an added sweetener in his ordinary cup of tea. Although subconsciously I knew that commercialization had started to taint even the literary field, I just did not want to admit this fact, even to myself. Always living in a world of make belief and deluding oneself into believing that their baby will be the bonniest of them all, any neoteric artist would hardly want to disenchant oneself. .

And then Mr. Samar Jha came into the picture. Mr. Jha is a senior colleague of my husband and apart from the fact that he is very ‘literary’ he also owns a very benevolent heart (how can we ever forget his magnanimous gesture of retaining his bungalow in Guwahati just so we could move lock stock and barrel into it?). So when my book was complete and we were hemming and hawing about creating a dent in our savings, Shanker (my husband) suggested I send two chapters to Mr. Samar Jha- for his scholarly comments and experienced advise.

Mr. Jha browsed through the chapters and suggested we go ahead with the publishing. Obviously I had qualified as an author. Moreover, there was no use in burning the midnight oil, for something that would never see the light of day. I saw the point. So the usual contracts and legal documents were duly signed and the process began.

A few months later I met Mr. Jha. It was aboard the ‘Bhagmati’, a fancy boat liner where the Railway Accounts crowd (from every zone) had gathered in Hyderabad for a reunion. It was the first time I was seeing him and it left quite an impression. When we walked up to him, he was introducing himself to a lady Officer, commenting on the correct articulation of his name. ‘No, no, no, no’, he was explaining patiently to the Officer, who was relentlessly bent upon pronouncing his first name ‘Samar’ as if it were a sultry season.

‘It is not ‘Summer’, he said good naturedly. ‘Let me show you a simple and easy way of saying it. Have you heard of Bernard Shaw?’ The lady nodded. ‘And what about Thomas More?’ he asked. She nodded again. ‘That’s all there is to it then’, he shrugged. ‘Just put ‘Shaw’ and ‘Moore’ together.’ ‘Shawmore’, I inwardly repeated, albeit silently. And this time the lady got it absolutely right too. I was really amused and intrigued.

Mr. Jha visited us the next day. He congratulated me on the completion of my book and promised that he would read it one day. ‘Why don’t you give it to him for reviewing?’ Shanker told. ‘Fine’, I said. ‘But first, let it get published.’

And now four years later, after I no longer belong to the list of those millions of disgruntled authors with unpublished books, yet again, Shanker reminded me about sending my book to his friend, Samar.

But now I am in two minds. And I feel my apprehension is thoroughly justified. As long as I had mentally pictured our friend’s identity as a warm and temperate climate, it was in good health. But a deadly combination of two philosophical, intellectual and literary wizards- Mr. Shaw and Mr. More, is way beyond my logical scope. ‘Let me think about it’, I said, a little warily. But deep down I knew that if ever I needed a frank appraisal it would be from this candid critic. Am I not right Mr. Shaw- More?

Nargis Natarajan.