Murakami's Ball

Apart from "High strung! High strung! High strung!", the other thing that most people have said over the years about me is that I have a gift for writing.

"Why don't you write a book? It will sell!" or "You really ought to think about making some money from this 'way you have with words' ".

Truth is, I have thought about it many times. It's not like I have not written books. I have. Three, actually. They were published when I was 11, 13 and 18 respectively.Poems.And trust me, they were not photocopied pages bound and stapled together and called "Book!". They were published by known publishers. My first was called Flowers and Butterflies. No points for guessing what I wrote about. Second was called Burning Candle. And the third ( well, I am not as embarrassed by this one as the other two), was called The Edifice of Love and was mostly poems about the Gulf war and my feelings and experiences as a refugee in the war-zone.

If anyone was to bring those books out in the open now, I would run for cover in embarrassment. Of course, it was all fodder for the press then, cashing in on news about the "prodigy" who wrote 'beyond her age'. But now, aged 30, when I go to family get-togethers and a proud aunt comes up and says she lent a copy of my book to her niece who is in 'College', I die a hundred gruesome deaths. Of course, 11 year olds write about Orange Sunsets and the Ocean and the Moon and their Kid Brother's Antics. And 17 year olds talk about isolation and fear in a war-zone when there is carpet bombing happening hot on their tails. It's only natural. They are certainly not expected to tap the range and intensity of Sylvia Plath or Maya Angelou. I have been told that I am being unfair to myself and seeing things out of context every time I deride what I wrote and published back then. Those were the musings of an adolescent and well, for my age, those were really good poems, they say.

Frankly,I don't care."Read my blog please!" I cry, " but please, don't mention those books! Especially to college going people who are majoring in English".

"Fine", said my brother one day, "Redeem yourself then! Write something NOW. You're 30. That's a good age to be in the publishing world. You've somewhat seen the world and developed a fairly decent style. You're not a spring chicken. Bring out a book now!".

So,I have been thinking. For years now. About what to write...

I can write really good poems having moved theme wise beyond Orange Sunsets and Kid Brother's Antics. But then do I want to be a poet? I really don't know if I can write stories. My family would laugh at this one- they think my head's full of fantastic stories- that old hurt, this festering angst, that unforgivable buffoonery, this nagging regret. If each were developed into a story with fully fleshed characters and scenarios or maybe just one melodramatic character aka Me, jumping from story to story, enduring all of these, it would make for an interesting compilation. Could I possibly write a novel? I am not sure.I studied Criticism and Analysis for donkey's years, then taught the same.Taking the novel apart, dissecting its components and fishing for Symbolism is what I do for a living. So writing my own novel should not be all that hard, right? Well, I don't know if it's that simple...

"Write! Just start!' gushed one website that turned up on Google search, "And inspiration will just turn up on your page. Not the other way round!".

"Writers are people who don't sleep much" proclaimed another site, "Get up an hour early and write the first thing that comes to your head. Even if it is rubbish!".

"Copy your favorite passage from your favorite book. Feel the words, the texture, the tone, and how the author has picked and chosen them" goaded another site.

I think Haruki Murakami is a fabulous writer. I read an article on him that said that he was sitting at a baseball game one day and saw the ball being hit out of the park. That's when he had this epiphany and decided that he could be a writer. I processed the logic- a ball flying high and a man realizing he could write. Made no sense. I guess that's why it's called an epiphany.

Scott O'Dell, who lived by the sea all his life said that hearing the sound of the wind and the surf just told him he was born to write. I marveled at these experiences and decided that I would wait for my epiphany too. So I went up on the terrace, determined to make my personal epiphany happen that very day. I saw an eagle flying low on the horizon, gleaming white and majestic against the setting sun. "This is my equivalent of the Murakami ball!" I gasped, feeling goose flesh all over and rushed down to write. Nothing happened. Maybe it just wasn't the day for an epiphany.

So I waited another 24 hours. It was about to rain and the wind was blowing really hard. The Gulmohur trees in front of my house shed some rusty flowers."Aaaaaaah! My epiphany! This is where my soul gets stirred into being a writer" I closed my eyes and felt the damp smell of the earth. "If this is not my Murakami ball, nothing is!". Half an hour later at the computer, again, nothing happened...

Then, one fine day after many months of reading and mis-reading natural phenomena, other-worldly signs and even entrails while cutting chicken ( Asterix and the Soothsayer?!?) and pointedly looking for signs that I was destined to be a Writer, I had that all important epiphany.Disappointingly, it did not come with any sightings of Eagles, Hares or flying Baseballs. It was just a fleeting thought on a hot Saturday afternoon while hanging some ratty underwear out to dry.Can Bloggers be considered Writers? Blogging is Writing after all. You write, put it out there, people read it, post comments. If you write really well, you get a loyal fan base who like your work and recommend it to other people. You get publicity. Maybe not in the tens of thousands like a regular published bloke, but word certainly gets around. People sitting in far flung regions of the world get to know about your work and talent. Hmmm, so, how is it any different from a guy who sends his work off to a publisher, who then puts it through the printing process and makes a book? You pick up a book and read it. You get onto the Net and read a blog. Same thing, different medium. Okay, so the Blogger does not make the fat dough the way an author does ( I've made 10 rupees from the Advertising on my blog in the past 6 months). Fine, the Blogger does not get coverage on Time magazine center-spread, the T.V interviews or Blog-reading sessions at a fancy book fair in Amsterdam.But the display of talent is the same.

I felt a strange resolution after that epiphany with the ratty underwear.I might write a book in the future or I might not but I am a writer because I write.Blog, diary entry or shopping list doesn't matter. The point is to just write. I don't have to really produce a novel or publish a book to be known as a writer. As a Blogger, I am automatically a writer! Heard that Xh, Prats, Metamatician? We are writers!