NavDharmyug

Let me put it on record- Writing is not fun. There is no happiness in writing. There is immense satisfaction in having written. When one is too overwhelmed by the world around, and one cannot quite fathom how one should react to it, One writes. Writing is the outcome of inadequacy of action.  No, this does not mean that writers are not men of action. Writers, more often than not, want so much action that their physical world fails to sustain. Thus, the imagination, the fiction, the fantasy and the words. Words- that exquisite conjoining of alphabets obtained in the excavation of the soul.  The written word nourishes, the unwritten is a constant turmoil. What does the writer do when he is not writing? He is either cursing, belittling, downgrading himself in his own mind. His pen gets heavier with every wordless day. There is a reason that writers and poets are mostly sympathetic and friendly to one another. They know and can identify with one another's pain. They ...

Languages live and die with human interests. Language does not have with in it to carry itself through public apathy. Language cannot survive vacuum and apathy. One of the biggest loss of the 21 st century is the death of languages. While technology has been one cause of it, religious appropriation and attribution is another important reason. Suddenly we have Latin for Christians, Sanskrit for Hindus and Urdu for Muslims. Absolutist religions have brought clash of civilization to our doorsteps. This reflects in the election of Donald Trump in the US and the books on Islamic supremacy being in best-sellers in France. It is not totally unfounded. Technology connects the mankind in unprecedented manner. Therefore, famines of Bengal in 18 th and 19 th century could not cause mass transfer of humanity from Asia to Europe nor could most bloody of wars in 7 th century push people westwards, as much as it could today. One can easily call names to people who are simplistic and intelle...

The weather has changed. Skies are clear once again, fog lifted. Azure, cloudless skies; trees bare. The dawn descends with the shy, blush of a fair, newly-wed woman. The days are not yet jaundiced with the pale, bright yellowness of the summers. There is a distinct hint of red in the yellow.  Writing is sporadic, very less. A few intermittent blog post. Unwritten words sit heavily on the soul of a writer. To accept oneself as a writer is to embark on a dangerous path. It is a solitary profession and a hard one at that.  I read to prepare to write. I tell myself. Be at some point, even reading has to make way for writing. Writing is not a quick job. It takes time, time and sitting all agitated inside and all peaceful outside, the incongruous internal and external world pulling one apart, in diverse directions. Writing takes time. One needs to tie that heavy stone to the neck of a reckless, wandering mind and allow it to sink to the depths. Bubbles of air escap...

Writing is fun only when I am in the process of writing, creating a world, conjuring some kind of magic. It is such a liberating feeling when the ink flows unhindered, words come tumbling over welcoming white pages. But at all the other times, my life as a writer is a life of absolute miserly. The periods are fraught with self-doubt, gasping in a sea of insurmountable emotions, searching for one write word, one perfect phrase. Some evenings are filled of such blankness of mind, I worry if I will ever write another word, let alone construct another story. The build-up to a story and the settling down after the release of a book- such miserable moments, and a haunting question, the Damocles sword- Will I ever write anything worth anything ever again? It must be so very hard for anyone who is a full time writer. But even for someone like me who is not a full-time writer- one question keeps coming back- Will I be read ? To quote J ulian Barnes from Flaubert’s Parrot ...

These stories, Collected under the title, Broken Shadow by Radhika Mukherjee , twelve shorts in total, celebrate words, in their plight to reach out to the world about which an artist seeks to search the meaning of, the immense beauty of those words, written with deep dedication which is visible in every word, one is caught up immediately. There is no build-up, no fooling around. These are not stories of plot and drama, twists and turns. These are the stories more in the style of Annie Dillard' s The Writing Life and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, contemplative, meditative. I hope I'd not be sued by Chicago Tribune description of The Writing Life, for it perfectly fits this collection of story, which I plagiarize with due credit here, " For non-writers, it is a glimpse into trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague. " While the book is much shorter in...

Rating : If you are a writer, Must read. If you are not- Still, a must read. I have just finished reading Middlemarch . It is quite a heavy and voluminous book. The story slowly rises, very slowly, spread across so many deeply developed and intricately engaging characters- the people of a fictional rustic town of Middlemarch in the 18 th Century England. The narrative and the story is strong, well-built with huge shoulders to carry various causes which it alludes to. The beauty and charm of reading a classic of those times is that while these stories were written when Europe convalesced under the forces which were to set it on a path to glory; it is to the credit to wonderful writers like George Eliot (Real name, Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880)), that they never allow the narrative to surrender to their causes. While the story deals with love, marriage as prime theme, it is not a romance novel, as is evident by the male pen-name taken by the writer in those times. Ther...

The year has just past by. Another year, another life, another sigh, another teardrop for the giant eye of the time. Many things can happen in an year. Lives can change- a country's life, an individual's life. How does one day differ from another? Does the tide turn, the Earth revolves in another direction? It is a psychological peg we devise to measure our journey. To measure how far we have traversed from where we started. Did we travel farther than others that we measure against? It sounds such narrow-minded to measure ourselves against others around us, but what other way do we have? This competition make us going, while in our heart of heart we know it will all end into nothing- cipher, a zero and only solace we will have, will be an unproven promise of afterlife. But as spaces around us reduce, shoulders rub against one another, we barely breathe, we sigh, long sighs, as if they would some day grow so big to swallow our whole lives. We need friends, camarad...

Art without purpose is nothing but debauchery. Every piece of good literature should serve one of the two purpose- soothe the senses, clarify the social questions. As of now, in India, we consider writer returning the awards to a government which they do not like as a sign of something of an act of bravery. The fact remains that anything can only be returned to the one who has given it in the first place, the Akademy was constituted as autonomous body, probably has missed out the notice of eminent writers. Also if intent was to embarrass a government, they also missed out on the right target, which should be the government which failed in protecting the citizen, the government which holds law and order responsibility.  But then author as conscience keeper of the society is misuse of the authority a writer has over words. Since I,as a writer, have a right over print space, I declare that I am an enlightened being, more sensitive, more rebellious than ordinary mortals.  ...

Eye of The Tiger I have been athletic but never sports oriented in my life. In between, I had faced my own sins of youth, arrogant decadence of all ills of youth- smoking, drinking, an incandescent  conscience and an unyielding spine,  aggravated further by constant strife between my refusal of all social judgments and an insistence by the world around me to judge me, nevertheless. It hit me, hit me hard. I went down with a feeling that I will never come back again. I remember those bleak days, fourteen years back, when every step taken would be precarious ringing with a hissing fear of death in its sound. I was hit by affairs of the heart, and with that I am not referring to my courtship which culminated with a marriage resulting in excommunication by the society and family. It was odd feeling. It was  unexpectedly  expected. I was told that was to happen, but being an only son, believed that warning from the parents to be hollow. Boy, solid it was, they ...