The Hatchling, the Hawks and the Dream of a Writer

January 27, 2008

After that brutal judicial shake-up in December, this January has witnessed lots of hurry-scurrying on my part.

January has been unusually cold, with the temperature even hitting the freezing point on one mercilessly icy night. But warmed by the feeling of anguish born of that injustice, which stoned my hibernating self, I have now come to my senses.

The summation of my realization is: keeping hopes for justice, however strong and sturdy your case might be on legal, humanitarian and moral grounds, is totally wishful thinking, bordering on the illusionary utopian world.

The reason I remained in this self-congratulatory, self-wanting and artificial sense of being at ease with my status of a would-be HCS officer, waiting for his inevitable appointment—hasn't the recommending authority, HPSC, got a constitutional status?—was that I still somehow believed in the farcically utopian and obsolete principles of justice, fair play and uprightness at the highest level of the judiciary.

But as it was to inevitably, inescapably happen, I was jolted out of this make-believe world.

The palace which I had created from the masonry work of constitutionality, legality, government's obligations towards its subjects and things alike proved to be a brutal, fragile, wispy palace of cards, which was dismantled by a politically vindictive snort.

But those little papery beams and pillars of my illusionary masonry work fell on my head with a crushing weight.

That cry of being wronged was inescapable, but this cry has the force to shatter the glasses of fair play and goodness.

I know that now I have got every right to turn into a negative character. Even the law of redemption allows me to do so, for out of the cage now I fly aesthetically, flapping in the world, basking with its sky-high towers built on all the shortcutting rubble of illegalities, immoralities and inhuman wantonness.

There is always a danger.

Now that I have come out of the safe cocoon, which unfortunately was too small to fetch me any morsels of survival to fly in the larger world of bigger realities, there is always the danger that I will be arrowed down while on my straight, uncurving, undodging flight by some nastily manoeuvring arrow or a smart predator.

I need to bring a dodging, dribbling, flickering, camouflaging misdemeanour to my flight in order to save myself from the circumstantial, planned barbs and slingshots.

So, just like a funny, half-furry, tabby-adorned nestling out of the nest for the first time, I flap my wings, trying to be airborne, my heart thumping with excitement, fear and suspicion.

The big world with its bigger things appears like a miraculous maze.

But the reality is that there are hawks and predators in wait on neighbouring branches.

More than my flagging sense of new adventure and circumstantial flip-flop, it is the chance sighting by a cruel-beaked predator which will decide my fate.

A few sudden attacks, unwarranted ones and spurts will further shake me out of the still-remaining strands from the past world, and if I am still lucky enough to survive the predator's clutches, more on account of my good luck than the dexterity of new, inexperienced wings, I will, in time to come, become an expert glider on the slippery, murky path of this real world.

These newborn flappings have seen me knocking at a few corporate doors for the post of content writer also.

There have been a few feeble, meekly spoken dialogues on the shaky stage of business as well for the last two years. 

More than my own struggle by flapping wings, it will be the circumstantial snares or the incidental rosebuds, brought about by the chancey wind of fate, that will decide the outcome of my new journey.

Despite its uncertainties, this new flight is worth trying.

One more thing needs mention here. It is of quite some importance.

During that period of hibernation, and even before that, I always found the very idea of doing anything except reading and writing intolerable.

I remained there in the dream world of classical French, Russian and English literature—that world of balmy happenings, full of pains, pleasures, pathos, agonies and ecstasies, their stories etched almost permanently on the ever-fleeting, cascadingly changing face of time.

As immortals of the literary world write immortal lines which inspire generations, that world which is contained inside the pages of a classical book is beyond the swiping broom of time.

Open a classical book and you travel back to the time fabulously drawn out for mere mortals like us to become a part of it, to feel the depth of those generous nature-human bonds, to feel the pulsating, throbbing, exciting pace, so slow to us, of life taking detours through the chancey snares of fate, and humans sharing those purely loveliest moments defined by innocent talk among first-time lovers—those summers, those winters, those rains, those snows; in fact, almost anything and everything so full of grace, even the villainy of those characters appearing tolerable in the classical mould.

So for a long time, and almost full-time during these three years while waiting for the never-to-happen justice and while managing these business affairs, whenever I could find time, I remained a brooding, though happily, shadow over those ageless words.

Once you get lost in the pleasantly curving maze of that fascinating world, you get addicted to it.

You find the world outside so boring, so ignorantly kicking for mere mundane survival.

It was a classic case of addiction, to be frank.

Those were the only moments of ecstasy for me.

This was the only real world for me.

To be able to create such a world myself on paper became the driving force of my life.

So at this period of time, the only choice worth trying for was to become a writer, and that too of the category of classical writers.

But for that, I need to earn some money.

That is why I am being drawn towards business, because I do know writers struggle a lot economically.

I remember Munshi Premchand's only picture that is available, and a great writer, despite having tried his best to wear the best of clothes, one can clearly see his shoe torn, his toe visible.

So as far as surviving as a writer is concerned, it's a pretty mountainous goal indeed, especially so given the ever-existent paucity of freshly coloured, multi-hued ideas delving deep into the beautiful chamber of pseudo-reality—the pliable moulds which can be used for creating beautiful landscapes, fascinating happenings, softly soufling emotions, agonizing mischances, multiplexes of luck, fate and destiny.

Even language-wise, I don't think that I even qualify for the lowest rung of the literary staircase.

But then what is wrong in having such a delicate, supple, harmless dream?

Doesn't anything other than writing seem an exercise in futility?

As far as HCS is concerned, I always took it as a poor crutch which would help me in future to give support to my lame literary legs.

Yet every powerful flight of fancy is destined to end in a landing on the earth. Either it is the final, forever rest resulting from the crash-landing, or the betterment of senses due to painful realizations born of fatigued wings, forcing us to come back to the rest-inviting clarion call of Mother Earth.

Exactly the same happened in my course and case.

I was a ripe and ready case for the arrows of futility to shoot me down.

That judicial thunderbolt brought me down, shaken to the bones, with the charred and burnt remains of my former ideas.

I looked around and was awestruck by the real meanness of the real world.

Now, as an inexperienced participant, I feel just like a month-old hatchling out of the nest.

In these grim proceedings, I find that these forcefully marching proceedings can definitely make you oblivious of most of what you stood for in the past.

I believe that, carried by the swift currents of new happenings, I will be pushed further and further from my coast. I hope I won't be lost.