AMBITION

It is 2 AM in the morning. Outside, it is silent. Most of the boarders of the hostel are in deep slumber (except the examinees, of course). In the distance, I can hear laughing and shouting. Somebody’s party perhaps. “You are not partying and you’ve got a job to do”- I remind myself. Jerking out of my reverie, stifling a yawn and stretching my limbs at the same time, I turn back to my computer screen.

I’ve been sitting like this for three hours now. My computer screen is blank. My media player is playing the no. 23 song on the enqueued list in winamp. The lusty voice of a singer long dead fills the room.

I want to be a writer- a good writer. Maybe I can prove to the world that I am no ordinary being. But I have doubts. My friends who are into writing tell me that you need to fulfill certain criteria to write. One of them even took the trouble to write them down for me. I look at the crumpled sheet of paper, on which he wrote them down, for the nth time and thought about each criteria vis a vis my capabilities. This is what I found out:


1. Heredity: Kiran Desai, this year’s Booker Prize winner and author of ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ inherits her talents from her mother Anita Desai. Vikram Seth, they say, is the son of India’s first woman judge of the High Court. Well, my mother is too old to write a book now or to be the first woman judge of the High Court. Seems, I’ll have to search if the other criteria match.

2. Background: It is said that people coming from difficult circumstances go on to become great writers. J K Rowling used to survive on the Government support while writing the first Harry Potter book. I can’t emulate her because of two reasons: a) there is no such support system in India and b) Harry Potter has already been created. What do I create? Har Pic?

3. Personal Experiences: My knowledgeable friends (whom I consider to be writers) often tell me that most of their stories are based on personal experiences. They have been spewing out volumes on a single topic- love. Ah! This is probably one topic I’ll be able to write upon. It so happens that for the last five years, I’ve constantly been in love, probably with every fifth girl I saw. It would be quite difficult though just to pick out which love story to write about. One thing would have been common though- similar endings- a broken heart, an unsuccessful quest.

4. Plagiarism: Ever since Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of Plagiarism in her book ‘How Opal Mehta got Kissed, got Wild and got a Life’ (that’s what I think the title was. Anyway, it was probably lifted from three other titles), I have been giving serious thought to this. So what if her book was pulled off the shelves? She got a name for herself, whatever editions were on the shelves were sold out and her second novel is already awaited with much expectation.

5. Inspiration: No, no. It is not the intake of air. I recently read a book where the author implies that God himself (or herself, I’m not sure) gives him the inspiration, rather tells him the whole story and even provides contacts for the story. But there’s a catch. That was the author’s second book and his first book about three guys in IIT was a bestseller. It seems even God needs a bestselling author to carry out his (or her) task! So, no hope here too. I have never ever written a story, let alone a bestselling novel.

6. Publicity: One important requirement to be a successful writer is to have some controversial subject matter. Take the example of Salman Rushdie. He became more famous for the death threat to him by fundamentalists than the novel which, in turn, boosted sales. He had the nerve to use the name of one of India’s PMs for a dog’s name in his book and got away. Now-a-days he can be seen in the august company of a great looking model/actress. I am at a loss to decide what to do first: a) search for a controversial subject that can entice someone to threaten me with death? b) Use the name of some famous person for the name of the cat in the story? Or c) try to be seen conspicuously at occasions with some beautiful creature by my side?

7. Setting: The setting for the story is a very important matter. This year, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Orhan Pamuk for showcasing the social conditions in Turkey. To achieve similar results, I’ll probably have to emigrate to Turkey or recreate Turkish conditions here- both of which are improbable. Pity, I wasn’t born in Turkey.

After such a detailed introspection- from genetics to environment; from Booker to Nobel; from personal experiences to plagiarism, I can come to only one conclusion- I am not cut out to be a writer. Well, maybe I would have been, had circumstances been different but one can’t have everything in life.

With these thoughts, my mind wanders off once again. Maybe I should try something else- something that would still satisfy my hunger for acclaim. As the soft sounds of song no. 45 reach my ears, I am hit by a brainwave. Yes! This is it! You don’t require much qualification for this and it is the latest craze among television reality shows. I am going to be a singer, a good singer……

October, 2006.