An author – deep down in my friend!

After reading Arundhati’s Roys work, God of small things, am still dazzled that she picked her Bookers prize for her debut novel and that’s the only novel that she has ever written (till date), though she has other kinds of literary works to her credit.

I was reminded about a close friend who has such brilliant linguistic capabalities that if only he starts writing, he would easily be one of the best in the country / globe. Added to his linguistic capabilities are his creative abilities, a good sense of humour, spontaneity and intelligence. Its sheer ignominy that he hasn’t started to write.

I thought of sharing a philosophical piece of his writing that he wrote to me in 2003 as an email, (with absolutely no modifications, not even spelling corrections ) that I still hold as one of my prized possessions.

….There are pleasant breezes now and occasional rains and I love to walk around now here. This is time of year when all the cobwebs get cleared out of our mind - the old brain seems to work better, evrything seems to be in a kind of harmony. I have a partly superstitious belief that things begin to move and stir at times like this and are building towards something. Its like when you follow a stream (I don't know if you've ever done it) trying to see how far it goes (either upstream or downstream) Tiny signs indicate to you when you are close to the source - the water begins to get clearer, the sound is more like a tinkle rather than a splashing, you can see different types of fish and suddenly you are there.

So too I notice tiny signs right now - it all seems to point towards the fact that I am approaching something important - any moment the veil will be drawn back and I will see the road ahead clearly, far more clearly than ever before.

Or like going out to sea in a boat, you leave the shore and waves further and further behind and reach a calm patch, where you can see almost to the bottom, but it happened so gradually you didn't notice ...... and then again, it can just as suddenly look rough, there are huge swells, and you look down and realize you are over a huge rock barrier.

At such times it seems like you are almost in a trance, walking around in the world in a dream, and all the people you meet are just floating by on other boats, and as you pass each other you notice that they are looking at you and you look at them too, in the same way that boats pass each other at sea, and just for a fleeting moment you wonder what kind of journey they are having.

These are things that I think we experience most keenly as children, and it is almost like a magnetic field around you and around everything else - everything emits an energy you can almost feel and touch. It fades away as we grow older and have too many words for everything. But suddenly on certain days or times of year it comes back and magic happens.

I don’t get such emails these days from anyone, let alone this friend, but now that I have blogged I know I can get back anytime to this.

And to imagine if someone can whisk up something like this for an unthoughtful casual email, how well will he do as an author ?

My friend is the author waiting to be one. Don’t you think so?