irritable vowel syndrome. Life as a grocer-writer

I have always wanted to be a writer. And a shopkeeper.

The first statement has elements of falsity and self-aggrandisement to it. It’s the kind of thing that Third World politicians like to say — a self-concocted hagiography: This precocious innate desire to serve the nation from the age of 13.

There are writers who start early: Toru Dutt (dead at 21), Arthur Rimbaud (dead at 19), and Dom Moraes, who won the Hawthornden Prize at the age of 19, while still an undergraduate. Those wielding the guitar or the tennis racquet start early too, for these are professions which coincide with the prime of one’s youth.

Let me reformulate the first two sentences. First I wanted to be a shopkeeper, then, later, a writer. These days, I want to be a full-time grocer-writer. The question remains pertinent in the light of the ever-present threat to a starving writer — that she will actually starve to death one fine morning.

As a boy growing up in Allahabad, there was nothing I wanted more than to be the owner of a hole-in-the-wall cassette shop. These were magical places, with stacks of cassettes, while the sole proprietor seemed to have direct access to the pop stars one worshipped. I always thought of Deepak, the cassette store owner, as someone who hung out with Madonna and George Michael after he had downed shutters for the day.

Owning a firecracker stall also seemed like a pleasant enough profession, especially when Diwali was in the air and one was in competition with richer neighbourhood boys — whose cracker was the loudest? It struck me as an excellent, if lazy shortcut to a salary, that the cracker stall man made his money in a week, before packing up for the year.

The years went by. I left school. According to the dictates of my class, and natural inclination, I got more and more educated, in literature, philosophy and sociology. I started writing stories and getting published and soon drifted into writing full-time. Once one has discovered one’s forte, the elephant in the room keeps dunking buckets of cold water on your head with its slender trunk. Who will pay the bills? Who will pay the rent? Who will pay for the food on the table? Who will pay for the family you will want to raise?

For a writer, the options are limited. Get on the creative-writing teaching bandwagon. But that seems like I’ll be banished from the real world, a scary thought for a writer in the realist mode. One can avoid the real world further by hopping from one writing residency to another. This still won’t answer your relatives’ question at a family wedding: “But what do you really do?”

And so, while I do my writing in Delhi or Dehradun, I’ve yet again found myself lapsing into shopkeeper reveries and fantasies. I am of the opinion that the kirana store & author combo is an excellent one. One sits under a whirring fan, writing at one’s cashier’s desk. One writes a page, a customer arrives to buy a kilo of rice or a tube of toothpaste. One growls authoritatively at one’s flunky: “Oye, ek kilo chawal de deeyo” , and continues writing.

If one wants to take a break from the writing, one can strike up a conversation with the customer, who might turn out to be the next character in one’s story. Not least, being a grocer-writer will give one’s bio a distinctive identity, which will come in handy while delivering the Booker acceptance speech.

I’ve had some fancier ideas as well. I’ve long wanted to open a Writer’s Bar and Cafe (WBAC) in Dehradun. Sitting behind a till and writing simultaneously seem to hold an almost primal irresistible fascination for me. Cash and creative juices should flow in tandem.

I’ve expanded this idea into a chain. From its humble roots in the Doon Valley, WBAC will open branches in Shillong, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, wherever there are writers. It will be a cosy lived-in place, unsnobby, with pictures of local writers on the wall. It’s a place you can go to drink away your writer’s block or to celebrate small and big triumphs.

I might not follow through but there are writers who have. I’ve met the film critic Rashid Irani at his Irani café in Mumbai. The other day, crime-fiction writer Ankush Saikia walked into my room in Delhi’s Greater Kailash, on his way to Shillong from Shanghai. He told me how he also works at his mother’s bakery. And the legendary Australian writer Gerald Murnane, who refused to ever set foot in an airplane, lived and wrote in this small remote town; at night, he worked as the bartender at the local pub. But here’s the problem with writers. Once I’ve written an idea into words, I’ve as good as created it in mortar and stone. I’ve already brought it into existence. It occupies a physical location, has a physical presence right here, in these very pages that you hold in your hand, gentle reader. A fictional WBAC is more fascinating than one that might actually exist. This, though, still doesn’t solve the problem of money, and yet it does to some extent: I will get remunerated for this column.

Palash Krishna Mehrotra

(Irritable Vowel Syndrome is a new monthly column on writers, writing and book culture)

Palash Krishna Mehrotra is the author of Eunuch Park and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India

COMMENT NOW