Something strange struck me as I approached the campus. It’s as if the trees lining the road recognised me and extended a welcome. The paying guest house I’d already booked was near the institute where I was due to appear for an exam the next day.
Early morning after a brief workout I was lying flat on my back, trying to practise a little mindful awareness. Just then I heard a soft sound like stealthy footsteps in my smallish room. It was not exactly dark. Moreover, there’s nothing in my room except books. Just then the sound repeated itself. And what did I see? The trespasser was a beautiful baby bird. In a flash it flew past me, out the balcony door, into the blue beyond.
When we checked in at the forest bungalow, it’s far into the night. My companions hit the hay straightaway. I was drawn by the high-pitched-yet-strangely-soothing sound of cicada chirping in unison.
They went to bed late after watching a horror film. Hardly had they got some shut-eye when they became aware of a confused murmur of people gathering somewhere. At first they thought it’s triggered by the scary movie. But the buzz persisted.
There was a time in my life when I had to look for solitude and anonymity to give shape to my thoughts. So I frequented places like National Library, Oxford Book Store and some such places.
Once I went to Bandel Church on a nippy Sunday afternoon, sat on the ground adjacent to it and started putting finishing touches to an article on writer Virginia Woolf. It was early afternoon, mercifully empty of people. But a cow came out of nowhere and would not go away without chewing part of the MS. Perhaps it thought the article was not worth publishing. Its menacing horns notwithstanding, I could shoo it away as I cared for my MS more than my life!
I was at the flea book-market hoping for a windfall. There I found an award-winning author rummaging through a pile.
One early morning in April 1878, a 20-something Polish youth climbed into a boat to board a British ship, James Westoll, moored some distance from the shore. As the boat neared the liner, a husky voice from the deck above growled: “Look out there.”
Those three simple words were enough to touch the young man’s heart and bring tears to his eyes. It was the first time in his life that someone had addressed him in English–the language of his “secret choice”, of his “future”, of his “very dreams.” The world was to remember him as Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad.
I travel on impulse. At one short notice, I headed for the holy city of Ujjain. Great distance away. To meet monks at Kumbh Mela. I met one on the bank of river Shipra.
It’s not widely known that once when struck by a tragedy–the sudden demise of his wife, just five years after his marriage—R. K. Narayan (1906-2001), the Indian writer par excellence, had decided to give up writing.
“The writer’s personal tragedy,” said Graham Greene, “has been our gain.” Greene couldn’t have been more right. Narayan’s self-imposed exile didn’t thankfully last for long. After a gap of few years, he wielded the pen once again, this time with a much surer and greater hold.
“To comprehend a nectar / Requires sorest need”, wrote Emily Dickinson. R. K. Narayan, who was particularly fond of the English language right from his childhood, and who is now reckoned as one of the major writers in the language, had once, in a university entrance examination (1925), failed in English.
