Longing, Belonging: A Few Thoughts

It is ten minutes past midnight and I am still not hungry. Old habits die hard: for many years now I’ve been having my dinner at two or three in the morning, the reason being I cannot write on a full stomach — I need to be hungry for my mind to work. And so I have made myself a drink: Signature whisky.

But if I am having a drink, I must also be writing, or else I consider the drinking to be a waste, and since I have nothing to write at the moment, having just finished Longing, Belonging, let me at least share a few thoughts about the book:

1. Longing, Belonging was entirely written in bed, with me lying down on my stomach in front of the laptop — sometimes on the bed in the bedroom, sometimes on the mattress in the guest room, sometimes on my favourite cot in my wife’s home in Calcutta. That’s been my ‘writing pose’ since childhood, though large parts of Chai, Chai and Tamarind City were written in the upright position.

2. Longing, Belonging took me three-and-a half-years to write. But in between I also finished writing Tamarind City, revised Chai, Chai and wrote a foreword (the revised edition, with a new cover, will be published later this year) and wrote a 2,500-word prologue for a future book.

3. Longing, Belonging was written at the cost of my health, social life and friendships. Friends came from abroad to India on their annual vacations, but I couldn’t meet them. Friends from outside Chennai spent weeks and months in the city, but I still couldn’t meet them because every evening was precious. Worse, I haven’t visited Kanpur — and seen my father and brother — in two-and-a-half years. Each time I took leave I went to Calcutta. They could not come down to see me either because the two dogs back home need pampering 24/7. The younger of the dogs met with an accident sometime ago and had her hind legs paralysed and now she drags herself — maybe that’s another reason why I have not made a sincere effort to visit home. I hope to make amends soon.

4. Longing, Belonging has been the most difficult book to write, so far. When I was writing Chai, Chai, just a quarter bottle of Signature would keep me company till I clocked 1,000 or 1,500 words a night. But with the Calcutta book, I could not produce beyond 200 usable words a night; no matter how much I drank or how many hours I spent lying on my stomach in front of the laptop.

5. I am no longer sensitive to criticism. In late 2009, when Chai, Chai was published, I was so upset with a negative review in Outlook Traveller (the only negative review the book had received) that I wrote an entire blog post expressing my anguish. I wouldn’t do that today. If a book is truly good, it will sell word-of-mouth, irrespective of what reviewers think of it. And if it doesn’t sell, then the writer must introspect as to why it didn’t.

So far I have not been faced with such a situation, but in future if I am, I know what to do. I would reread what Herzog wrote to a fellow filmmaker when the latter whined that people were not coming to watch his films. Herzog told him, “Quit complaining. It’s not the world’s fault that you wanted to be an artist. It’s not the world’s job to enjoy the films you make, and it’s certainly not the world’s obligation to pay for your dreams. Nobody wants to hear it. Steal a camera if you have to, but stop whining and get back to work.”