A... Part 6

The story continues...




But all that I have told is what I do, not who I am. So I will start again.

My name is A.

Why did I start with my name? Does my name define me? If my name was something else, would I have been a different person altogether? If my name was B, would I still not be a writer. If I take away my name, my designation, my success; then do I get the real me or do I get a pale imitation, a mere reflection of my real self. Let me try this then. I cast away my name, my designation as a writer and now I will try to write about myself.

So I will start with my weaknesses, shortcomings and liabilities. I know you are thinking that he must be a cynic to start off with the negatives. Yes, I am a self professed cynic and I am proud to be one. I am proud because contrary to popular belief I consider it a virtue but since everyone considers a weakness so I have labelled it such. But then I like being different and that is why I am a cynic. A cynic once said, “Other dogs bite their enemies, I bite my friends to save them.” This statement defines the purpose of my existence. I write so that I can warn you, my friend, of the terrible dangers that abound in this world. Through my writing I hound people about the error of their ways. I consider myself a messiah, sent by the God to do this service to mankind. Through my stories I reveal God’s secret messages so that you can learn to live a life of virtue and decency in this detestable world. In doing so, I often have to bite people to save them. I used to make my friends the subject of my stories and in these stories, I used to concentrate on one flaw of that person’s character and show it in exceptionally negative light. I used to focus so intensely on that one flaw that everything else in the story did not matter. The only thing that mattered was that that person had an unforgivable flaw and their only hope for redemption lay in eliminating that flaw from their character. I hoped that my friends will be glad with my insights into their problems, but it was not meant to be. With every story I lost a friend, but I continued to write. I had the God’s message to deliver, and as long as I was doing well to the people by showing them their faults, I was fulfilling my divine duty and obligation. In a short time, I lost all my friends and since then I have been living the life of a lonely hermit, like that of my master, my muse, the Diogenes of Sinope, who in a different time was known as ‘the Dog’. Like my master and muse, I live a life of self-sufficiency, austerity and shamelessness. My shamelessness comes from the vulgar truth I write in my stories, my austerity from the humble unfurnished quartes I live in, and my self-sufficiency comes from living on my own, away from the world but in the midst of it, living a life of sympathetic detachment from my surroundings.

I am insane. But I do not consider myself insane; rather I am sanest person I know. However the society considers me insane, so again for your benefit, I label myself insane. There is a famous Latin quote ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ which means ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. From this perspective, you, the society consider insanity as poor health of mind. You think that my mental processes are defective, but that is only because I am not like you, I do not think like you, I do not act like you, in fact I have a gross disdain for general opinion of how things should be. I am vastly different from all of you and so you label me insane. I am like the ugly cygnet who was ostracized by the other ducks for being different. Like the cygnet that grew up to become the most beautiful swan of them all, I have taken up writing to prove my worth and God willing I will become the greatest teacher of them all, the greatest messiah that lived on the face of this planet. Call me insane, but then remember Jesus was called insane in his time, Prophet Muhammad was driven from Mecca for being different. So I embrace my insanity with all my strength. It is better to be insane in this sane and miserable world, maybe my insanity will take me to a different road, a road to redemption, a road to salvation.

I am an egotist. I see that you are frowning, yet I have said only a single word. Is being an egotist so bad that you are not even prepared to give me a patient hearing before giving your judgement from the high moral pedestal where you sit? So, now you are prepared to listen to me. Well then, I shall begin. An egotist is a person who indulges in self praise. We have been raised to be modest, told that being humble is a virtue. It is a virtue, but only when indulged in moderation. But we have this fantastic ability to take everything to the very extremes; we do not believe in moderation, moderation is too mundane for our liking. So we tend to overdo the modesty, turn in into servitude and submissiveness. Instead of self praise, we indulge in no praise or outright hostility. Self criticism becomes commonplace in our lives. We find faults in ourselves before others do, and drag ourselves down. It leads to low self-esteem and deep depression. We give up, give up on ourselves, and thus give up on life. And this is the sad fate of those of us who cannot and will not, through the force of their upbringing, indulge in self-praise.
I was humble once. I used to frown on those who indulged in self-praise, much like the way you frowned at me in the beginning.

But now, you are thinking, you are trying to make sense of what you have read. But I have to move on. But in case you are wondering how to identify an egoist, so that you might learn from him. Look around you; he is the one who is quietly smiling in a corner, contentment writ large on his face, his face glowing with the knowledge that he has done the job well, discreetly enjoying his solitude, and when you look at him, he smiles at you and says now it is your turn, my friend.

I am a lonely person. I do not regret it, rather I love my solitude, I crave for solitude, and I defend my solitude with the fanatic zeal of the Spartans guarding their homeland from the tyranny of barbaric hordes. I live in an island, surrounded by islands in this vast sea, but away from all the other islands. I do not allow any boat to land on the pristine unspoiled yellow beaches of my island and so no one does. And I spend my days lying on the beach, writing stories and stealing lives. Yes, I steal lives. But I am no voodooist. I steal lives to make characters, characters who tell their stories to me, the stories which I write, and which you read. I spend a lot of my time talking to these characters, trying to make friends with them. They listen to me. They listen to my vicious diatribes against society, city, country, people I know, people I don’t know, people whom I rarely see, and against myself. They listen to my advice, they follow my advice, and they consider me the true messiah. These characters live with me in my island. They respect my solitude; they come to me only when I need them. When I need to write a story for the column, I close my eyes and I call one of my characters, I call it with all my heart, I implore them to come to me, I sing a little song.

Come to me, my friend,
I will hold you tight.

When you are not up to your mark,
When you are in dark,
Come to me, my friend,
I will be your light,
I will hold you tight.

When storm is in the air,
When you need my care,
Come to me, my friend,
I will be your might,
I will hold you tight.

When you are down and out,
When you are in doubt,
Come to me my friend,
I will take you higher than the greatest height,
I will hold you tight.

Come to me, my friend,
I will hold you tight.

They come to me as friends, as comrades, as brothers in arms. I embrace them and time stops. They tell me their story while still in my arms, they laugh, they cry, they love, they hate, they fear, they hope, and they try. And these are the stories that I write for your benefit, my readers.

My name is A. I am a rara avis, a rare bird as those versed with Latin would say.

Story of A - Part 5

Continuing the story of which the first five parts are given below.

A Short Essay about Myself

“Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are, accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.” – Henry David Thoreau

My name is A.

I am a writer; at least I like to think that I am a writer. But then I am only a writer because I have a friend, a very close friend who grew up with me, was one of my first readers, who was there when I first dreamt of becoming a writer, who was only person sitting beside me by the lake behind our school throwing pebbles into the water, when I declared to the whole wide world, shouting at the top of my voice that I will be a writer someday. Maybe that long forgotten evening beside the lake had some impact on my friend, because as soon as he became the editor of The Sunday, he called me up and offered me a column, to write anything and everything that I want. I had not heard from him for a long time. Shortly after that eventful evening he had left the school and went to a different city, but before leaving he had promised that he will keep in touch, and that day a little over a decade later he proved that he was not one to make empty promises, a virtue which I would abuse a lot during our friendship. But the reason why I decided to become a writer was not because he offered me a column to write, it was the fact that he had kept alive my dream, a dream which even I had long forgotten, like a powerful dream which holds your attention for a few minutes when you wake up but before nightfall is long forgotten, banished to the deep dark dungeons of memories, the dream of becoming a writer. And in keeping alive this dream of mine, he gave me something that I had lost, he gave me a will to live, a will to fight for life, a will to dream again, dream of what might still happen, dream of all the fantastic possibilities that life offered, dream of all the adventures that I could undertake through the newspaper column. Before he called, I was seriously contemplating about ending my miserable life, ending this wearisome drudgery through life without any hope for joy or prospect for happiness. But this column offered me a ray of hope, a way out of this quagmire called despair into which I had fallen, a chance of redemption, to make something out of my life, to do some good by telling all the people what no to do through stories about my life. And so I became a writer.

I write short stories which appear on one of the middle pages, the right one, squeezed between the editorial on the left middle page and the world news on the other side of the right middle page. This helps me a lot; people generally do read the editorial, they need it to form opinions which they can then discuss in parties, in office and try to project themselves as an intellectual who reads a lot, thinks a lot and then forms a esteemed and highly valued opinion, with which they then educate everyone considering it their moral duty and obligation. Little do they know that everyone else also reads the same editorials and forms the same independent and, let me stress, highly valued opinion. So all the discussions are just reduced to people quoting from different paragraphs of the day’s editorial and if possible few paragraphs from the editorial that appeared a day or two before. But that does not matter, does it, as long as they have an intellectually stimulating discussion, so everyone aspiring to become and discuss like an intellectual reads the editorial.

The same breed of people also read the global news. They want people to know that they have a global outlook, so that they can discuss about politics, wars, crisis happening in countries around the world, and suggest possible solutions and remedies. The fact that they are unmindful of the same problems being faced by people who are their neighbours, colleagues, countrymen, does not bother them. After all when you are solving complex world problems, how can you be bothered with mere trifles like their own city’s and country’s problems? Surely the world needs them more.

So between these two critical pages, my stories appear and due to these two pages, my stories attract the same lot of hypocritical pseudo intellectuals, and because of the sheer numbers of people who belong to this group, my stories gather a lot of eyeballs as the ad guys at the newspaper like to say, and because of these eyeballs I am a somewhat famous writer, and because of all this I am free to work as I like, from home, away from the hustle bustle of a regular office, I just have to turn in a new story every friday of the week, so that it can be published on the sunday in The Sunday.