Daily Times

Some years ago, an old friend of mine in Islamabad sent me an e-mail to ask why I do not write for various newspapers. This kept me wondering why on earth he chose to ask me this question when there were many others more qualified than I to answer him. I knew, however, that it was a measure of his affection for me to spring such a surprise and see how I would react. I thought for a while and then e-mailed him this reply:
“Thank you very much for encouraging me to write but in doing so you have overestimated my ability to write and I cannot be taken in so easily. As you know, just as some people are good listeners, rather than good speakers, I believe I am somewhat good only at reading rather than writing. To me, writing presupposes a state of mind where the writer feels that his knowledge on any given subject is perfect or adequate and that the time is ripe for him to reveal to the world something, which was hitherto not known. Luckily, or unluckily, I have never attained that state of mind. For each time I sit down to write, a demon overtakes me to ask if what I am about to write is actually going to kick my audience in the shin, to which my reply is always in the negative. Thus, the impulse to write is killed before it takes birth and I am relieved of a burden I could not possibly carry. My aversion to clichés and platitudes has no small part to play in my inability to write. Added to this is my conviction that the world is much the same in whatever way you look at it or try to change it. Interfering with the Divine order is like a puny David knocking out a row of Goliaths with his sling-shot pen.”
Thank God this harangue more or less satisfied my friend for, through this seemingly inverted logic, he rightly took his cue that because I could not write, therefore I had invented a convoluted argument against writing just about anything. Thereafter, he never insisted that I write again, nor did I venture into any such activity, till only a couple of years ago when I was unwittingly driven into a situation where I found no better way of finding catharsis than by writing in the newspapers.
Seeing oneself in print is a strange fetish from which a fairly large number of writers suffer even though they may not have anything substantial to convey. We see, every day, a huge bulk of printed matter filling spaces in newspapers and magazines, which no one cares to read. It is like just like when someone enters a library and wishes to spend an hour reading; they will be anxious to read something they have not read before — something thrilling or exciting. To the readers of today’s fast moving world, the huge cliché-ridden mass of printed material is unable to open a new window into the mind or show a new world to the eye and is therefore no more than wasteful trash. Quite often some of the columnists on newspaper panels exhaust their treasures but continue to serve them as space-fillers. Some say that the real merit of a columnist is to keep writing even when there is nothing to write about. This may be in the interest of the writer or the publisher but it certainly is not in the interest of the reader. However, this practice goes on till one finds that, in the tonnes of printed matter, only a few ounces really count, and the rest of it goes down the drain without being seen or read. Now, in such a situation, my hypothesis may have some grain of truth. I do not however maintain that whatever is written should sell as pearls of wisdom, yet I do wish to see that whatever appears in print does enlist something new and fascinating for others to ponder over, to provide new food for thought to ruminate, to light up a smouldering speck in the buried dust, to unravel some hidden mystery, or at least to titillate the mind so as to keep readers guessing about its contents by opening further scope for surmises and debates.
Urges to write may be many and varied. Maybe he or she has a story to tell or some information to give. Maybe they want the people’s attention to share what goes through their mind or maybe they have the selfish pleasure of seeing themselves in print despite having little to convey. Maybe they want to be heard by others because of a desire to feel important. I do not underrate even those who write under the sheer force of egoism since George Orwell, a giant of a literary artist, even legitimised “the desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood”. Some people write because they feel that is the only thing they are good at. Some write for fun, some for money, others for pleasure and still others for a bit of catharsis. Whatever one may write, it must be with love and passion. Any writing devoid of these emotions is dull, insipid and boring. One must only write when there is an uncontrollable urge to ventilate one’s feelings and sharing them with the public at large as if relief were only possible by disseminating one’s thoughts and making the readers witness what had been passing within the writer’s mind and soul.
So much for the writer’s end. What goes on on the reader’s side? He is impatient and short of time and has many other chores to attend to. Since his childhood he has spent many years poking his head in these drudgeries and his mundane nights and days have shown him that this printed stuff is not all on which his fate hinges. He has only a passing fancy for printed stuff, and shows his concern only in so far it exhilarates him momentarily or gives him pleasure to forget his worries for the time being. What he or any discriminating reader would wish to get out of the published material is whether there is something new or strange the writer wishes to convey, or anything that enriches his mind, making him more aware of his own surroundings. If the stuff serves any of these purposes, it is good enough; if not, then he steps aside and hurries away on his business.

The writer is a former member of the provincial civil service and can be reached at zafar.aziz.ch@gmail.com