Bombay Dreams & Mumbai Screams - Part I

'Bombay' was a word that somehow had earlier got stuck in my mind like a week-old chewing gum that passes through piles of dust and garbage on the footpath before it finally meets your shoe... and kinda, sticks like glue (hey, it rhymed)!

Anyway, as a collegian, Bombay was like the ultimate destination where all my sane and insane paths wanted to lead me. Wanted to write and do creative stuff and what better place to do that than Bombay.

And finally, I even landed there. As a copy editor with DNA newspaper. However, it was supposedly for a short period (two months). Actually, I was working for DNA Money's Ahmedabad edition which was yet to kick and hence me and my reporter colleague Mitul were sent on an official trip to learn and well as help the Mumbai DNA team.

Just like any whimsical boss decides a national product launch in two weeks (for which the product is yet to be identified), this decision of our trip to Bombay came all of a sudden and in just two days, I was in Mumbai. Meanwhile, Rachana, my now-wife and then-girlfriend had already drowned half of Ahmedabad with her tears.

Day 1 was exciting. Finally in Mumbai! Our accommodation was not yet finalised. This bugger Mitul had assured that we'll find "asylum" in some hostel kinda place but it never worked out. Hence we reached DNA office with four suitcases and some bags between the two of us, only to find that we've reached a "factory" of human machines, almost 200 on a floor in some 20 rows X 10 columns, all staring at us - as if we were two fully-loaded astronauts!

We spent that night in a nice 7th floor apartment (DNA's guesthouse) somewhere near Mahim. But we had to leave it in 5 days and find a place on our own. And we did it. A small (actually, tiny is the right word) room in a small house in an untidy government colony in Antop Hill (the name made us think it’s the most posh area in Bombay and we soon discovered it was a place where all the taxi-drivers of Bombay landed at night to sleep in their homes)! There were two best things about this house – 1) A cat which jumped on my bed every night from a window that couldn’t be closed and 2) a crazy old deserted woman right next to my window who yelled gaalis all day and night (those which even a guy would hesitate to utter). With these two things, Mitul’s and my sleeps in Bombay were indeed, very sound! (pun intended)

End of part I (More to come)

A Writer's Block

Here's an idea that I have. This is how a short story I am writing would begin...

Holding a pen in hand, sitting amidst scattered empty pages with an uncontrollable urge to put thoughts into words… here I am, wanting to write with nothing to write about…
intended to write with no pretences…
addicted to weave incomplete sentences…

It’s been about year-and-a-half now that I’ve put something on paper that’s worth reading. All my creative turbulences seem to have vanished as I find myself famished, struggling for a good idea to start my next novel. Success, they say, is short lived. And so do I believe. But what’s haunting me more now is the fact that it’s very hard to imitate your own success. My last two novels made record-breaking sales, the latter superseding the success of the former. What made them more famous was the fact that both of them were finished in just 8 months each. And here I am standing 16 months past my last novel, still waiting to crack an idea worth writing!

‘Master of instant bestsellers struggling for an idea’, sounds like a news article headline doesn’t it? It may seem flimsy but you just can’t imagine the string of problems & consequences I have begun to face. The malaise of facing a creative impotence, pressure from the publishers to deliver something soon and over a dozen phone calls a day from desperate fans complaining of not getting to read something from one of their favourite storyteller. Truly, fame brings its own consequences.

Comments please...

Advent of the adventurer

Hi there. (or rather... hi here)

This blogging phenomena has tickled my curiosity quite often and here I am with a blog of my own. And this is the first post on it.

This one's gotta be small as I still need to check how things operate on this site.

Will return with something worth writing about next.

Ciao,

Kappywriter
(Why Kappywriter? Simple. Name's Kapil and I'm a copywriter :-)