Well if you are a Bengali then you would know what hatekhari is but for all the other people who do not know what it is or for bongs who haven’t undergone this ‘stuff’ it can be translated as ‘initiation to writing’ or ‘beginning of writing’(ummmm?) Well perhaps we do not actually begin to ‘write’ right after the initiation because we pass through a phase of developing a consciousness about ‘writing’. We gradually evolve as we try to hone our skills so that our verbs and adverbs, adjectives and tense are falling in place and we are syntactically correct. But so much so for all those who initially teach us to write. But is writing merely syntactical? No! It is ethical too. Can we develop a certain sense of ‘ethics of writing’ as we climb up the crowded stairs of school? It is a difficult question to answer (or is it?). A few may but most of us are provided with a readymade solution in form of sample essays and answers by our venerable private tutors or the coaching centres simulating within us only a sense of potency(perhaps that is the reason why so many of us fffffail to perform or we celebrate monogamy! Later, on a fruitless night, we say to our spouse, “ You know darling perhaps I am not good at everything but once in class 11 I had written a very good essay on The Importance of Preserving and at that age only I had the subtlety not to mention ‘the Nature’ part of it! Ah haha! Such was your shona! I also used to play cricket well or sing well! Then came the AIEEEs and AIPMTs and now I am working as a Senior Sales Executive! Gave up everything! I actually dreamt of playing guitar like Slash!”).
“That writing never happened.”
Even after this there are people who have to write. It is a compulsive disorder. Well! We have to write because we have to submit our papers and churn marks out of shit! Write because some venerable organization with a few gandu policy makers think that it is the only paradigm of excellence! We skore out of it although there is a birth of a nothing. We take precaution not to produce anything by our act of writing except for a retarded score. But even this cannot prevent the academic world from being overpopulated with worthless Edmunds!!
Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact(MLA/APA/CHICAGO),
My mind as generous, and my shape as true(ISSN/ISBN),
As honest intellectuals issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops.
–Fuck Lear, Fakespeare
But even then there are people who must write! More than ever at this point of time when writers are being persecuted by all sorts of fanatic forces! History proves that writers have always been feared. Oh Solzhenitsyn! A writer is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, In The First Circle)
We must write because there is a Palestine. We must write because Ananta is dead! We must be like Raktavijas-“He from whom each drop of word is a seed”. With the death of each writer should be the birth of one more! We must write because Bruno Schulz was killed. We must write because Gramsci was imprisoned. We must write because we are forgetting Bose. We must because Rushdie has written. We must write because Utpal was smitten with freedom! We must write! We must write because Sandipan wrote! We must write because we must fight! We must write because chitmahals were merely exchanged! I must write because it purges me! I must write because it merges me with the infinite! I must write because I have never written and I have never been written! I must write even if I am killed! If you hack me into pieces the pieces of my body lying on the street will form a contour of writing! I must write! I must write because I am addicted and no one listens to me except for my writing! I must write because I am a hypocrite and it is my writing in which I am true with all my follies! I puke in my writing! I write while I piss! Oh Writing! Writing is bliss! I come with my writing! I sleep when I have written! I wonder if I have ever written! I fuck with my writing! I jerk with my writing! I write because each and every moment the world writes on me! So long I live this gives life to me! I write because someone challenged me and I failed! I write because someone abused me! At times I write for the sake of it! I write because I want to plead! I write because I want to bleed! It cuts through me! I write! I write! I right! And I write because he wrote….
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word almost doth tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
-The Master, Sonnet 76 (no plagiarism)
(And why do I even write… because he wrote?!)
– Arijit Mukherjee
Plato's Caves online 