A
new exercise book. I remember looking forward to each new book. Crisp white
paper, sharp-cut corners and the promise of the blank page; what amazing worlds
could I create in it? When I was at school a major pleasure of the classroom
was to get a new exercise book.
One
day I got a clean yellow one, each subject had its own colour, and Latin was
yellow. I loved the yellow ones best. Each copy had a nuanced shade and some
almost dripped a golden honey.
Amicus
Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas.
Plato is
my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.
-
Sir Isaac Newton.
I
wanted to write the truth. Even though I did not realise it in these terms. I
wanted to create beauty. But I did not realise that beauty and truth are sisters
sitting, staring, one on each side of a window that the world has made opaque.
It is the raison d’etre of the writer to make that window translucent once
again.
Once
I remember my book was returned to me by Smiler, my Latin master, it came as no
surprise that I got an A. Even though this was the first time. I had prepared
for my homework and I thought I knew something about Ovid. A new ‘A’ in a new
book, a new experience.
Perhaps
it was the realisation that the grades were in my control.
It
was not down to the mood of the teacher, or the vagaries of luck or magic or
spells and superstitions. If I would just make it back from the woods after
lunch and stop kissing the girl who had those pink violin lips, a few minutes
earlier than usual, and listened to Smiler in double Latin then I could get an
‘A’!
It
sounds simple and in some ways it is. The easier it reads, the more sense it
makes, life and writing are like that. Easy to say but hard to achieve. Like a
movie star looking gorgeous on screen having beaten a dozen baddies and
monsters; he still shines with a Colgate brilliant smile. That is the
preoccupation of a movie star.
The
concern of a writer is to first realise the internal truth. This is true for
all, not just writers. Grab your heart if you are brave enough, for it takes
enormous courage, and look internally for the truths before you ask others to
tell you theirs. Tell the truth about yourself through your writing, whether it
is fantasy or a science fiction world or writing that attempts to prove a
political point. As discussed in my previous blog: When Are Writers Going toTake Responsibility Again?
If
circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though
it were hid indeed
Within the centre.
-
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
It
always comes from the centre. Only then can you hope to reflect the truths in
society or say something meaningful about the human condition.
My
writing developed exponentially through the encouragement of egalitarian
movements like Brit Writers. It is through them that my novel, The Butterfly
Hunter, has come to fruition. This story reveals the truth regarding the on
going ‘Clash of Civilisations’, which is the major issue in most societies
today. And when writers find their voice in the public sphere only then can the
true worth of Brit Writers be imagined. It is indeed individuals that change
society but society also changes individuals. Society necessarily asks
individuals to examine themselves, sometimes after a calamity. In India
recently a medical student was gang raped so badly she died of her injuries.
Seven health care workers were shot for giving polio vaccines in Peshawar.
Malala Yousafzai is being treated in my hometown.
Open
your exercise book. Look, all the pages are white or a kaleidoscope. They could
contain Shakespeare or Newton or you. And every object and life itself remains
motionless until you act upon it.
You
can write the essential truths no matter the taste: the page is blank, only you
can write something that means anything when you know who and what you are.
Where have you come from and where are you going? The planets are in motion and
for this one speck of time in eternity you can matter: to yourself, to your
family and to society.
Life
often teaches you that real passion cannot succeed. The world is mean, custom
and caution defeats bravery and justice. People are uncaring towards others,
full of pretence; untrue even to the ones they say they love. Disappointments
in relationships, hopes like warm comforting fires drenched by the desire of
cold material coin.
I
have enough reason to hate. Hate lives long. Love grows pale and insipid with
superficial indulgence. If I have not hated enough that is why I despise
myself. I should hate the world. I must hate the world more. The wrongs in it.
The differences between how things are and how they should be. That realisation
is the great leap humanity has made, unlike the other animals that is what
makes us laugh and cry. Our scientific and technical evolution has far
outstripped our social evolution. We are in the infantile barbarity of
civilisation. Unevolved, puerile, cruel.
There
is no such thing as happiness. Maudlin merchandise; sellers of popular
psychology books that tell you otherwise are simply peddling crappy lies,
usually written by people failing internally. They are like the magician who
will tell you what lottery numbers will come up next week if you buy him a
meal.
Continuous
days of happiness are torture. They leave custom and decorum and pale pretence
of decency in charge of social function and also destroy art and dreams. The
conformers, ‘the happy ones’, will barely ever create anything worthy of
another thinking human’s consideration. The hate can turn to striving, to
achieving, to self-discovery. That is beauty and truth. It comes from within.
Yes,
I am a doctor working in psychiatry. But you don’t have to be to realise that
you can turn the anger, the pain, and the hatred into aspiration, into softness
of behaviour but greatness of action: internal cohesiveness and structure is
success.
When
I am old and wrinkly or even wrinklier I will buy an exercise book. If I have
two loaves of bread, I will sell one to buy a new exercise book. Then if I have
some spare coins I will buy a sweet smelling hyacinth.
I
will put the hyacinth in front of me and breathe deeply of its fragrance. And
if that is my last breath on my last day I will plant a bulb. Because love is
not lost and the wind rustles through leaves and when I no longer breathe, the
wind will blow through the woods still. I will be glad to have been a leaf on a
branch that once gave green to the forest of humanity.
And
so today I bought an exercise book: it is yellow and the cover is crisp and the
pages are white.
Brit Writers
