mid-day turns 40: Entertainment writing in India takes you everywhere

When I was much younger, I saw a cartoon by B Kliban that I totally related to. A dog stared up at a man changing a light bulb, and thought to himself, "I could do that." Most of my life was spent mimicking that dog. And my career choices were driven less by what I wanted to do, more by not wanting to do whatever I was doing. And thinking like the dog, "I could do that [instead]?"

I'd stare at people around me and imagine myself as doctor, psychologist, bookshop-owner, cook, architect, cartoonist, novelist, time traveller, whatever. I had managed to sell a few short stories to magazines, including 2001:Science Today, Mirror, Debonair, during college.

While sitting in a neuron-dissolving computer science lecture, I read a lovely letter by Adil Jussawalla (then editor of Debonair) talking about the immense possibilities of writing, and after a brief detour to a 'raddi' store where I scanned copies ofEsquire, Reader's Digest, Sputnik, many Debonairs, of course, and proudly imagined my future book amidst those wonderful Macleans, Wodehouses, Kings and other 'raddi', I clearly had one of those, "I could do that", moments. I took the Sinhagad to Bombay train.

Adil was quite perplexed to see me; understandably so. He had sent me an extremely courteous rejection letter for a short story - not quite the red-carpet I had mistaken it for. But, I was there in flesh, and after giving me the occasional job (hand-model for a story on serial killers; one cartoon) he passed me on courteously to Anil Dharker and Hutokshi Doctor at mid-day.

I was 19. They sent me packing to Poona, with murmurs of a stringer-ship, if I could come up with stories. And I took the Sinhagad back, lurked around the city with a new sense of purpose, seeking the elusive story everywhere. Roughly an hour before I had given up on journalism for good and was fancying starting a video parlour, plus second-hand bookshop, plus misal joint, I chanced upon a sign for the Beyond Life Foundation.

It turned out to be a magazine that specialised in true accounts from the afterlife. The elderly gent amidst old copies of the magazine muttered that it was started by his brother. Being an afterlife skeptic, he intended to shut it down after the said brother had passed away. But he had changed his mind now, he muttered, resigned: "Because my brother won't let me!"

And that was my first (and only) story for mid-day. 350 bucks, thank you - equivalent to eight movie tickets at Apollo/Alankar, or 10 books from 'raddi shop', or 15 bhel puris at Interval Bhel House, or any combo of the above. Not a bad deal at all. I had a clear sense of purpose, of a future. And promptly forgot it.The next story on the Rajneesh/Osho Ashram was so interesting that I bypassed writing it.

Over the next few years, I flitted through various jobs, like a fly caught on a windscreen wiper (determined to not go where the car was headed, which was computer science) driven by sheer Brownian motion, from one thing to the next. A kind acquaintance gave me a recommendation letter to 50 top advertising people. But it wasn't much help as Ad BigShot #29 told me that my acquaintance didn't actually know any of them. He was just being kind and encouraging.

I liked talking to random people and never meeting them again. I liked writing. So I finally trotted back to journalism. Publisher Maneck Davar mentored me valiantly, but found that I was perhaps not suited for political journalism - after being booted out of Gujarat while touring with VP Singh; and later from Baramati, for reasons I won't go into.

Business journalism? I asked the head of SEBI what a share was! So, other than occasional pieces about cops and doctors who tolerated me (I was fascinated by crime and medicine, due to an overload of Chase, Christie, Maigret and Henry Denker), I usually wound up just making up my stories. Not the best way to work in a business of facts.

Others were a bit perplexed and worried about me. But I was delighted that I was getting to know myself better. I had learnt crucial things. I was averse to all forms of authority. I was ambitious about so many diversely different and disparate things that they had cancelled each other out, and I had
no ambition left. I disliked trains intensely.

Trying to interview people had made me realise that stammering was a huge problem (I could not say my name, or my publication's, for starters). But changing my voice and pretending to be someone else every day with different people helped me fix my stammer. I discovered the joy of talking, and haven't stopped.

Smiling and being courteous was very useful, even if you were clueless. Director Kundan Shah, who I apprenticed with, gave me the crucial question to ask to wriggle out of situations, "But is there poetry in it?" A sozzled painter told me what sounded like a magic mantra at Vijay Palace Bar, "We are born. We die. In the middle we do Time-Pass." So I might have been 'time-passing' myself into oblivion. But clearly all this was an excellent use of youth.

I had just quit my production job at UTV. Again, Brownian motion - by sheer chance they came across a fictional résumé I had sent four years ago while day-dreaming in college, and I found myself bizarrely working in their in-flight department on a hi-band machine!

I loved the short works of Woody Allen and Busybee, and happily wrote a series, which ran a few years. I have no idea who read it, if anyone did frankly; or I was just "filler". But it was fun; kept the writing gears greased, and helped me non-violently ventilate about the city. I paid Pradyuman back by naming the lead character in CID after him. That's the birth of ACP Pradyuman explained.I paid Pradyuman back by naming the lead character in CID after him. That's the birth of ACP Pradyuman explained. In my current avatar, I am supposedly a screenwriter. If you do something long enough, they give you a label. And I have learnt some more useful lessons relevant to the 'now'. That the business is still warier of a writer with a script, than of a gangster, with a gun. That "no" is less painful than a "yes".

You write better if you write with the abandon of a child to the discerning audience of a child. A good way to gauge an upcoming social engagement (possibly interesting, probably dicey) is to see how it holds up compared to a glass of rum and a good book (assured good). Stuff like that.

But, I still stare worriedly at others around me, suspecting that they have more fun jobs than mine, thinking I could do that instead, which partially explains why some of you may have met me across the desk in a studio, or in a teaching institution, or carrying lights for a band, or eyeing your job profile, whatever wherever. I am as perplexed as you are. Like the 13th Doctor, I may be the same as the doctors preceding, but I don't quite know the ones before me. Or the ones after.

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