Flash Fiction Chronicles

 The title to this post is a variation of what a famous advertising person of yore once said: “Don’t tell my mom that I’m a copywriter, she thinks I’m a pimp at a … in …” I can’t remember all of it. Nor can I remember who said those wonderful words. But the essence of it has remained.

Whether you are a copywriter or its poorer cousin –  fiction/poetry writer – you wouldn’t want to go around confessing it to the general God-fearing, respectable neighbor. Let me explain how and why.

1. You are already suspect because you keep late hours.  Don’t ever underestimate your neighbor’s ability to find out the finer details of your nocturnal activities!

2. You don’t come out of the house like most respectable ladies of leisure, er, homemakers, to take the air between five and seven in the evening. Double the shame if you are an almost brand new mom.  I am no longer a brand new mom–been there, done that mom thing–I know what its like!

3. You are also a bad person to socialize with because you do not know and (gasp! sacrilege!) care about the latest in jewelry and fashion. You show little interest in the  love life of that pair of newlyweds across the street. Your neighbor’s little darlings don’t make you go “Oh cho chweet!” You have few complaints about the “servants.” You don’t watch soap operas or television serials as they are called here in India. 

4. To make matters worse, when they politely ask you what you do in the house, (meaning “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO COOPED UP IN THE HOUSE ALL DAY MOST DAYS?! DON’T YOU LIKE TO MIX WITH US? ARE YOU TOO GOOD FOR US? EH! EH!”) you say you write.  WRITE?

Now you’ve done it. Their eyes say it all. You’ll either get looks that say,” aha! so that’s what she does late in the  night when decent people sleep, the little pervert!” Because you should have known better than to believe that they’ll think you are a freelance journalist (very respectable and very powerful job for women, what’s more it even lets you mind the baby while you earn). Women journos take an interest in their neighbors’ lives. They attend parties or whatever. They have a life beyond their computers. Your neighbors are  well informed women and men too, you know.

As for the men! Their reactions are an entirely different kettle of fish – of the piranha family. One fine gentleman when told by my spouse that I write, asked with a supercilious smile, “And what do you write madam, detective stories?” The look in his eyes said something indecipherable. I simply said no and walked away.  Another time, long ago actually, when I was still a full time working mom, and used my lunch hour to scribble, a junior male colleague asked me what I was doing and when told, smiled secretly and after that kept giving me sly looks! Another male colleague asked me, on another day, whether I had men and boys in my stories! I had no answer to that. 

With women it’s more a question of not being part of the group and proving a point. I’ve had women telling me that they “also” write but don’t tell people about it”! One woman told me that even though her “English was very good she didn’t bother to write!” 

The more openly suspicious ones will ask you what you write. Say “fiction and poetry” and lay yourself open to loud sniggers to start with. The second question will arrive very condescendingly, “do you get money for it?” To which you will mumble sheepishly – of course you will mumble sheepishly, what do you take them for? They are in the know! Had you been a real writer your mug would have been plastered in page three or the weekend supplements of most leading dailies, print copies of your books would have adorned all those glam book stores that have coffee bars as well. But here you are, getting mostly published in the virtual world (those print publications hardly count because you submitted through email) calling yourself a writer!

So I usually keep mum until indiscretion gets the better of me or I have run out of creative descriptions of Chennai weather. It is more difficult at social gatherings in India, especially where men and women separate into two groups. But I manage, until someone asks, ”what do you do, really?”

Adapted from an earlier post in Writers & Writerisms

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Rumjhum Biswas  lives at the edge of the sun toasted city of Chennai, in a corner where migratory birds cruise the sky above the din of a burgeoning IT hub and an ancient temple dips its toes into a not so ancient mini lake. Her writing life will hibernate while she gets used to this new life.

I didn’t choose to be a writer. I write because I must. I write because if I don’t, I’ll go crazy. There must be thousands of writers who say this. I know I am not unique.

I have been writing since the age of seven, may be earlier, since the time I learnt the alphabets perhaps. During those innocent days, I did not question myself why I scribbled poems and sometimes songs in notebooks. I just knew that if I didn’t jot down whatever picture and emotion came into my mind immediately, I would feel angry and physically sick.

Once during a two hour math exam in school, I finished my paper forty five minutes early, just so I could pen the lines of a poem that were constantly coming between me and the numbers (I don’t remember how much I scored in that exam, but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell, so don’t ask!) Sister Padua, our music teacher, who was minding us, saw me mumbling to myself and scribbling on a paper after I had given up my answer sheets. She told me to stop distracting the other girls who were still writing. Disturbed, I stormed out of the room. She was shocked by my impudence. Afterwards, when I apologized to her and explained why I had become agitated, she said that she understood, but I should have trusted her enough and told her the reason instead of becoming emotional. She gently told me that she would have allowed me to leave the classroom and sit in the library and pursue my poetry in peace.

Another time, I became nearly hysterical with grief because my poetry notebooks couldn’t be found shortly after we had shifted to another house. I don’t recall this incident, so I must have been much younger than the math exam episode. Years later, my mother told me that that day she realized how much my writing meant to me. Yet, I myself didn’t know it. For a long time, too long for my own good, I neglected my writing self. I felt embarrassed to tell people about it. When I did, it usually produced strange reactions ranging from derision and mockery to irritation (“oh, don’t act intellectual with me”) to jaw dropping awe, to in one case, even titillation.

Over the years, I withdrew my writing self, until I hardly ever wrote for myself, except for the occasional poem. I had a job that entailed a large amount of creative writing, so I lulled myself into thinking that I was fulfilled. I felt stories and poems rampaging about in my head when I took a long maternity leave when my first child was born, but did nothing to capture them on paper. Foolishly I told myself that I just needed to get back to work. The inner disquiet did not go away. Life went on. And, except for the one or two stories that I wrote during lunch hour at work, I continued to ignore my writing self.

I began writing again in earnest shortly after my second child was born. Not tentatively, but furiously and angrily, hating anything that came between me, my writing and also my family. I chucked my lucrative full time advertising career; after a couple of years, I even stopped freelancing. My world revolved around my husband, my children and my writing. A couple of stories appeared in online journals. I became more and more detached from the social world. At times it felt like my head would burst if I didn’t leave everything aside to write. I wrote in my head all the time, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, at the playground with my babies, even while watching the occasional television. And, I took time off from my family and home constantly to bang away on my computer. But I still couldn’t tell people that I was a writer.

More stories and poems began to get published. I wrote more stories and poems. I wrote a novelette. I finished writing the first two drafts of my first novel. My husband got transferred and the new city we lived in gave me opportunities to touch base with writers groups. But I still couldn’t say it, when people, outside the writers’ circle, asked me what I did. The words stayed in my throat, hurting my gullet every time I swallowed them down again.

One day, my son, told me quietly that when his friends asked him what his mom did, he said that she was a writer. My daughter joined in and said that she was proud I was not a ‘normal’ mom. My husband, who has always supported my writing, said nothing. He only smiled his “I told you so” smile.

Rumjhum Biswas has a great family, and is also a writer. So it is a good thing she has a great family to start with! Some of her work – poetry and fiction – can be viewed at her blog: Writers & Writerisms And at her website.