Ian and I don’t interact much these days, at least not now. There was a time when I wanted to be a writer, and I thought Ian was my gateway to the world of fame and eternity. I don’t know myself well, but as far as I do, I am not selfish. But in Ian, I initially saw profit. And so, he edited my stories and I dreamt of writing ten stories and getting them published and become an instant hit. This is partly because he himself used to think that my stories were wonderful and fresh. I pitied him really, for I knew I was not special. Not at all.
I was never sure about myself, but Ian was. He persisted when I long gave up. We started interacting on emails, I think it all started in 2005 or 2006. I was 25-26. By the time I was 28, Ian turned into a friend, and I no longer could think of him as my ladder to success. This is also the time I came to Mumbai and soon lost interest in writing. The city overwhelmed me with its daily struggle. Life was no longer comfortable and fun as it was in Bangalore. But I loved the people here more, and decided to stay back. I am in Mumbai since then, got married, my kid was born here, I bought a flat and settled for good.
Everything changed, but there was only one constant – Ian Vincent Mulder. No longer my editor, or my ambition, but my dearest friend. Perhaps the only one apart from my parents who would wait to hear from me. I confided secrets and took guidance from him that I wouldn't tell even my childhood friends. I trusted him blindly, knowing here is the man who has nothing but good for me in his mind.
What prompted me to write this post is that I discovered an audio file in his blog, it is personal and so I don’t want to share the link, but it filled me with sadness hearing his voice and his struggles with recent illness. The post was of 2017, but I discovered it only today. I guess he is much better now, we have definitely interacted after that. He is as eternal optimistic as ever. I am critical. Over the course of the years, when I became a true journalist (read cynical) I have no idea, but my way of seeing the world has definitely changed. I am no longer an optimist, not pessimist either, but perhaps a realist. Which is perhaps a shade of pessimism.
Anyway, hearing Ian’s voice, perhaps I heard him quivering somewhat, it filled me with sadness. I didn't keep my words, he wanted good for me, he wanted to dedicate himself for my talent. Perhaps, I should have been kinder to him, perhaps for him only I should have written more stories. But then I am dead from inside kind of. No stories come to me anymore. I am not creative. I write news reports, what I see I write. Somewhere the imagination has been wiped clean.
Looking back, I think the reason why I stopped creating fiction is that I didn’t have the language required. I am neither good in English, nor in Bengali. Why would anything come to me. Whatever I can write is in this simple English that perhaps doesn’t make a good read, definitely not as a literature. It is perhaps okay for news reports, not literature for sure. Ian offered to edit and rewrite my stories wherever required to make it suitable for an English audience, but it also somewhat took away the fun of writing for me. Perhaps realising that, he just edited copies and fixed the language here and there, but I had lost the creativity and so like a spent cow, I was destined for the journalism slaughterhouse. Frankly, I have done relatively well in journalism, but I look back at my old self with nothing but envy. It's a full transformation I went through, and only Ian stayed with me as constant.
When I heard his voice today, I became emotional, and wanted to write something to shed the mushiness. I think I owe an apology to Ian, but we have created seven-eight stories together. He has a wonderful blog too, not sure if he would want to share the link publicly, so not tagging his new blog. Who knows, maybe one day people will read our stories/blogs and be happy. One thing is for sure, both of us don’t want to be famous anymore. Just writing for the sake of it, like a form of doodling.
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