Gravel In My Shoe

By Ganesh Saili

Dear Reader, it wasn’t during Covid times. It was not a virtual literary festival. It was pure flesh-and-blood live action. As guests, Abha and I found ourselves next to the hill station’s solitary club, near an army cantonment. Hearing a commotion on the flat below us, I remarked how good it was to hear jawans on parade.

‘I see no jawans,’ said Abha. ‘Looks like it’s demonstrators at the gate. They are protesting yesterday’s debate.’

Next day, it was my turn. With six other authors, I find myself sitting on a stage. Beside me is Ms Iron-Pants, compere, interviewer and general busybody, who had already decided that I was the wrong type. When my name was announced, she adjusted her spectacles and looked down her nose at me. Dismissively, she spoke: ‘Strictly speaking, Ganesh, aren’t you a non-fiction writer?’

What! I didn’t know writers came labelled and shrink-wrapped. Or was it that chhokra-boys like me had no business at the high table? Perhaps I should have stayed where those of my kind belonged, barefooted in the backyard, with the servants.

‘Serves me right!’ I berated myself, fighting that familiar, sinking feeling of a passenger getting off a train at the wrong station. But I guess there is a first time for everything! For often in real life, pedestrians rarely walk into a jumbo jet.

But I too am on a roll, undeterred, spoiling for a fight. I refuse to go down. ‘Guilty as charged!’ I hear my disembodied voice saying. In the good old days, authors were known for their writing prowess. In our times you find yourself sandwiched between celebrity-authors and a publisher. You do not get an approving nod, unless your sales graph looks like a jet taking off.

Although my ‘Not tonight, Josephine!’ moment has arrived, my inquisitor is unrelenting. Tenacious as a pit-bull, she latches on to my leg, her teeth firmly clenched and if you looked, you would have spotted her jawline twitching pugnaciously. And she will not let up, figuratively tossing me around like a rag doll. My townspeople will vouch that I have no problem with my people skills. They have served me well thus far and the results are not too bad. What I really need to work on, though, is my tolerance for idiots. Duct-tape and bubble-wrap seem like the perfect solution to stifle them. For she is no mood to shut up.

‘Didn’t you do a Kama Sutra?’ she needles, wagging her finger at me in a manner not unlike a shopkeeper who has caught me with my hand in the till.

I hear my disengaged voice like a train chugging its way through a dark tunnel. ‘Vatsayana wrote the original!’ I reply, adding, ‘What I wrote was a reader-friendly commentary.’

Pushed to the wall, I wished that I could turn into the Hulk, thump my chest, half-snarl, half-hiss: ‘Yes! I did. That was ages ago when I started writing. The book did quite well, thank you very much. It was translated into two dozen languages, and kept my publisher in business! In Australia, Down Under, it even inspired one fellow to open a store called ‘The Kama Sutra’.

Instead, I promise myself: ‘I will get my own back. My revenge will be: ‘I will write about you’. After all, for a writer, it’s all grist for the mill.

Who said there are three things a writer can do with a woman: Love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature? But that is the path for great writers. The days when she was epic material are over. Of course, turning her into literature is a no-no. Anyway, I am a peddler of words, I put them together by choosing the middle path. Trouble is, the aforementioned spools of duct tape and shrink wrap swim back to crowd my mind.

A restless murmur passes through the gathering. The packed hall looms like a mountain. Thankfully, the mountain and I are old lovers. Eventually, the session ends, as Ms Iron Pants moves on to the next author.

Whenever I remember that session, I think of her as the gravel in my shoe.

Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their own pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found renown world-wide.