Skip to main content

Kind words from a voice on the telephone

Last month my young friend Chintan forwarded a short news item from a Kolkata newspaper, announcing the demise of one of the city's (and indeed the country's) most respected literary figures, Professor P Lal. There had been no mention of this in any of the other papers, and a couple of my friends in the publishing industry had not heard the news either. Today, a little over a month later, The Hindu's Literary Review carries a full page tribute, combining perspectives from Shashi Deshpande, Keki Daruwalla and Gopikrishnan Kottoor.  All three writers have similar recollections of Prof Lal, all three mention his generosity of spirit and his dedication to the art and craft of literary publishing.

I've been thinking of writing something on this blog ever since Chintan sent me the news. Prof Lal helped me realise a long standing dream of having my own work published. He helped me get beyond the sense that my wish was a mere indulgence. After many months (years?) of dithering, I had put together my collection of poems and decided to seek a publisher. I had of course heard of the Writers Workshop and read many of the collections, both fiction and poetry, put out by them. The hand-bound gold lettered covers were quite familiar and so were the names represented on many of them. Having grown used to an online mode of functioning, I sent off an email to the address indicated on the web site, and received a prompt reply--read the terms and conditions mentioned on our site, and if in agreement, send us the manuscript in hard copy and we will get back to you if we consider it suitable. So I did.

About ten days later, one evening, I received a phone call on my landline (my daughter picked it up and she said, someone called Professor Lal from Calcutta)... yes, it was him, and he was calling to tell me that he liked my work and would be happy to publish it. "But why don't you send it to a commercial publisher, it is really very good," he said. I suppose all of us who write do have a certain sense of the quality of our work, but it always helps reinforce one's confidence to hear it from someone else (especially when that person is not an indulgent parent or a kind friend). We spoke about some of the formalities and then he said, "You must keep writing."

There were a couple more conversations, mostly routine chats about proofs and postage, and as promised, two months later, my book was out, in the beautiful cloth binding that characterises WW. These are moments I won't forget. The phone call and those words. Opening the advance copy of my book.

I do agree that some vanity is involved, and as other commentators have observed, WW has over the years published work of excellence as well as indifference, and it is up to the reader to make the distinction, But Prof Lal's work nevertheless has allowed many of us to emerge from the woodwork more confident, and more willing to take on the sometimes cruel gaze of the critical audience.
 

Comments

Prakash said…
I was delighted to read your forthright blog about the filip that Prof. Lal gave you in bringing your maiden writing to be published
Every one of us have a Prof. Lal in our life.
I had mine in the person Colin P. Masica a reknown American linguist who taught Hindi especially Bihari Braj Basha. His facilitation helped start a career in rural community development,poverty alleviation and humanitarian service since I was 19 year old.
I am happy to Linkedin with you and hope we can be regular contact sharing common interest.

Popular posts from this blog

A house called Ayodhya

How do words get taken away from you? How do they mutate and reconfigure around entirely new meanings, only weakly related to those that they held when you owned them? And then, through repetition and constant association, they solidify into these new forms, their other histories hidden behind impenetrable layers, where they have not been erased altogether.   I live in a house whose name often elicits a curious look, raised eyebrow, a muffled cough, a judging eye, or even a vigorous nod of approval. But for even the least politically minded, the name is evocative of something. For some of us, it is the wave of negativity, divisiveness, and violence unleashed by the events of a December three decades ago. For others, it may represent the righteous assertion of identity.   But the name etched into the gate pillar, now fading and diminished when compared to the glitzy lettering on neighbouring walls, has nothing to do with the politics of place and claimed heritage. It is a simpl...

Remembering Ja

Ja (right) with Maxine, at the Alternative Network meeting, 2004 I opened the newspaper this morning and way down at the bottom of page five was a small insert in remembrance of an old friend and sometime mentor, Janaki Iyer, known simply as "Ja" to many of us.  I myself took a decade or more to make the transition from "Mrs Iyer" to "Janaki" to a very hesitant "Ja"--the diminutive seemed not to do justice to a woman who in a very gentle and quiet way had touched so many people, young, old, and like myself, somewhere in between. First, the specifics. Janaki was a teacher from start to finish. After many years of teaching in an upscale Bombay school, she moved to Hyderabad and, with an enthusiastic friend, started Ananda Bharati, a learning space for children of migrant labourers, in a small room in the YMCA, Tarnaka. Many of those children went on to join the mainstream school system and complete their secondary education; a few even obtai...

Talking about Talk: a conversation with Sherry Turkle

Credit: CNN Image s The Tang Building sits on the southern edge of the MIT campus, overlooking the river whose grey this autumn afternoon acts as a foil to the gold and auburn of the trees across its wide span. I rush up the stairs to the second floor—I am a minute past the appointed hour—and arrive, just a little out of breath, on the second floor. The corridor is dark and the roomy lobby leading to the room that bears the number I’ve been given is even darker. I check my phone again to make sure I have it right and then venture inside, flipping the light switch and finding a spot on a comfortable sofa. One never feels quite prepared for an interview. Especially when it involves someone who has already been in the media eye over the years, whose engaging commentaries on life in the digital age have found their way to the TED stage and from there into millions of YouTube and Facebook shares, whose books straddle the academic and popular; someone who could be the Nora Ephron ...