Yet Untitled 103 - The Parable of the Lost Writer

A Fable about Emergence

Dearest Yet Untitler,

I am so full of thoughts and ideas, but it feels like looking squarely at a humungous raincloud that’s turgid and grey, but keeps holding on to its rain. Mumbai is a bit like this these days - thick, hot days thirsting for rain that does not oblige (though these clouds started relenting a bit on publishing day). But on most days in Mumbai, we’re sweltering.

In my head, I’m surging.

Turgid clouds, Vembanad Lake, Alleppey, Kerala, c. 2005

My handwriting is in flux again. That means things are changing and I’m in a new place. Remember YU067?

Well, it’s happened again. And there’s no going back.

This time, it was after spending a week with an auteur director for whom I’m writing a script. I feel as my abilities have been kneaded like dough, stretchhhhhheeedd like plastercine, and hammered like hot metal. Coming back home has been like plunging myself in an ice pool. I see myself emerging from the water like a black, steaming amorphous mass that now has been left to set. I’m curious about what shape this clay will take hereafter.

I enjoyed this. Shall I call it an ordeal? I used to arrive at my meetings with this director inwardly vibrating with terror. It was a complex terror: a cocktail of failure, the anxiety of anticipation and weariness. Why weariness? There’s a certain rigamarole to writing. Especially in the initial stages, it gives rise to a feeling of fatigue at having to the wrestle with something that does not yet have form. Sometimes, it feels like punching in the air and in the dark. Usually, as the writing part is my expertise, this battle is felt to me with others stakeholders becoming disembodied voices shouting their encouragements from the edge of the dark, voices that fade as you go deeper down the dark continent of your story.

Even while writing collaboratively - as I’ve been doing in my role as a writer for OTT shows - those journeys also begin with a bunch of folks floundering with you in the dark. I tell you this so you know the terror I felt at being in this jungle alone. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a solo expedition like this.

Lunuganga estate, Bentota, Sri Lanka, c. 2024

The expectation on all fronts was that I navigate this jungle successfully. Hence, my terror at the perils I would find in the dark. What would leap down from the looming branches to attack my flesh? What would crawl up my ankles towards the softer parts of my legs where it could dunk its fangs?

Juhu beach, Pre-pandemic Mumbai, c. 2020

The director stood on the other side of the jungle like a mountain, waiting for me to come. He would speak to me every day, but mostly it was left to me to turn his words into maps. When he spoke, I listened. When he didn’t speak, he waited. When he waited, I moved.

Maps and tools, Khalid Tyebji’s workshop, New Delhi, c. 2015

There was great movement over the past seven days. I had had enough of finding these story-forests to be dark, unnavigable places. Enough, I said. The story is waiting on the other side. Enough of thinking of the dark as an impediment. It was time to use every sense, every perception, every faculty, every limb - to move. To emerge.

Emerging from the forest, Pavana, Maharashtra, c. 2022

Emerge, I did.

Emerging took its toll. I emerged with the toll and with a story.

Interestingly, it felt like the toll was the bigger prize.

I exchange this toll now for some sleep before I move again.

Thanks for listening. Do leave me your thoughts as a comment or be replying.

Lotsa love

V

PS - Let’s hear it for early publishing! Hooray!!