The song Bhaag Milkha Bhaag contains these profound words ‘bin khud jale na hoye ujala.’ Those words kept playing in my mind when I slipped into depression weeks before my book's launch. By then, writing it had been a see-saw journey of hope, despair, fear, and countless internal struggles. The obsessive pursuit of literary achievement had exacerbated the ebbs-and-flows of life, making me more brittle than I already was. This is the dark corollary of the writing process that we rarely discuss in public, but which many authors undergo in ways big or small. Here's the story of my battle scars.
With the book now having been out for over four months, the journey seems orderly, inevitable, and effortless in the rear-view mirror. In reality, it was anything but that. The relief of the launch and the ecstasy of positive feedback may have numbed the battle scars, but the many ways in which this journey has changed me tells a different story.
The journey I took with Caged Tiger began with a week in isolation back in November 2020. My workplace had declared a week-long break for Diwali, which I thought would be a good excuse to give the writer in me another chance. At that point, I had been writing on and off for almost fifteen years - a novel here; a collection of poems there; some op-eds spread across the years. I was, however, still waiting for that effort to which I could devote myself completely, and whose outcome I would be willing to stand by, come what may. I drove down to a resort in Coorg, far from the familiar rhythms of my daily life. With the outside world largely shut out, I began putting my often-disjointed thoughts on paper. I wrote about the infinitely inspiring yet sometimes frustrating country we live in, about incidents in the recent past that had made me ponder, and the hopes and fears I possibly share with my co-citizens. I wrote almost continuously for twelve hours every day, from 8 AM to 8 PM. Each day felt as challenging as tapasya, but at the end of which I had a 30,000-word manuscript.
The next struggle was to bring my family and well-wishers along. Rightfully, most of them worried that my book could land me in trouble because of its topic. While I could convince some, I had to respectfully disagree with others. The most difficult were the conversations within. Having worked hard academically for years to build a comfortable life, was it worth it to entertain even the remotest possibility of trouble because of my book? Even if I felt convinced that I could land this safely, should I put my parents through the anxieties that they had already shared with me? Why not instead write a self-help book that would still make me an author and help me monetize my academic achievements? At those moments, I turned to that innate belief in karma that many of us share. I convinced myself that a book written to suggest ideas to improve our beloved nation and not to criticize a particular government or leader would not land me in any trouble. I also asked myself that if I – despite all my inter-generational privilege and luck – could not write this story about India’s institutions, then who could? My feet, which had just climbed the ladder of social mobility and feared losing the good life, decided to take that leap into the unknown.
After that began the longest struggle – to write the rest of the book, while having a demanding full-time job. My predicament was compounded by the fact that I truly loved my role in the social impact space, and I could not harbour even the remotest idea of reducing the time I spent on it. Therefore, I researched and wrote only outside of office hours - on weekends, early mornings, or late at nights. It felt like having two jobs, with no weekends or free time during weekdays. That feeling of burning like the metaphorical flame in the song Bhaag Milkha Bhaag was compounded by the fact that this was in the middle of the pandemic-induced lockdown. I spent all my days inside a room, trapped by my aspirations for this book and yet, in a strange way, also liberated by it from the incalculable human suffering around me. Just by chipping away at it day in and day out, I ended up writing a 90,000-word book in fourteen months. In those intervening months, my ideas had changed so much that I entirely discarded those first 30,000 words I had written in Coorg. Many of my arguments became sharper and more confrontational, while in other areas I beat a strategic retreat. The Caged Tiger had taken new stripes, and I too had changed with it.
None of this is unique to either me, or even really the process of writing a book. Neither is it a glorification of human struggle and sacrifice when none is required. But every so often, we embark on journeys that require us to stretch ourselves. Our desire for that goal becomes so strong that we often straddle the boundary between equanimity and complete irrationality. The world sees the end outcome, the book signings, and the adulation on social media. But my experience makes me believe that the core of who we are as writers lies in the unseen journeys we undertake. Journeys where we sometimes battle debilitating self-doubt and relentless questions from those around us. Journeys where days and nights are long yet short, enjoyable yet frustrating, and completely chaotic. Being able to keep our heads firm and clear at those times is incredibly important. That, perhaps more than the words we eventually put on paper, truly makes us writers.
One of the ways I did so was by being close to nature. At the resort in Coorg, I moved my writing desk to an open area, where I could see falling leaves and the playful animals whenever I looked up from my laptop. I walked around the resort, letting the playful chirping of birds take my mind away from the serious topics on which I was writing. Once back home, my writing room was an oasis of peace in the middle of Bangalore, overlooking majestic trees and a patch of greenery for as far as the eye could see. I kept myself away from the chaos of the city, which was merely a few metres away from my house. Instead, I often let myself just look at those trees, breathe deeply, and be grateful for being alive and well. Even on the toughest of days, being close to nature made the journey seem a lot lighter.
I also found joy in ‘anchors’ around me. My partner, who isn’t much of a reader, was nonetheless an anchor that reminded me of my past, present and future; of a life and a love that is far more important than the book would ever be. We also rescued a dog from the street. Leia created a space in my life and calendar that I didn’t know existed. While my book heavily criticizes the centralization of power in India’s institutional architecture, an analogous centralization of focus in our lives is equally corrosive. I believe that we should instead create many smaller sanctuaries where we can live somewhat different lives, each acting as a check on the excesses (good or bad) of the others. In my case, the joyful monotony of arranging food, keeping the house clean, and taking care of my co-habitants became a sanctuary that helped me escape the heaviness of writing. At the same time, writing became a sanctuary that added meaning to my life and prevented me from descending into intellectual stagnation. My mind, nourished by the differences of these multiple worlds, thereby became better equipped for the challenges that lay ahead.
Through all of this, those regular ebbs and flows of life never ceased. When my maternal uncle passed away during that unforgiving delta wave, I could not stop thinking of the memories I had of him. It was my first experience of the death of someone so close to me, yet the pandemic ensured that I could not be there with my family at that time. Work itself went through its twists and turns, exacerbating rather than ameliorating the tumults of my personal life. Someone very dear to me betrayed me in such a vivid and life-altering manner that it seemed to invalidate many of my happy memories from the last few years. As Caged Tiger raced towards its launch date, the combined weight of all these experiences finally broke me. Two months before the launch, I started seeing a therapist and went on anti-depression medication. After a few weeks, I briefly emerged from that vortex, but soon went back into it and resumed the medication. Moving in and out of depression, I slowly made my way to Caged Tiger’s launch date. When that night finally came, I felt the accumulated trauma of that journey slowly escape my body through my tears.
How much did the process of writing Caged Tiger take from me, and was it worth it? I will never know. The tapestry of life is too intricate and interconnected that it is difficult to pinpoint what life would have been after removing only a single thread. Instead, I try to think of all the joys that writing the book has brought to my life. After many false starts over fifteen years, I have finally fulfilled my childhood dream of being a published author. I feel I have done justice – not completely, but to a substantial extent – to building on the work of several researchers whose work towards a better India has inspired me. I made the deliberate but difficult choice to aim ‘heavy’ topics like institutions to an audience of GenZ and millennials that is otherwise not usually exposed to such topics. The first print has sold out; the bragging rights of being an Amazon #1 bestseller achieved. Through the umpteen struggles of the last few years, I have entered my thirties a lot wiser and more resilient. My life has new light, and it would not have been possible without burning in the process.