The Shortcut to Being A Published Writer

In response to the overwhelming public demand for some less banal than a recipe (although I think recipes are about as banal as the Dal Lake), here is your Chhotacut to becoming a writer:

Submit an article to the Reader's Digest.

They'll do the due diligence in terms of making it read like a Digest article. They will even research the background for you, especially to find out if everything you have written is true.  

Here's the one I submitted (and they published).

And because I think my submitted article was better than the final edited one (Pride's definitely my favourite sin), here's the original:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Teacher 

Seven o’clock assembly, 1991. More than 1200 teens packed into a large hall. Indu Ma’am’s morning address.

“You are children that are coming to a special institution. You have the personal responsibility to live upto ideals. Ideals like truth and honesty…”

Image Courtesy: Reader's Digest

Barely suppressed yawns and careful whispers. Looking around to see where that boy/girl you have a crush on is sitting. Crossing and uncrossing your limbs to shake out the pins-and-needles. And the collective, silent, sigh of relief as the lecture meandered into a close with the school announcements.

Indu Ma’am was everything a teacher should not be. You may think teenagers are a liberal lot, since they like to break rules and experiment, but growing up in Delhi in the nineties, we were anything but. So Indu Ma’am’s bead necklaces, which graduated in size from the points in the ballpoint pens to TT balls (that was a lot of balls for us hormonal lot); her gauzy chiffon sarees, her nearly see-through blouses, her fuchsia lipstick – all came up for furious, almost medieval, disapproval.

Not that she had to care what a bunch of raw post-pubescents thought about her – she was the Principal. She could deliver maudlin, 30 minute lectures on her favourite spiritual topic. She could get away with conveying to us, over 15 embarrassing minutes in front of your friends, how despicable people who did not wash their canvas shoes daily were.

If she was any other teacher, we would just have sniggered and left it at that. But with all that power, we had to give her the full treatment – hatred.

To avoid public humiliation, we behaved faultlessly whenever Ma’am was within sight or hearing range. Better still, we avoided her as far as possible. For example, if you turned a corner and spotted something fluorescent pink at the other end of a long school corridor, you took a detour, even if it meant climbing up and down 3 floors to reach a ground floor classroom.

When Indu Ma’am walked in as our 11^th Grade Political Science teacher, we were all prepared for thirty-five minutes of sullen transience, forcing our bottoms to stick to our chairs. Passing time stealing glances at the labored progress of the seconds hand around the clock face.

 “How many of you have read today’s paper?”

A few of us raised our hands.

“You can learn a lot from your textbook, but you’ll learn more if you just start paying attention to the papers more,” she said. “When I was in Czechoslovakia, we went on a visit to London. As a Political Science student, I had to visit the British Parliament. Parliamentarians sat like this.”

And with that, our stolid and strict Principal put her dainty feet on her table. The class erupted in giggles. To our amazement, Indu Ma’am laughed with us.

She told us to start watching TV news and read novels set in Europe. “Have you read Anna Karenina?” She asked.

Over the next two years, Indu Ma’am opened our minds to what the world was talking about. While completing a chapter on democracy, she discussed notorious tyrants. In the section on communism, we were treated to a rather interesting story about Rasputin’s relationship with the queen. We spoke about Ceauşescu’s bathroom fittings (gold) and Imelda Marcos’ shoes (2700 pairs). We debated on the merits of the federal system of governance over a semi-federal one.

In another class, she told us she was wearing shorts to the beach, when.... We did not let her complete. Some of us were laughing so hard we were bent at the waist.  “What? You people think I was never thin?” We laughed even harder. That was exactly what was on our minds – her weight.

Many years later, when I started taking classes for entrance-exam-hardened IIT students, I realized how much confidence that had taken – her self-deprecating humour in a group of nearly-adults at their bitchy best. When she walked into class, she transformed into a teacher in the mentoring sense of the term, leaving her role as chief administrator at the door. What struck us was the ease with which she could switch modes. Her Principal personality was rigid, unyielding, and preachy – everything a child could grow to resent. In class, the same person changed into a co-learner, a storyteller, funny, wise – inspiring.

The newsmakers of the nineties came alive in Political Science class, their choices and their lives a matter of wonderment and debate.  

Was Winnie Mandela right in separating from Nelson Mandela? Our middle-class-eighties upbringing balked at the idea. Indu Ma’am asked us why a public persona has to stick to the public’s opinions. She introduced the idea in our heads that divorce may just be an expression of choice, with little to do with morals, often none at all. “In France, most people choose to be in relationships without marriage,” she said. The idea was nothing short of revolutionary for the sheltered creatures from conservative families that we were, but once we were nudged our of our comfort zones, a lot of our beliefs underwent interrogation and lunchtime debates.

Twenty years have passed since I sat in Indu Ma’am’s classes. I have forgotten nearly every part of the Syllabus that fetched me a respectable percentage in the Class XII boards. But I can still tell you when the UN’s Security Council deadline for withdrawal of troops ran out for Saddam Hussein, and what followed.   

When you are seventeen, you haven’t quite figured out who you want to be and choose to play it safe with sticking to whatever the others in Class are. The problem is, they too are looking upto confused morons like you for some inspiration. In Political Science class, however, for a brief 35 minutes every 2 days, our beclouded age would recede. Taking part in discussions, listening to other people’s opinions, sharing your own, imbibing new information that went into shaping those opinions, we became, for half an hour, seekers and learners, and not merely adults-in-the-making.