Writers and Writing in Muzaffarnagar

Featuring my mother's literary life, a septuagenarian 'comrade' with an affinity for truth, and a crude estimation of the Hindi vanity-publishing market

In August, I spent two weeks in Muzaffarnagar, my hometown, in my mother’s house. This was to see if I could find some sort of writing sanctuary there. Towards the latter half of that stay, I wrote about the cocktail of anxieties that had led me there. What I wrote became an essay, titled Crossing the Viliya, which was carried by the Bombay Literary Magazine’s newsletter on August 15.

Crossing the Viliya didn’t spend too much time on specificities of the Muzaffarnagar stay, its chief concerns being the mini crises that had made that brief homecoming necessary and whether there was an old-new way of looking at the world to be gained from there. A fortnight has passed since my return from Muzaffarnagar. Apart from mother-made paranthas, hours of plastic-ball cricket with my twenty-three-years-younger cousin (who lives with my mother), and a feeling of realignment—an almost audible feeling, with swooshes and clicks—between the wheels of writing and self and persona, what I remember most warmly now is witnessing the rigours and routines of my mother’s life as a local Muzaffarnagar writer. She displays enormous energy and appetite for literary activities, and keeps herself terribly busy with them. It’s lovely, really; it’s infectious. In fact, the only time when I stepped out of the house during my stay in Muzaffarnagar was to attend a writers’ meet-up in a house two lanes away from ours. She convinced me I was specially invited.

That there are writers in Muzaffarnagar cannot be surprising. There are writers everywhere. What might be surprising is to know that there is a whole ecosystem in places like Muzaffarnagar—and therefore, one is sure, in most other Indian small towns too—an ecosystem that enables local writers to meet, discuss their work, and offer commentary to each other, and also an ecosystem that allows a playground for the showboating of book launches, shawl-on-shoulders photo-ops, and bouts of gossip and backbiting. About four years back, I began to be introduced to this world by my mother, Sunita Malik Solanki, who, riding a post-retirement surge of enthusiasm, an element she no doubt shares with a majority of her peers, became a ghazal writer in the early months of the pandemic and soon started self-publishing volumes of poetry. She has published four books by now—‘Same as you,’ she doesn’t miss to remind me—and is threatening to add two more to her bibliography before this year ends.

During the pandemic, when my mother evolved from ‘newbie’ to ‘known’ and gained a certain status among the local literati, she would attend every online गोष्ठी (meeting) and लोकार्पण (book release) she could find. When the pandemic ended, these events turned offline. Now, her house, like the houses of her peers, is the location for some of these meetings. ‘Sometimes, there are as many as thirty people attending,’ she tells me. ‘That’s why I’ve reduced the furniture in the drawing room. For extra space.’ For those always wondering about the power of poetry, here is a simple answer: it can move furniture.

*

In the early days of my mother’s literary adventure, I had taken it upon myself to be her harsh editor, to make sure that she wrote better and better. It turned out to be a frustrating endeavour. We bickered a lot over video calls, me pointing out the flaws in her writing, she taking all that I said personally and coming close to tears. It took me some time to realise that I wasn’t going to be very successful, that she would make her own path, at her own pace, and that if her ambition regarding her work was strictly local, it wasn’t my remit to stretch it over wider landscapes. What she was doing—engaging with literature, expanding her vocabulary, learning about poetic forms and playing with them—at her age, after a lifetime of being a home maker, was enough in itself (her job was given to her on compassionate grounds after my father’s death; she was 53 then, and retired five years later at 58, which is when her life in poetry started). My mother’s literary adventure needed only to be savoured, to be seen as a beautiful effort of the will, and also, in some way, a hat tip to a different life that could have been hers. To redefine oneself, to become new—these possibilities were perpetually refreshed in her engagement with literature, which, it was clear even during its early days, would last her till her own last day. This is what we shared, I finally understood; this is how we were similar. There was no need to beat a Szymborska out of her. Or a Geetanjali Shree.

During a brief stay in Muzaffarnagar in February 2022, I’d attended the launch of my mother’s second (or third, I forget) book. The launch was part of a larger literary event: held inside a school’s premises on a Sunday, snacks and tea on offer for the fifty or more people in the audience, some clear cultural-religious agendas narrated from the stage, strong saffron sponsorship whiff in the air, schoolchildren starting the show with vandana and professional singers ending it with a homage to Lata Mangeshkar, who had passed away only days before. My mother had already talked me up with the organisers. So I attended the event as some kind of big-shot writer, the kind a white writer automatically becomes in big-city literary festivals, and was tasked to be the main speaker introducing my mother’s work. I felt a bit proud of her when I spoke, my throat constricting in emotion at one point. I ended up, however, making a point too nuanced for my audience: that I had often failed to mark the original impulse that had pushed me to become a writer, or had failed to spot anything elemental that propelled my writing journey, owing to which I had spent years thinking of myself as an accidental writer, but now, with such a book launch, with my mother having become a writer too, I can begin to claim that writing was a thing I inherited, if only we could be a little lenient with chronology. When I was off stage, a cocksure man walked up to me and advised me not to think what I was thinking. When I asked him just what he thought I was thinking, he said, ‘That your mother has learnt writing from you.’ I gave him a vacant smile and walked towards the samosas.

When we reached home after the launch, I asked my mother if we had just been part of a right-wing event? My mother is secular in DNA, left-leaning (without knowing it), and belligerent in condemning bigotry and hate crime, even though it is impossible for her to let go of caste pride (we are Jats). In response to my question, she revealed a pragmatic side to her. She said she didn’t know exactly who had funded the event that day, but that she wouldn’t be surprised if it was an organisation affiliated with the sangh or something like it. ‘I don’t agree with them,’ she said. ‘And sometimes when they say nasty things, I call it out and get into a tiff. That’s how it is, here. What to do?’

I was stunned hearing this, but not because of any shock. I was stunned because my mother’s defence was the same that an established author would give to justify attending a literary festival sponsored by, say, a rabidly right-wing news channel or the like.

The other thing that I learnt from that event in February 2022 was that my mother happily talked me up before her peers to draw some of her own status. Things that were difficult for local Muzaffarnagar writers to achieve—to have a book listed on Amazon, to have a certain number of ratings on Amazon, to get paid for publishing a book rather than having to pay to be published, to get an award from a legit-sounding organisation like the Sahitya Akademi—had been achieved by me, Sunita Malik Solanki’s son, and mentioning these achievements of mine added to my mother’s social capital.

In doing both these things—ignoring chasms in politics and adding to social capital by association—my mother proved herself to be a better promoter of her own literary persona than I was. Where I felt tormented, caught between tangles of reserve and ambition, she was free and uncomplicated. This is what we didn’t share, I understood. But I was impressed by her, no doubt. I don’t deny that there might be a link between the cultural activities of the right wing in small towns like Muzaffarnagar and the genocidal tints that our national politics is programmatically afflicted by, but somehow I don’t see how the former readies my mother for the latter if she steadfastly holds to her beliefs (and votes accordingly). Also, I think that an entire reality is encapsulated in her ‘That’s how it is, here. What to do?’ Liberal islands are liberal islands; nothing of the sort exists in Muzaffarnagar.

Thankfully, funded events are not central to what I labelled as ‘ecosystem’ early on in this essay. During my stay in Muzaffarnagar, I noticed four kinds of literary activities in my mother’s calendar: online classes, in which she sharpens her hold on one or another form of poetry; impromptu meetings, of the sort where one person announces they are happy to receive authors in their living room for an afternoon; meetings under a benign banner, held through the industry of one of many local organisations set up precisely for the task of setting up author meet-ups (Mummy holds a position in one of these, I learnt); and launches and events, things that inevitably have some kind of sponsorship (read soft-sanghi) flavour. These illustrate the full breadth of the literary ecosystem of Muzaffarnagar, and, by extension, of similar small-towns in the so-called Hindi belt.

The writers’ meet-up that I attended in August, the only occasion when I stepped out of the house, was of the second kind: an impromptu one, with no small or large organisation behind it. It was held at the house of seventy-seven year old Sam¹, only a few lanes away from my mother’s. Sam had, in fact, visited us five days before the meet-up, to discuss the programming of a book launch with my mother and to chat with me (he knew about my visit from my mother). During our conversation, I learned that he was a non-writing writer, one who had been working on the same novel for more than thirty years. Hearing him describe his plot, I felt a surge of sympathy for him, though when every now and then he betrayed himself as a bit too reliant on WhatsApp University for what he knew of the world that sympathy diminished significantly. His diction was distinct, however, with a studied distance from the emphases of khadi boli and a certain air of calm erudition, and these contradictions in his content and manner held my interest. On his side, learning about this and that writing practice of mine left a definite impression.

Sam announced the meet-up the very next day. My mother told me that he’d arranged it because of me, that I was going to be the attraction. I didn’t mind: I was excited to meet my mother’s company in a supposedly more intimate setting.

From my mother’s house to Sam’s: the first turn to the left, then a right, and then a left

On the day, at around 4 p.m. in his living room, Sam started the meet-up by reading two long poems: one about Lord Rama, the other about the ills of Hindu orthodoxy. Sam then asked me what I thought of Rama. I said that my generation had only seen a post-Ramanand-Sagar Rama, and that we found it difficult to dissociate the god from the political project that had followed Ramanand Sagar’s TV serial. This ruffled a few feathers. Nothing untoward, though. Jay, a short-story writer of my age, asked Prof, a retired professor of History and a ‘comrade’ (per Sam’s introduction), if there was any historical proof of Rama. Prof bluntly said there was none, and added that our conception of Rama was itself not very old, relying for the most part on Tulsidas 16th century work Ramcharitmanas. This ruffled some more feathers, with Valmiki mentioned, but Prof held firm. D.K., a short-story writer of Sam’s age, asked the group to move on to literary matters. Shobhit, a poet of my mother’s age, read some of his ghazals then, and the odd couplet struck a chord with me. Jay then read a short story about the needless beautification of Muzaffarnagar railway station, which wasn’t really much of a story but hinted to me how local matters could elicit beautiful creative responses. My mother then read a few of her poems—about grit and not giving up, about her grandmother, about witnessing as a child a dacoits’ raid on her village—which I genuinely thought were the best poems recited that day, despite the generally low bar. I read a Hindi poem called Godsenagar, a poem written out of fear that Muzaffarnagar might one day be renamed so (after Mahatma Gandhi’s killer, Nathuram Godse). Again some throats cleared, some unease in the air.

The reading rounds went on. There were rounds of tea, too. The general air, I must add, was of applause. There were wah wahs all around; always. Nobody displayed any intent to offer any criticism to a fellow writer. This was, as they pejoratively say in other worlds, a mutual admiration society. At some point it got on to my nerves. I pointed out an error in a short story by D.K., something to do with a faulty verb², which miffed him enough to defend his obviously erroneous choice. There was some to and fro, and the to and fro began to seem like a tussle. Sam intervened to drive some sense in D.K. about what was, in reality, a small but indefensible error. But the man remained stubborn.

‘Look, I do what comes most naturally to me,’ he announced. ‘And this word came most naturally to me. And nature is never wrong. How can nature be wrong? So the word must be right.’

‘That’s not how it works,’ Mummy and I said simultaneously, and then smiled at each other. A general suspicion of the first draft, and the related commitment to revision, were things that I had asked her to inculcate during our video calls at the time when she had started writing. I was happy to see she had retained some of what I’d said.

At this point, Prof the comrade, despite having read nothing of his own writing, took our leave to attend to an errand. It was as if he was offended by what D.K. had said and could take it no longer. Kamlesh, a poet about my age, read some of his free-verse poems then, and followed them up with an open question about ‘the role of the author’. It was a bait nobody took, and which I was glad Sam didn’t hurl my way. Then Shalini, also in her mid-forties, read a poem about Draupadi’s life³, followed by a short story about an old house-help who turns up bruised at an employers’ house because her son has beaten her. The employer gives her chai and biscuits. When the story ended with just this, the short-story writer in my was disturbed. I asked Shalini if the housemaid had been made to do the chores after the chai and biscuits. ‘No,’ Shalini said, and then narrated how the son had turned up at her house after some time, and how she had scolded the man and threatened him with consequences if he ever did that again. Shalini was the employer.

‘Did he stop?’ I asked.

‘No, Amma doesn’t tell me but he still beats her sometimes.’

‘Why is all this not in the story?’ I asked.

My mother jumped in: ‘The son is probably beating his mother even more because of the scolding he got.’

Even though this criticism could clearly be interpreted as extending to her, Shalini expertly localised it to the story and said: ‘I understand. The story needs to be bigger, needs to include more of what happened.’

At this—a writer’s happy receipt of critical input, even in a situation with personal involvement—I stole a glance at D.K. and took some pleasure in the scowl spread on his face. So long for writing in flow, without revision. So long for thinking of writing as a task free from artifice. Sam and D.K. then talked at length about the difference between आलोचना (criticism) and समालोचना (review), and although I felt that their conversation had something to do with me, I failed to understand it well enough.

Towards the end of the meeting, Sam asked me how authors interacted with each other in my world.

‘Not this way,’ I said. ‘It’s very good that you meet like this. But I think that these kind of meetings should be used to criticise each other rather than praise each other. I’m sorry if I have behaved inappropriately today.’

‘That’s the only way one can learn,’ Mummy said, and added Kabir’s couplet about keeping one’s detractors close.

D.K. then said something that felt out of character, and oddly graceful: ‘Yes, we must criticise each other. Otherwise all of us become frogs in a well.’

*

I have thought about Sam’s final question many times in the last two weeks. Why don’t writers in my world, with all the resources we have, with all that we know about the value of revision, and with all the craft nuances that we harp on, meet like this? Are we too self-conscious, or too egoistic? Are we afraid of the D.K. in our midst? Or are we afraid of the Tanuj who might appear one day, act superior, and upset things? Or is it just that we live in big cities, and to live two lanes away from a writer with whom we can discuss our concerns over an afternoon is a luxury we just don’t have?

Do small-town writers have a unique opportunity then? I wonder what Jay and Kamlesh, the younger ones of the lot that afternoon, felt on the matter of revision and flow. Is literature a only pastime for them, too, the only difference being that they had started ‘indulging’ in it before retirement? I can’t say.

Surely the big Hindi publishers can play a role in cultivating this vast, entrepreneurial, and self-motivated reader-writer-ship.

By my ill-informed estimate, the Hindi vanity publishing industry is likely to rival the English trade industry, if one compares only new-title revenue and not the backlists and classics. Vanity writers in Hindi, of which there must be about three dozen in Muzaffarnagar alone, buy on average ~50 copies of their own books and gift them to other writers, even sometimes couriering copies at their own expense. At a meagre 200 rupees per title, the total annual revenue of the servicing publishers, if one assumes 36 writers publishing one book each, turns out to be 3.6 lakh rupees.

There are 75 district headquarters like Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh alone. You can do the math. You can guess the margins of a business that needs no distribution.

One way to read this 3.6 lakh number is to see it as the absolute minima of what Muzaffarnagar literati is willing to spend on literature per year. The true estimate is many times this. My mother has a shelf of her own now, a shelf full of gifted books from writers in Muzaffarnagar and around. She receives requests to write forewords for books, to write reviews of them, to contribute poems to newspapers, to submit short stories for anthology projects, and to read her work at the All India Radio station at Najibabad (a paid gig). Whether out of obligation or interest, she engages with others’ work and is always keen to learn. She will buy books if she has to, if she’s convinced of their quality or their contribution to her own craft. But where from? Where is the bookseller in the city? Forget booksellers. Where is the knowhow? Who is talking to my mother about writers like Nirmal Verma, or Vinod Kumar Shukla, or Chandan Pandey? Who is creating the feeling of lack that leads to purchase? To diagnose the writers I met at Sam’s house as having constricted world-views or limited ambition, or to label them as frogs-in-a-well, happy to hear their own echoes, is one thing, but what else, I ask, could have happened to them? When capital-L Literature is not interested in a place, small-l literature—sanghi, commie, whatever—emerges on its own. To judge its output is to misread the message.

And to all writers in my world: let nobody tell you that there is a limit to readership in India.

1. All names, except mine and my mother’s, have been changed. You may call the choices uninspired, but I assure you they are deliberately so

2. To recreate his error in English: He’d written ‘Chairs were established in the open area’ instead of ‘Chairs were placed in the open area’.

3. A listicle of the woman’s misfortunes