Edited by – Sristy Changkakoti
What is a writer…
Can simply writing few lines on the paper make you a writer…. Absolutely not.
All writers rejoice!!
Because we are a special breed…
We are people who would prefer penning down our innermost thoughts than sharing them with our closed ones….
We are artists in our own sense…
We create a new world every time we pick up our pens and let our imaginations soar…
Very recently the members of the SCIT ‘Reflections’ and theatre group ‘Eklavya’ had the privilege of meeting Mr. Dushyant Singh, a renowned full-time writer and part-time actor.
If the experience had to be described in one word, it would be – ‘enriching’.
Mr. Singh is by no means a stranger to these parts of Hinjewadi, even he remembers every time he visited SCIT – first as a judge then a performer and this time as a guest.
In this world where most of us hide our passions for writing and acting as them just being a hobby, he proudly announces that – “I am not an engineer who is trying to be writer…I am a writer who is trying to be an engineer…”. When you hear about his achievements and participations, you wonder…’He is a true manager…How does he make time with his schedule…’. If you hear some of his comments on the recent trends and realise…” Hey I thought the same thing…”, then maybe you are ignoring your creative side. Take for instance he mentioned Sarahah and called it a group of people who don’t have any kind of hope from this world…
So…Take a chance…Write Something…. Explore Yourself.
Some of the things he touched upon in this gathering were ‘How do you become a writer…?’, writer’s block, ‘How to write…?’, thoughts on theatre and finally ‘How to become a GOOD writer…?’.
As someone who loves to write (cannot call myself a writer yet…), to learn an accomplished writer such as himself also had moments like looking at your own writing and cringing at how could I write something so childish… was an eye opener. According to him, you are always dissatisfied with your first work, it may appear childish, slobbish and all in all a wreck then you write some more…you keep on writing and that is how we improve.
His words…” We always first write to impress someone (be it a first ever love letter or even a report to submit in school), but you keep on writing until words on the paper start making more sense to you than they did before…” touched a chord in me as there were times when picking up something to read…a book I hadn’t touched since my high school days could make me tear up. One of the most common phenomenon that every writer experiences is a ‘Writer’s Block’ to which he replied that there was no cure, just consider it being another phase you have to go through after bitten by the writer’s bug. Mr. Singh mentioned that some of his favourite writers include Mirza Ghalib, Gulzar sahib and Piyush Mishra, some names – even people who don’t have any interest in poetry would know. The thing these writers have in common is that they pen down emotions mainly attached to little things around them hence the subtleness of their verses manages to touch people in a way that they can never forget. Quite obviously the event next in order was his composition that took inspiration from his old school things lying in the corner of the house…a beautiful poem highlighting his journey from using pencils to pen, hence reaching a place in life where the words you write can never be erased. He also highlighted the relationship a writer has with ‘ink’, lamenting on the fact that most of the writing that we do these days is on a keyboard whereas the real fun is when you use a pen and the see the course that your work has taken to rach its destination.
From writing poems and stories, we moved on to writing plays and scripts, this part of the session begun with a very simple question – ‘How many of you like going to watch plays?’ but ended with a very complex emotion that “it takes courage to love theatre”. Adding more to this he explained that not everything in life has alternative, so once you experience theatre at its best there is no going back and in a world where movies have taken over and very few people still remember that in the past most of the talent that entertained us on the silverscreen were gems of the theatre world, the future of the Stage seems unsure. Going further into the technicalities of directing and making a play work he shared his own experiences like the age-old tiff between the director and the writer (how they never agree on some things…) and so on.
To be a good writer making a habit of thinking on the topic for some time and then writing on it would make all the difference. To any writer, his work can never be called ‘finished’ as everyday a new idea breeds and takes flight hence always making your work a draft and editing it numerous times is a good habit to keep. Another anecdote was that a good writer always leaves the conclusion to the audience…a way to keep them a part of the story you are telling and not just mere spectators.
Finally ending the session on the note that his views and ideas of the Infosys ‘PRATIBIMB’ group were very similar to our very own ‘REFLECTIONS’, hence any interaction with SCIT was always to his heart, we bid him goodbye with hopes to meet again.
