Still Not a Writer
What Counts as Writing A few days ago, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary conversation about how everyone spends time, a friend mentioned about me "…but she writes.” This was technically true. What followed was predictable. “ Kahan chhapta hai ?” (Where does it get published?), asked the questioner. “Online,” I said. A pause. “ Haan , lekin kis paper mein? ” (But in which newspaper?) I said I write a blog. ‘Oh’, she said, her face looked - processing and contained, like the outside of a blender whirring on hard, dry spices. The conversation died its own death. This is not an isolated interaction. It is a pattern. Somewhere along the way, it has become clear to me that ‘writing’ is not a verb. It is a whole different category with eligibility criteria. This is not new. Even on a newspaper desk, feature writing occupied an ambiguous space, written, published, read, and yet not quite ‘real writing.’ And blogs, unfortunately, do not clear the prelims. A blo...