“A writer,” according to an anonymous personage “is the greatest creation of God. To preserve the sanctity of his title, he must try his best to work for the greater good; by striving, aspiring and inspiring.”
The depth of this statement sinks into me whenever I read it. A writer is a marvelous creation of God; the perfect paradigm of God’s unique and sentient attributes. He lives in the hearts of millions of people, ruling them, controlling the flow of emotions. He has the power of words; the power which entitles him to make anyone laugh joyfully or cry lugubriously. Writing, therefore, is no easy task as many take it to be. The most difficult assignment that can be assigned to a particular person is to write. For a writer must dream as no one does; he must think like no one has ever done before. From figments of the imagination to heart-rending screams of a lover as he is dragged to his doom; from radiations killing innumerable people to the plethora of hard work that extracts a heavy toll from a factory-worker; a writer has everything in the drawers of his mind; he will rummage through them and bring out what appears to be the most chivalric and the most abominable conclusion. He cannot and he must not tarry, even for a split fraction of a second; his dilatoriness may have an outcome whose drastic force is difficult to control. He may make or mar the beauty of a nation. A poet says:
“Yesterday a philosopher declared aloud
Your nation has vowed to be destroyed
Asking him how could this be possible
Said he, you have poets in profusion”
It is very important to define the spirit of writing. Writing merely for the sake of wealth and fame is not only rash and unscrupulous, but also destroys the quintessence of this “holy” profession. A writer is a builder of the nation. If he resorts to illicit means then the nation is destroyed. He must burn the midnight oil, he must work heart and soul to create something that is constructive and provocative. Writing extracts a heavy toll from the writer, leaving him weakened and hollowed, but compared to the extra benefits a nation may achieve, it is worth the effort. A writer can instill a new spirit in the people simply by crafting a book from words which individually carry no value. He provides the impetus to the nation to progress and prosper by leaps and bounds.
An amateur writer is always better than a professional one, for while he serves to rejuvenate the societal values by infusing a new spirit of hope, the latter seeks to destroy it for selfish purposes.
George Washington once said: “Keep flax from fire and youth from gambling.” As an afterthought, we might add that we must also save our writers from moral corruption. The lust for wealth is insatiable and often drives man to desperation. We need to save our writers from being desperados who seek to destroy the nation.
Professionalism is of two types. One is the type that seeks to induce refinement in writing by learning, practicing and experiencing. The other strives to create something that brings in a lot of wealth and fame. Although class A also gains fame and wealth, yet they do this by moral and social construction of the society, unlike class B who is intent on blowing it to smithereens.
A writer possesses a partial dominance over others; he has the absolute trait of being able to create. This makes him the most helpful and the most dangerous person of the society. He can be the creator of the protagonist who, like the phoenix, contributes in raising a nation from ashes to the heights of glory. Or he can be the villain who, using means clandestine and apparent, destroys the framework which is the base of a nation.
Today we have a tremendous obligation to fulfill. We, the writers are the saviors. We are the ones who must save this society teetering on the verge of collapse. Together, we can make a difference. Every constructive thought that we transfer onto paper, amalgamated, will swell to form the tsunami that washes away the century-old grime and dust from our society’s frame of mind. We have been rolling like self-conceited prigs in the mire of oblivion. Now let us rise and shine, the illuminating rays of the glorious sun reflecting the clarity of our perception. We can transform this society in a place where all, rich and poor, bourgeoisie and proletariats will be able to sing, the music of their voices synchronized to form the symphony of humanity:
“Worship the rising sun
O ye! All thee!
Not in interests vested
But for the greater good.”