Writing is an unceasing journey – it has no end, no destination. Continuously moving forward is a compulsion, or perhaps that is just its fate. Each work is like a pause; there’s happiness and satisfaction at having reached this point, but more than that, there’s an enthusiasm to move ahead. But sometimes, this sequence gets turned on its head. A writer can be so happy with the work and so satisfied with the ensuing fame that the enthusiasm, instead of spurring them to move ahead, keeps returning to that work and circles around it, captivated. Is that the reason why I haven’t even written ten lines in the last ten years? No, I’ve probed every corner of my mind with great honesty; forget being captivated by my past work, I’ve never even been content with it. I’ve not written anything that has given me complete satisfaction, either in terms of its quality or in terms of how much I’ve written. So then? Did my concerns, my priorities change? Writing was never my first priority nor my main concern in my order of preferences. I had to find the time and convenience to write while I looked after my daughter and my home (for which I had full responsibility) and managed my job (which was necessary to execute my responsibilities); whatever I wrote was not at their cost, but in the middle of fulfilling these responsibilities. In the beginning, there were crises and problems at every stage, there was hardship and distress, there were nerve-wracking traumas, but with all that, I somehow continued to write, whatever the quality of the writing. Today, these crises and problems are all but over, but the writing is over too. So is a life full of struggle and problems a necessary precondition for writing?

Sometimes I wonder, could it be that I no longer have the dedication or the devotion needed to write? Maybe, and if this is so, I have no hesitation in acknowledging it! It’s a good thing I’m not skilled at making arguments and don’t have the writerly talent to pretend that this pause is not a disconnect, a move away from writing, and instead find some general reasons to release me from the mental torment and pain inevitable in such a situation. What do I have left today? I feel I am floundering, more so with each passing day. I’m also smarting with pain at my gradually eroding self-confidence. Today, I realise with all my heart that as the connection between the pen and the written word kept disintegrating, so did my connection with life – I have become cut off from other people, I am shrinking within myself. Despite all this, an unspoken craving to write keeps niggling at me and one day, wrapped up in my ordinary comforts, but with an increasingly impoverished mind and unhealthy body, I left my infinitely colourless life, a life that was stuck in a machine-like routine, and went to Ujjain. Alone. Let’s try one more experiment.

I don’t know why, but the process of gathering my life’s scattered and lost threads in order to write reminded me of something my gardener once said. There was no space in my house, and I had no gardening resources, facilities or knowledge, but I had put some potted plants in the house as a hobby, and I was very fond of them. One day, one of the plants, for no apparent reason – there had been no bad weather – shed a whole lot of leaves and, in a couple of days, turned into a clump of twigs. A mere stump, a bit like me. When the gardener saw this, he mercilessly plucked the remaining leaves too. Hearing me exclaim, “Arre! Arre!” he answered simply, in his own language, “These leaves have to go, there’s no point being attached to them, they can no longer give life to the plant. Now we have to look at the roots.” And he turned over the soil in the pot. A bunch of roots came out of the depths, covered with mud, the fibres entangled with one another. He ruthlessly threw away the fibres that had rotted and were draining the plant’s life. He cleaned the healthy roots, he was sure they would give life to the plant and make it flourish. To be reborn, did I too have to go back to my roots, pull out the ones that had rotted and carefully save the ones that had brought me this far? Did I have to find a similar process that might breathe life into this lifeless plant? Sometimes, it’s not just helpful but essential to look back in order to move ahead. You will find many little bundles of memories, incidents and situations hidden away; the slightest touch will bring them alive. God knows how many characters will demand favourable events to fully shine, how many situations will demand befitting characters to fully reveal their truth. They will stand before you like a challenge, spurring you on, inspiring you and demanding new reference points in today’s circumstances. Let’s see what happens when you engage with all this with complete faith and honesty. Who knows, some new shoots may begin sprouting from these stump-like twigs!

I was born in Bhanpura village in Madhya Pradesh, but my earliest memories are of our two-storeyed house in Ajmer’s Brahmapuri Mohalla, in which the upper storey was my father’s domain. There, in the middle of piles of books, magazines and newspapers lying around in a disorganised, haphazard fashion, he would either be reading or giving “dictation”. Below, all of us brothers and sisters lived with our illiterate mother, who had no personality of her own – she was always willing, from morning to night, to see to our wants and obey Pitaji’s orders.

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Before Ajmer, Pitaji was in Indore, where he was well known and highly respected. Along with working for the Congress, he was involved in social reform. He didn’t just preach education; he even taught eight to ten students in his own home those days, many of whom did well in life and went on to occupy high positions. Those were his days of prosperity and well-being, and many stories were circulated about his generosity and large-heartedness. On the one hand, he was a soft and sensitive person; on the other hand, he was short-tempered and egotistical.

I only heard about all this. By the time I saw them for myself, these fine qualities lay in ruins. After suffering a severe financial setback in Indore, he came to Ajmer, where, all on his own, he bravely went ahead with the task of finishing his incomplete project of making an English–Hindi subject-wise dictionary. This was the first and only dictionary of its kind. It brought him fame and prestige but not enough money to take him back to his earlier prosperous status. But he looked after his family of five children, oversaw four weddings (in whatever way he could manage) and the hospitality standards in our home continued as before. However, for someone used to spending money freely, he suffered because he had to watch his expenses. And perhaps, it was this continuous worsening of his financial condition that began squeezing out all his positive qualities. His shrinking money situation and big ego didn’t permit him to share his economic compulsions even with his children. The torment of expensive tastes (which could not be met), unfulfilled ambitions, of being relegated to the margins after having once been at the top transformed into anger, and Ma lived in constant fear of Pitaji. The wounds at having been betrayed by his own must have gone very deep, because in his later years, my father, who had once blindly trusted everyone, became so suspicious of everyone that sometimes even we were not spared.

We are actually Jains, but Pitaji had been initiated by Arya Samajis, so none of us kept the fasts that Jains usually do, not even during Samvatsari. We never went to the temple or listened to lectures by religious scholars or holy men. Yes, Ma would go once or twice a year if she found someone to go with her. Once, five to seven sadhvis (women saints) stopped at our house to spend the night in the course of their travels on foot. Ma was overjoyed. The courtyard was full of 67 devotees, except for Pitaji, who stayed upstairs, and I, who didn’t come out of my room. After being repeatedly asked, I went upstairs to call Pitaji but he flatly replied, “What will I do in the middle of these illiterate sadhvis?” I had to soften his blunt refusal by saying he wasn’t feeling well. He understood Jain philosophy well and had good knowledge of the subject. I did go and sit with them but argued so much over what I thought were their outward affectations that all the assembled people were aghast. A Marwari family …. that too a girl (on whom downcast eyes and a silent tongue were glued on at birth) and look at her attitude, her audacity! Sitting among so many men and arguing with sadhvis! How were they to know that arguing was part of our nature, something that was given to us as a tonic since childhood?

We never had any Arya Samaji havans or yagyas or chanting of mantras in our house either. Pitaji had only adopted their social reform aspect. Looking back, the wedding of his sister, conducted around 68 years ago without any ghunghatpurdah, had been quite a revolutionary step. Educating girls like boys, opposing child marriage and other social evils, abandoning outward pomp and hypocrisies – this is what we had seen since we were children. I don’t remember ever seeing any religious rituals at home. Despite being Jains, we did – emulating our neighbours – make a little tableau on Janamashtami, but that was more for the joy and fun of decorating than any religious purpose. Diwali was the only festival we celebrated. Yes, on that day, a puja thali was prepared and, following Ma’s instructions, Pitaji would put some roli, rice, mithai, water and flowers on the Ganesh and Lakshmi statues, fold his hands, pray for five minutes and be done with it. For him, the real festival would be the day a new section of his kosh (dictionary) was published or the day he got a big “order”. That day he would become really tender, affectionate and generous – Pitaji, a father full of affection. That’s when I realised that a man can have many different faces.

Excerpted with permission from This Too Is a Story, Mannu Bhandari, translated from the Hindi by Poonam Saxena, Penguin India.