Musings of a Lazy Author

Sabarna Roy is Senior Vice President [Business Development] at Electrosteel Castings Limited, an author of nine Literary and three Technical bestselling books, TEDx Speaker, Champions of Change Award 2020 Winner, Times Excellence Award 2021 Winner in Indian Literature, and Golden Glory Award Winner for Critically Acclaimed Bestselling Author of the Year 2021.

The luminary has been awarded the Right Choice Award for Author of Eminence of 2022. Also, he has been selected among the India Today Group: Icons of India. He has completed his ninth literary work: an epistolary novel, which will be published in the winter of 2022. Presently, he is working on his tenth literary work loosely titled: Thirty Summer Poems and Conversations about a Murder.

Sabarna Roy has received the Best Author to Watch 2022 Award from Indo-Global Entrepreneurship Conclave Delhi organized by Business Connect, and Best Author in Indian English Literature of 2022 at the Ninth Asia Education Summit 2022.

Azteca University, Mexico has conferred Honorary Doctor of Arts to Sabarna Roy for his contribution to Post-modern Indian Literature. Sabarna has received the Most Iconic Author of the Year, 2022 from Government of Punjab. Since the age of fourteen, Sabarna Roy has been maintaining a daily journal containing the minutest details of his life. Some of the journal entries are reproduced in this column for the benefit of the readers.

1. Every person that I know craves for appreciation. Some people silently. Some people loudly. I have always thought I have not been as much appreciated in life as much as I should have been or I should be. Although, some people think I have been pampered since my early childhood and that I sulk, is proof enough that I am a pampered brat. To be frank, I have been in-confident with my first 4 books.

As such, I never was a part of owning these books when it came to marketing and branding to the utter dismay of my publisher. With my new book, I have started taking baby steps. I have/am received/receiving some appreciation. Well, it does make me happy. I have also received some positive criticism and suggestions.

Whenever, it comes to appreciation, what comes to my mind is the assessment of my illiterate paternal grandmother, who cared for me a bit more than my mother, about me. She was not even my biological grandmother. She was a widow who was essentially a caretaker of my grandfather when he was terribly ill with Diabetes II. After my grandfather died she carried on in my paternal house and earned the respect of the status my grandmother would have got.

This was possible because of the equitable ethics that baba practiced. Her care for me was deeply holistic and dense. She saw me through all the illnesses I suffered until the age she was alive. Her attachment to me and my attachment to her are indescribable. Something beyond words. She was deeply patriarchal although submissive herself. She was greedy for petty cash. She would exaggerate anything that would create an effect. She was ritualistic and deeply religious and an ardent follower of Krishna.

She appreciated me openly. She always said: My oldest grandson has the heart of the kindest king! Ask from him anything; he would give! She would completely embarrass me among a crowd of strangers. I would curtly ask her to keep her mouth shut. She always touched me when she appreciated me.

I am at an age when I have understood: technical strategy and literary books are often appreciated on kind days; rarely, your heart. So, in a sense, I feel a deep sense of gratitude towards this woman today. It is true I am neither kind; nor I am a king and nor do I have any kingdom.

But people do not appreciate you for who you are rather because who they are.

2. Strangely, I dream of rock-cut tunnels nowadays. Long tunnels. Almost endless. Pale beams of illumination panning the distance from the faraway end. Tunnels of darkness. I am desperately running inside each of them to reach to the end. The tunnels are very dimly lit.

In spite of the pervasive swarthiness I can clearly see colourful graffiti painted on the stone-walls of the tunnels sharply depicting my other unknown lives and dreams, which I, in the due course of my life, have so fiercely protected from others and as such, forgotten them myself. Were the tunnels constructed and decorated so that I am halted to confront my own life head-on. Who built these tunnels of forgotten dark anecdotes?

I ponder over the chaos storming inside my soul; I know there is a raging chaos inside the Universe and even inside the micro-environs of sub-atomic particles. Will all these chaos and energies resonate with each other and explode like fuse on fire?

3. A chilly morning. Ma and Kingshuk were having their third cup of morning tea. Ma was in good mood. Kingshuk although not particularly in high spirits was smiling looking at the hazy Calcutta skyline.

Ma repeated: King, in a poor country like ours, people who live in half-lit dreams end up their lives in misery. You already gulp a lot of cheap alcohol.

King retorted politely but firmly: You do not understand. I want to explore the world. Visit all the libraries and museums. Read the classics. Appreciate the works of ancient artisans and masons. I want to write sad erotic poems. I want to be with you.

Ma held King’s head and played with his tousled long curly locks and cried invisibly.

Ma: King you need to have a lot of money to support such a life.

King: What good is Baba’s money that he earned over the years and piled up in safe Government backed investments and handed over to you before starting to live a life with BithiKakima? I sometimes wonder what a money-churner he was; he was almost a magician with money. He handed you that load of cash to keep his conscience clean; he knew provided he has his limbs at the right places he could make more and more money.

Ma: Why is it that you have no appetite for earning money? Taking your family legacy forward?

King: True that I have no appetite for all that. I want to live my life my way with you.

Ma: And, you want me to be a partner in all your crimes?

King: You think burning cash is a crime. I don’t think so. But yes I want you to be my partner forever.

4. Two observations:

1. Everybody has an agenda. There comes a point in your life when you have no agenda left. People want to score points on you at that vulnerable juncture. You feel like you are in a cage with blistering asteroids flying past you. You feel like an unending loneliness engulfing you like a shadow yet you enjoy those moments of sheer celestial existence.

2. There is a gangster saying: If you mix blood with alcohol it will catch fire and if you mix blood with water it will turn into sewage. It takes a long time in life to understand this saying.