A Country Penned by Writers

TO enter the country of writers, one does not need any visa or passport; one can cross the borders anywhere at any time to land themselves in the country of writers.

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Citizenship of this country inherently remains with the readers who are always carefree of any doubt or fear of losing their citizenship. If they wish to live in the world of “Malgudi Days”, they can do so, or if they wish to take a stroll in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Macondo”, they are more than welcome to do that as well. If not either, they can wander in the lands of Narnia, Wonderland, Lilliput, and Hobbit, as the writers’ countries are not identical.

Some of the worlds are pure fantasy, while others create their own with a mix of real-world paraphernalia around them. But with all the differences in their world, there is one resemblance that cuts across all of the worlds—a capacity to offer a distinct meaning. At times, those meanings lay before our eyes, but at others, they are hidden.

When the Vedas ascribed Indra as the most powerful god, his heaven was considered to be made of iron; it did so because iron had already been discovered and agriculture was directly associated with rain. In time, the fall of Indra’s character and the rise of newer gods became interdependent with alternative sources of agriculture and water and further decline in the character of rulers at that time.

This was indeed a parallel between reality and imagination. But Indra’s tale bestowed the real world with at least one meaning: Indra fears every worshipping citizen, as he believes the entire endeavour is for securing the throne of Indra. Symbolically, this fear is eternal for those in power.

For early writers, the world was comparatively linear, which made it possible for them to categorise good deeds and bad deeds and, based on it, the way for hell or heaven. As a genre, it was not much of a storytelling technique; rather, it was a form of faith. But today, the world has grown up to become complex, and so has the world of writers.