A WRITER AFTER 200 REJECTIONS

The story of a struggling author, whose dream came true after 21 years

- Abdullah Khan

I WAS BORN IN PANDARI, around 30 kilometres from Motihari in Bihar. My education started in my village madrasa and then in an Urdu-medium government school.

I did not have any English then. When I discovered, at age 20 or 21, that Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell was born in Motihari, it made me wonder if I could be a writer too. That day, it became my dream.

My Abba was the one who opened up the world of books for me. I must have been seven or eight, when he first gifted me a Hindi storybook. He was posted in a small town near Patna and visited our village home. Looking at the book, I asked Abba if it was for my next class. I did not know then that books existed beyond the classroom. When Abba explained, I was fascinated to hear about storybooks. I couldn’t believe I would not have to pester my mother or grandmother for my daily dose of bedtime stories. That was the beginning of my love affair with books.

By the time I was in class 10, I had finished reading hundreds of novels— literary as well as pulp fiction. Some of my favourite writers were Ibn-e-Safi, Devaki Nandan Khatri, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Prem Chand, etc. Nanaji (my maternal grandfather), who ran an Unani and Ayurvedic medicine shop in a small kasba (town) called Bairagania, used to be the only person from the area who knew English. My father cited him to motivate me to improve my English. Also, my private tutor, Janak Babu, made me believe that it was possible for a Bhojpuri-speaking, Hindi/Urdu-medium student like me to learn the language. After 10 months with Janak Babu, I started reading comics in English. Two years later, in 1988, I read my first English novel, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan. The first book I actually bought myself was A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri, for the princely sum of `30 from a roadside bookseller.