Hemantha Kalam - 93 'How I ended up as a writer too'

Thanks to COVID-19 (Corona Viral Disease-2019) there is almost a military routine lined up at home. Anything that comes in from outside, except milk, needs to be quarantined and thus I am given the newspapers to be read two days hence. Inevitably I am behind the ‘latest and hot news’ by two days, when it should have become cold. One such late but news that is quite important to me triggered my thoughts on what prompted me to take up writing, making me end up a writer as well. There have been several reasons for this.

At school, I was frequently taking part in the bi-lingual essay writing competitions and have won considerable prizes rather consistently. The praise that comes along with the prizes was sort of, er, intoxicating. Yes, you would notice that in this era of self projecting social media exposures, even very humble people like me are forced to shun off the modesty.

Apart from the essay writings, some of my articles were being published in the primary school magazines too. Of course those subjects were very mundane such as describing a cow or a mango tree etc. And right from school I had been a bi-lingual writer – writing in English and my mother tongue. And those days I was credited mostly as ‘P. Hemanta Kumar’ and not with my present elongated name which came to me much later due to some clerical gimmickry at my high school.

Somewhere in the latter half of 1972 I was relating a tiny half paged funny story to my neighbour who was just bringing out a children’s magazine called ‘Bommarillu’ in my mother tongue. He got my story published (he wrote it himself) and paid me a princely fee of Rs.5.00 (valued at about Rs.200 today) for the story. Thus my first earning was when I was about 16 years old and from a literary work literally. I am not counting the earnings that were given to me by my uncles and aunts whenever they used to visit our home.

Between 1972 and 1984 there was a lull in my writing activity. My maternal uncle and also my mentor in photography Late Jonnavitthula Purnaiah Sastry always used to goad us (his nephews and nieces) telling us that when we read so much, if we don’t attempt writing, we were wasting our education. He never appeared to have thought of or worried about the talent portion of it. Apparently this worked silently at the back of my mind, in a latent manner.

Meantime, the travel bug hit me after I acquired my first camera sometime in 1980-81. I was virtually using all my Leave Travel Assistance (LTA) from my company, sell part of my leave to en-cash the same for buying film rolls and used to travel. Over time, the hitherto dormant writing bug also started working again.

So sometime around 1986-87, I wrote a quick article and titled it ‘Will Rayalaseema become an Isuka Seema?’ (Will Rayalaseema become a desert? – Isuka is sand and Seema is area in Telugu and Rayalaseema is the south-western portion of Andhra Pradesh state of India). The article tried to elucidate the plight of the people in the water scarce and impoverished place reeling under severe drought conditions at that point of time.

But I didn’t know to which magazine I should send this article to.

I don’t remember for sure, but my favourite and regularly read magazine ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India’ seemed to have stopped publishing by then. That left me with little choice than to send to some newspapers or another magazine called ‘Caravan’.

Interestingly, I have to mention here a side story. The publishers of ‘Chandamama’ brought out a magazine called ‘The Heritage’ from January 1985 (but which closed down in December 1989 exactly after bringing in the 60^th issue, for lack of feasible patronage). This magazine was to showcase everything about the culture and heritage of India in its entirety. And I was living within a mile’s distance of the publication place.

So I had sent my impeccably and neatly typed out ‘manuscript’ (I always squirm when writing the word ‘manuscript’ for typewritten or computer printed matter) along with several relevant photographs, to the editor. From that day I was looking forward to receiving their response and after a month of waiting for their complimentary copy of ‘The Heritage’ with my article published inside. Not to emphasise, I have to mention that we have been subscribing for that magazine at home, right from its inception.

However, after about a month, my manuscript and my photographs were received at home by my mother from the postman. When I came home from my work and eagerly opened the envelope, I was disappointed to see my manuscript and photographs and a small paper, the size of a ‘Postit’ slip, on which it was written that while my article was good, it should have been sent to some news magazine as it had more news value and not to a specialised magazine such as ‘The Heritage’. At the end of the message there were the initials ‘MD’, that of the editor, I presumed as I knew that the managing director of the company for sure would not have meddled with the subject of story selection.

MD could have simply ignored my manuscript or just returned it without saying a word. But he had taken the trouble of showing me the path and thus he became my guide star.

Accordingly I repacked the article and the photographs, changed the covering letter and sent it to the fortnightly magazine ‘Frontline’ honestly, with little hope of it being accepted for publication. But from that day I was buying the magazine’s issues to see whether my article was published or not.

Only a writer could experience the agony and the ecstasy of waiting to hear, for being rejected and her/his article being accepted for publishing. I had abundant experience of all these three dynamics.   

About a month later, lo and behold, I could see my article in Frontline albeit under a changed title of ‘Thirsty Rayalaseema’ and also tweaking a bit here and there in the story. Trust me – first I couldn’t believe my eyes. Having studied in a slum, in a hardly respected school, to getting my article published in a most respected and reputed magazine of the times was a matter to be celebrated – at least I thought so. I went out to buy the copy during lunchtime at my work. I silently came back to my seat with the magazine, though I was literally bubbling with joy. No recommendation, just my work and my effort has fructified, on its own. Later I just showed it to a few of my close colleagues but interestingly I remember that it hardly evoked any great response I had expected from them. It was like ‘oh you got it published yeah, OK good!’   

Having thus started, I found my works were later published in ‘Swagat’ the in-flight magazine of Air India and Indian Airlines, Newspapers like ‘The Hindu’, the ‘Deccan Herald’, ‘Andhra Pradesh Times’ and in Telugu magazines like ‘Andhra Prabha Sachitra Vaara Patrika’ and ‘Priya Datta’. My articles on management were published by ICFAI University both in their magazines as well as in their compendiums.

In Telugu, I have to say that while my writing is influenced by the eminent Telugu author Late Palagummi Padmaraju (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palagummi_Padmaraju) it certainly has been shaped and moulded by Late Vakati Panduranga Rao (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vakati_Panduranga_Rao) who was editing the ‘Andhra Prabha’ weekly. My interaction with him has been mostly over phone as he was in Hyderabad and I was in Bengaluru at that time. Yet, he had trust in my work and spoiled me by never editing whatever I wrote for him for four years between 1990 and 1994. My work for him, on lesser known places of Andhra Pradesh was mostly published as a ‘Centre Spread Photo Feature!’ And I had a real good fan-mail that was regularly published in the magazine every week. That’s a different high!

Emboldened by the slow but steady acceptances of my work, I approached Mrs. Susan Ram, who was then with Oxford University Press (OUP) as an editor and requested her to commission me for writing a book on lesser known places of Andhra Pradesh. She was kind to give me an appointment in her office only to politely tell me that they cannot commission any work unless I bring at least a synopsis of my writing. After about 35 years or so, I am yet to make and take that synopsis to her. Meanwhile I heard that she had left OUP and also the country.

She also was curious about the period (full stop) after my name and before my surname which I used to have those days. Only then did it dawn on me as to what an unnecessary period it was. Promptly I removed the period from my name but my signature, which I cannot change, continues to have a period after my name and before my surname. Man lives with some anomalies and so do I, with several of them, alright.

I made some money through writing, but it never was enough to sustain me as a livelihood though. The journey continues and I am curious to see how many different turns it is likely to take for me.

Meantime, coming back to the news in the newspaper that triggered this blog, it was that Mr. Manoj Das, (MD) the man who had put me on the right path in writing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manoj_Das) had apparently breathed his last on the 27^th April, 2021. May he find the truth and peace and may he attain satgati. Today I still hold almost all the copies of ‘The Heritage’ edited by him in my collection among various others – I may be one of the few or even only one to be holding them. Now the collection should serve me as a good remembrance.

And as I write this, I realise as to how much we owe to others knowingly and/or unknowingly for existing in this society, as I do to these great writers and so many others who I came in contact with and who came in contact with me in this tiny winy life of mine.

So, to all of them and you, my  

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya and Nepalese), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic and Sudanese), Shukriya (Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai), Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea), Malo (Tongan), Vinaka Vaka Levu (Fijian)

 

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India