What if 20 writers are fitted in Bigg Boss Season Five without pens or laptops? I can assure the producers of Big Boss that these writers will go hopping crazy within the very first week. They’d get all too restless and desperate for that outlet, for that release of words and emotions. After all, writing is an addition that takes you through, helps you go on and on against those odds, those everyday frustrations, those struggles. Writing alone can help you offload your pent up feelings. You don’t need a stone or a shoe to spell out anger and frustrations when you can throw words on the paper or just key them in.
In fact, some of our best-known erstwhile political leaders survived those British-imposed jail terms because they could write, sitting in those solitary confines. I do not want to sound cynical, but in reality, a writer can come up with the very best in that cocooned state, when he or she moves far away from the crowds and writes away, undisturbed, in a solitary confinement of sorts, sans distractions and intrusions.
I often wonder at what pace we are supposedly marching ahead when today’s prisoners are often not allowed to pen down their experiences while sitting behind those high walls. Why should they be deprived of this harmless way of venting emotions? Why should they be not allowed to pen their bitter experiences in those jails? Are we really marching ahead or moving backwards? If we were truly and genuinely concerned about our prisoners coming out as reformed individuals, we should make diary-writing compulsory so that those jottings can take ample care of those raw emotions. Not to be overlooked is the grim reality that a big percentage of our jailed population consists of undertrials who are technically innocent but are treated as full-fledged criminals. Why can’t they be encouraged to unleash their emotions on paper? Even if he or she is a full-fledged criminal, surely, he could be given a second chance and not made to sit condemned for years to come. And what better way to do it than by allowing them to write?
I wonder why anger can’t be contained in those so-called troubled locales and disturbed areas by this very outlet. Diverting anger and frustrations in the young through diary jottings and writings is the ideal way to contain their emotions. Maybe bestsellers get churned out. And shoes and stones wouldn’t get hurled about.
It is a mere illusion that only a few can write. So, very often, I have heard these one liners along the strain — “but how can we write… we don’t know how to start off and then our grasp (of the language) isn’t great and is it okay to write everything because…”
Each one of us can write. Even at the cost of sounding repetitive, I can assure you that if you have the basic grasp of ‘abcd’, you can write. And it’s just that writing requires a certain discipline and tremendous will-power. And you certainly don’t have to be a full-fledged scholar to pen books or churn out novels. In fact, the simpler the style, the better the connectivity with the reader, so even school dropouts can churn out long and short stories and get going, taking refuge in an abundance of words, and moving away, however temporarily, from the turmoil around.
If the government and the establishment are not able to reach out to the angry, young and violent prisoners, then they can try one last time with the help of the written word. Let jails, prisons and reformation-cum-detention centres be flooded with books, and more of them. Let writers and publishers interact with them, help them start off with their manuscripts and let there be a free flow of the written word. Let police batons and those policing tactics move backwards and take a backseat, as I can assure you that writing will take care of much.
Meanwhile, the producers of Bigg Boss should, in all earnestness, invite a bunch of writers into that infamous home. Lock them up without any of the means to write and then let the public see what strange and bizarre antics get going. After all, writers think and react differently. And with no means to unleash their very thought process, they might begin to go screaming around.
