The other day, while responding to a question during a session, I quoted those lines…and while coming back, I tried to figure out how and when I started believing in them…
…I was barely 15 when I started serious-writing (if such a term exists)… the credit goes to my elder brother (my Tauji’s son, but more real than one can imagine)…He was one of the most important early influences in my life and due to his connoisseur taste for Ghazals, I fell in love with this genre…
I still remember how I started! I once read someone’s couplet in a magazine and got so hooked upon it that I then wrote its stanzas on my own…but now it was a tricky proposition…because I had my first creation with someone else’s first-lines and my stanzas…
After that I wrote completely on my own…but every time people would talk about me, that first hybrid creation of mine would always feature as my standalone-first (you don’t forget your first love also because people don’t let you)…
I would choose to believe that as a teenager, I didn’t know how to explain that whole proposition to the people, who were all now treating me as sort of a prodigy. But I can’t rule out a possibility that I didn’t clarify also because I must have started liking the spotlight and didn’t want to risk my position under it…
Then one fine day, I got to meet this so-called art-critic of the city and when that hybrid creation of mine came in front, he immediately spotted that it belonged to someone else (he also remembered the name of the writer)…I still remember the satirical look in his eyes and even today it makes me shudder…
Although I can say that I was not a culprit or a pretender and was only a victim of an ignorant innocence but if ever I hated myself for being in my skin, it was on that day.
On that day, I learnt, “Never take credit of someone else’s work, because then you corrupt your soul…” and “Never disown the credit when you deserve it, because then you demean what God gifted you with…”
I am not an extraordinary-achiever but when I look back, I find it has served me really well, as I think your overall confidence of being ‘in your skin’ comes from many such little-yet-important values that you set (or are forced to set) early in your life…(also, then no amount of spotlight affects your alignment with your inner compass)…
As they say…”clear conscience is the softest pillow”…
But since I use a hard one…So I would rather say…
“With clear conscience, who needs a pillow…!!!” (Now, you bet it’s an original one!)
Disclaimer: Personal values are subject to market risk. Please keep reading the blog-documents carefully before trusting.
