“I write well. Should I go for Literature or Journalism? This was the question I was faced up to with since I was fourteen and thought I could do well if I took up writing as a profession. By the point it was time to select between the 2 apparently congruent fields, a new three year BSc program in Mass Media had newly been introduced in Indian colleges, and I just joined the swarming masses of future’s trained advertisers and journalists. The 1st class in journalism and I knew, O God! This isn’t where I belong! The opening lesson laid down obviously how unfit a 19-year-old, dreamy-eyed, book-loving fantasist was in the ‘realities of actuality’. My story-writing abilities had no result with the story-writing of a paper. In reality, with small room for creativeness, there wasn’t any place at all for imagination. No wordplay, no symbolism, no flowery descriptions, not even a little safe subjectivity. The most worrying difference between a fictional article and a paper report, for me, was the elemental style in which the 2 are routinely presented. Continue reading →