I must be totally ignorant…but so many categories of “writers” have emerged of late. So, I was flummoxed on receiving a mail asking me if I needed my “resume” to be prepared when I go job-hunting. Er, mercifully I don’t quite need to go on that sort of a shikar.
Anyway, on some investigation, I discovered that there are a vast variety of chroniclers of my bio-data and accomplishments (or the lack of them). I just have to ask for the kind I want – “simple” or “flowery” (sic) – and the right writer would be assigned to me for an affordable fee. Affordable, of course, is a relative term. In the case, the fee ranged from `5,000 to `20,000, which could bring in a week’s ration-paani actually.
And there are experts, who’re in incredible demand during the wedding season. These “writers”, with the god-given gift for ornamental hand writing, sit patiently for days on end, inscribing the name of each invitee on the wedding card. Writing in gold letters, silver, or plain black — take your pick.
Another tribe of writers I was clueless about, specialises in — believe it or not — composing love letters. Used by unlettered domestic aids and chauffeurs particularly from the northern states, the writers keep men in touch with their wives till it’s time for the annual chhutti. In fact, a prominent filmmaker is even working on a story about the exchange of letters between a chef to his wife and a school-going daughter living on the outskirts of Jaipur.
One such love letter writer has a complaint though. His workload has diminished considerably since the boom of China-manufactured cellphones. “Today, I just get two or three letters to ghostwrite in a week,” he sighs. “It’s only the ones who want to be more poetic or erotic who still come to me…because I’ve built up a reputation of being quite romantic with my words. Their wives love to be written to with intimacy.” Now, the clan of Bollywood’s script doctors are fairly well-known. The guys who aren’t generally, go by the name of “Punchwallas.” In constant demand for both television and scripts, they add jokes, double entendres and insinuations galore to scripts, not always for the better though. The punchlines are often derived from joke books (Khushwant Singh’s collection are the staple sources), and from Hollywood’s sex comedies.
Still, it’s not a bad life for writers nowadays — as long as you have a pen and paper, or a laptop, words sell.