Writing is a lonely profession. Let no one tell you otherwise.
This is what it comes down to: It's just you, your computer, and your stack of notebooks. Whether you're a journalist filing stories on tight deadlines, or a novelist, or someone who writes biographies - as I do - or assists a celebrity in composing his autobiography - as I also do sometimes - it ultimately comes down to just you and your ability to effectively wield words. Words are your weapons.
These weapons are not easily wielded. This is especially so when you are writing about yourself. I am 68 years old, and have spent a very long time in newspaper and magazine journalism. I have interviewed potentates and peasants around the world, and I have met everyday people everywhere. I like to think that I'm a natural listener, and that I enjoy listening because everyone has a story to tell. I have listened to stories told by people in virtually every country there is. My job was to take their stories and mold them into journalism for the masses.
But what about my own story? I was born and raised in Bombay (now called Mumbai); I studied in the United States, which is my adopted home; and for the last decade I've lived in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is a gem of a country at the eastern edge of the Arabian littoral, and its people are warm and welcoming.
For many years, I had thought of assembling an anthology of the fascinating people I'd met and the strange-sounding places I'd been to during my journalistic travels. But a wise and successful editor, whose opinion I value, suggested that instead of an anthology I should write my memoir. He said that I could weave in the stories of my encounters around the world. The book would have a narrator - me - and a narrative line - the story of my life.
Why would anyone want to read my story? The editor had a quick answer to that one: "Because you've led an interesting and privileged life. Tell us how that came to be. Tell us how your journalism affected you. Tell us stories behind the stories that you covered. And tell us about the larger lessons you learned as you pursued stories. Such an approach would work very well."
I was immediately intimidated by the idea that my autobiography would actually work as a piece of literature. The editor must have read my mind. He referred me to something written by Rebecca Swift, director of The Literary Consultancy, a London-based service that assesses manuscripts.
"Everyone thinks they've led the most interesting life," Swift says. "If you're thinking about writing an autobiography you need to ask yourself: 'Why my life? What's so interesting about me?' Maybe your autobiography could contribute to the wider social history and fill in the gaps that others could not. As tempting as it may be to embellish a few particularly embarrassing moments in your life, you must remember to stick to the truth. Your autobiography or memoir is fact, not fiction after all. Though changing names or locations to help protect the privacy of the people you're writing about is acceptable, you shouldn't censor your own feelings or motivations regarding them. Be nice, but remember, while the people you write about might recognize themselves in the text, the majority of your readers will not. Don't compromise both the plot and your integrity in order to make the minority happy."
And so here I am, staying up most nights, digging deep into my memories of the five decades since I left India to go to the United States on a scholarship for a college degree in Boston and a stint at university in New York. This kind of digging doesn't necessarily turn up fully formed episodes; I find fragments of my experiences, both pleasant and not pleasant. I find myself missing friends who are dead; I find myself wishing that I'd stayed in closer contact with them.
I come up with memories of how benevolent editors took me under their wings and taught me about journalism.
Those editors were like surrogate parents for me, an only child who had no relatives in America. I think about what it was to fend for myself in an alien society that was hospitable but nevertheless difficult to understand.
There are times when I wish that my parents were still alive so that they could fill in the gaps in my memories. But both of them died in 1985. And although I still retain vivid memories of my Mumbai so very long ago, I am sure that I could have learned so much more from them about our family history. My mother was an acclaimed writer in the local language of Marathi; she also taught Sanskrit at university level. My father, a lawyer and accountant by training, worked for a major bank. They would, of course, feature in my memoir.
There are moments when I break down. That happens when certain incidents and episodes appear. I rue my broken marriage, and I regret the estrangement with my son, also an only child.
I'm learning that while you can recreate the past, you can never bring it back to life except in literature.
Or can you? Maybe that's what a memoir should do.
So here's my first line: "I was born on a stormy May afternoon in a city that was then known as Bombay..."
And the next line: "And now here I am, 68 years later, writing about the life I've led..."
And the line after that. And the one after that. Line after line about where those 68 years went, and whom I spent them with, and what I learned and what I wish I'd not learned.
I hope this mattress composed of life-lines upon life-lines will add up to a memoir. It may not constitute a work of art. But it will hew to the truths as I experienced and understood them.
It will be a book. It will be a memoir.