Write way of right or wrong choices

So, what should a column contain and how much of a columnist’s life should it be permitted to hold? How many skeletons should trundle out of hidden closets to be aired in public? What are the limits of anguish and happiness that have a right to appear? How many bags of everyday events and everyday things should sidle up and move into written spaces that take up a weekend? While we are at it, are bits of bone and other pieces of people that we have known, entitled to a place in these lines or should they, and their secrets, be left in quiet peace? Is this a dialogue between the writer and the reader, or must it remain, perforce, a one-way flow of words, ideas and experiences? Will it be appropriate to talk of spending week after week in a hospital, knowing deep inside that a loved parent is not going to make it? Having one’s own close brushes with death. Getting a glimpse of its finality and for the moment, escaping it. Those questions, silly or grandiose as they may sound, are something that take attention the moment a column is due — and in a vast maw, they must cover the range of birth to death, and all the drama and detail that lie in between.

Placing this aside for another day and another moment to vent, apart from other bits and pieces of writing that one has done, in years long gone, there were two regular columns. The first stemmed from my childhood fascination with different architectural forms, decor and design. Of the reasons why we lived the way we did — and do. This was for a now-defunct but glossy and well-respected design magazine. Here, one wrote about things as varied as mud walls plastered with cattle-dung or of how fine wall finishes were once achieved by a mix of lime-wash, egg-whites and shellac which was smoothed over using a large sea-shell. One spoke of formal gardens and weed-patches that passed as gardens. One compared the merits of the open garden with the closed courtyard and examined the origins and merits of both. The editor, bless her sense of humour, however, had a grouse. Every time the piece reached her by ‘snail mail’ of those days, I’d get a call on the landline — which was all that existed then. “When will I get a decent looking photograph where you are not wearing an oversized football referee’s shirt for your profile picture?” she would complain. Before the paunch expanded and the shirt sort of began to fit, that fine magazine was closed by its publishers.

The other column was for a national paper that still focuses on economic affairs and on the weekends, carried a travel page. Here, one wrote on heritage hotels — and this was at a time when the concept was just getting off the ground. Hundreds of ruins were waiting to be rescued. As places that offered both hospitality and history, these places were still few and far between — and this was a market that was barely emerging.

Sometimes lugging a backpack and walking from a bus stand, and more rarely, arriving in a car, one visited many without telling them what one was doing. Once, just once, one cheated and sent a friend over to take pictures and elicit information. But, more often than not, one went there, wandered around, talked, ate and sometimes stayed, and then wrote what one had to. This was all fairly straightforward. One wrote with honesty, paid one’s bill and if one could help it, did not criticise a place simply for the sake of criticising. Today, as some of my hotelier friends tell me, things are more complicated. As one said, “Apart from the occasional inspector, who, if he takes a sample of curd, you know you are in for trouble as that will never pass the purity test, there are three categories of people we have to watch out for. These are bloggers, influencers and small children.”

Some of the first two categories, and ‘only some’ one should strongly emphasise, will tell you in advance that they are going to write a bad review in all sorts of places unless you provide this and this and also that; gratis, of course. The expense and the headache are factored into good hospitality and public relations by the hotel, while an unethical blogger or social-media influencer stands to lose credibility. The most vulnerable to this blackmail are young entrepreneurs who have barely started off and are terrified of bad reviews, and have to stretch every publicity-gathering rupee to its maximum.

The trickiest ones are children. For one, they are ruthlessly honest. And if they are what one bluntly calls ‘ill-behaved brats’, then patience, goodwill and the benign presence of various deities is required. As the above-mentioned hotelier friend said, “You have to keep the child happy. If the child is happy, then the mother is happy. If the mother is happy, the father is happy. And the father pays the bill.” Well, here is another stereotype and one that stems from a friend’s lifelong experience in hospitality — of keeping a smile on the face while hiding the scowl within.