I Still Write Decent Literature

I sit back and stare at my screen in deep despair. Every ounce of poetic complexity had escaped me, and what’s left of my mangled brain was a few synapses firing up at the thought and mention of every Gen Z word ever. I am what the wise call ‘ruined’.

Organs erupt, playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I fall to the ground. I’m shrieking. I look up at the ceiling and there’s no ceiling. Instead, I see a disgruntled Cro Magnon man gathering berries; he stops to look back at me. He sneers and runs away. This dude can’t even speak!?

I am then faced by the ancient Aryans writing the Vedas; they look at me and immediately turn to light up their Cannabis; they look traumatised. If they could stop Aryabhatta from inventing the zero, they would. The Sultans decided not to invade India after reading what I wrote as a consequence of generational fad.

Fast-forward to British India – R K Narayan quit writing Swami and Friends. The Bri’ish just committed another massacre. Sarojini Naidu looks at her newest poem and rips her manuscripts apart; the Bazaars of Hyderabad see her no more. Women in the eighties and nineties were asked to stay away from literature, lest they write like me.

My mother in her prime twenties gets a glimpse of my writing and decides to stay away from marriage altogether. I weep. I sob. I roll on my floor and cry for comfort. Nobody can save me. I am a victim of nugatory modernisation.