A SHORT MANIFESTO FOR THE THIRD WORLD WRITERS
Write, comrades. Write rage. Write rage that liberates you and renders your enemy off-balance. Rage-writing. Riot-writing. Wroiting. Don’t care if you write something and the system underlines it with red ink and calls it an error. Write errors. I encourage you to write errors. I plead you and beg you to write errors.
Third world errors. Embrace these errors. Embrace your wounds. Don’t look at yourself and your writing through the lens of the west and the sycophant writers of the east. Tear those lens apart and readjust your sockets. Readjust your focus. Load up your pistols. Aim your poems for the head of literary status quo. Sharp-edged. Searing.
Have you ever written something and thought of your language as too ranting and too radical, perhaps too violent even, a crazy language of the other, a language of pure imbalance, a language of vengeance, a language that is unacceptable, error-filled rage, rants emanating from dementia, deranged sentences, something of a dross that should be discarded and forgotten and thrown in the dustbin of history? Have you ever felt that? Its a common feeling among us, some of us, and what do we do?
We usually filter our rage and make it presentable. We de-radicalise our language so that the respectable english-reading class of this country is comfortable reading it. In my previous sentence the word english is underlined with red link because I did not capitalise the first alphabet. Fuck that sentence and fuck capitalised alphabets. We sanitise our dirty vengeance so that we don’t get rejected by the magazines and journals and the market. And some of us go so far that we start pandering to the demands of the west to get accolades and fellowships and awards and fame and respect. Our words underlined with a red-ink disconcert us. And we embrace our wounds as if we were the deserving candidates of oppression. We hold onto the benevolence thrown at our face by the benevolent dictators. Look at us!
I dreamed of rage-filled pamphlets and woke up in a place of marketable writing. I dreamed of commotion and woke up to witness compliance. I dreamed of solidarity and woke up to betrayal. I dreamed of underlined words and woke up to inertia. I dreamed of a revolution and woke up with a seizure.
Fuck the respectable reading class of this country. Destroy market demands. Market demands and marketable writing inspires vomit. Get rejected and wear that rejection like a heart on your sleeve. Write reject-able writing. Don’t sanitise your words to get published by some fucked up magazine or a journal. Get together and start a blog of your own or start an underground literary movement that takes on assholes behind literary festivals. Please, for the love of God and for the love of your land, boycott cunts like Dalrymple. Boycott Mohsin Hamid. Boycott those standpoints through which such writing makes any sense.
Not a single word framed against you shall thrive. Remember that. Write it on the walls of your heart.
Not a single word framed to cash out your misery shall prosper!
I can think of someone who wakes up at 5 AM everyday, goes to terrace, smokes a cigarette, looks at the sun that is struggling to make its way through the east, and sits down to write poetry. Writes to honour his ancestors who resisted imperialism. Recalls the days of oppression and urges readers to don’t forget or forgive or be compliant. Refuses to be shortlisted for awards. He doesn’t demand any respect for his writing. He doesn’t care about market interests. He cares about the wounds of history. He cares about his writing routine.
Write.
Remember what is imprinted on your heart and write. Write for your unrequited loves and mistimed orgasms. Write to resist neoliberal capitalism and corporatization of arts. Write to bomb that high walled building where Dalrymple is tampering with our history and our wounds and our life-experiences. Write to be banned. Write banned writing. Banned poetry. Write what is needed to toss the social order upside down. Write as a revenge. Write what was written to honor the death of Bhagat Singh when women of Lahore took on roads to sing it out. Write Rage. Rage to liberate. Take it to the page. Whatever runs through your bloodstream, take it out on the page. A message spelled out in Red. A message underlined with red-ink. Error. Third world errors. Write.