When I was a lecturer at City College, where I held forth on the history of literature and the nineteenth-century novelists, I used to moonlight as a writer of middles for our popular newspaper. My colleagues never missed a single middle of mine and always gave me critical comments on my latest gem. The ‘middle’ column, about 500 words long, appearing in the centre page along with the editorials and syndicated columns, was considered a non-genre and totally non-consequential, but some of us took great pride in regularly sending in our contributions. A friend of mine suggested I make a volume of all my middles and publish it, while another kind-hearted soul thought I could produce a full-blooded novel if I set my mind to it; I did not bite this bait at first.
But after her persistent harping on my trapped genius, I succumbed to the temptation. As some wise person said, one needs deep pools of silence and long avenues of solitude in order to be a writer, and it hardly seemed I had the wherewithal for the enterprise. Until now, only teachers engaged in doctoral work were entitled to study leave. I wondered if my plan to write a novel would cut any ice with the leave committee. I had put forth a plan of work and hoped for the best. It was an agonising month of waiting. Would I make it or not? If I was granted leave, I planned to go to some solitary hideout to write. I had heard of writers’ colonies where the would-be geniuses would be given a packed lunch and released into the wilderness. But that was in the West.
One of the leave committee members leaked the outcome of my leave application to me. It was a heart-breaking no. Well, the following two years, my leave application met with the same fate.
By then the novel within me, good or bad, was crying to be released like the cheetahs of Namibia. I confronted the principal, who was the chairman of the leave committee. The principal was a sweet lady, shrewd, and had a sense of humour. She listened patiently to my tale of woe, my anguish at not getting the leave, and my ambition of writing those three thousand words every morning, which seemed to be the recipe for the birth of a successful bestseller. A point-blank question from the principal struck me dumb at her perspicacity. "Are you bored with teaching, my dear?" she asked, smiling at me. As I fumbled for an answer, she said, "Yes, you want to write stories. There will be plenty of time for that when you retire."
I protested, "But I’ll be too old by then, with no ideas, madam."
"Nonsense," she said, "you will see time literally hanging on your fingers, and that will be your time, believe me."
She was right, indeed. It’s been years since I retired. And I have also found contentment in writing these ‘middles’ which come and go like butterflies, unlike the trapped cheetahs.