Today is World Columnists' Day. Okay, so I made that up. But the logic is sound. We have many dedicated days, such as International Puddle Jumping Day. So why not WCD? (Puddle Jumping Day, incidentally, invites you to reconnect with your 'inner child'.)
Even if such a day doesn't exist, it should. For, as someone insinuated to me recently, column writing is a dying art. By that I mean the general interest columnist (GIC), who isn't a specialist but a compulsive commentator on -- for lack of a better word -- life. The defence or cricket columnist still holds their ground. But GICs have been upstaged by the stand-up comic and podcaster.
But a column is a column. The columnist doesn't need to perform a structured ramble in front of a captive audience that feels compelled to laugh audibly and visibly. The e-book didn't kill the physical book, right? Besides, columnists rarely get into trouble with the law. No one reads the fine print.
Did I say 'art'? Is column-writing an art? In school, in our first economics lesson, we were taught that economics is both an art and a science. Ditto for columns. In the sense that a columnist tries to get at some objective truth, in the most subjective possible way. The quest for truth is not a prerequisite. Sometimes, a columnist might tell a story, a slice from their life. Like Adil Jussawalla used to in his Bombay columns.
GICs get plenty of suggestions from readers. 'Next time you should write on this...' Now, just because a GIC writes on anything and everything doesn't mean that everything and anything can be turned into a column. There's a process of trial and error.
In the pre-social media era, a certain kind of glamour was attached to columnists, an aura even. In my early 20s, when I was working at my first job and living in Delhi's Def Col, I'd go every Monday to the newsagent in C Block to pick up a copy of the Bombay Mid-Day's Sunday edition. It ran many columns.
Columns always fascinated me. The slug and strapline were so seductive. Like with any art form, one first consumes others who've been doing it for a while and observes how they do it. I could take names, but then I'll run out of space - and a columnist is first and foremost a miniaturist.
I had some delusions of glamour when I landed my first column with a Delhi tabloid. I was disabused of them when I went to buy brinjal and the shopkeeper gave me a paav of baingan wrapped in a paper bag made from a page that carried my column. I was amazed at the speed of recycling. The column appeared on Sunday, and it was a paper bag by Thursday. This is a true story.
Nowadays, a columnist must contend with another beast: the response on her own social handles. Earlier, one wrote, the column got published, and that was it. The writer had a romantic notion of a stranger reading it on a train or bus somewhere, chuckling to herself, then falling asleep.
Aaj-kal, one shares it on FB or Insta or X. There's an added layer of apprehension: the column will flop. That's also fine, because column-writing is a low-stakes game. In the sense that it's not like an expensive film flopping, or a botched surgery, a matter of life and death.
Here's the thing about GICs. Unlike stand-up comics, they don't form a close-knit community. They might not 'like' each other's work on social media. But I suspect they read each other secretly.
For instance, I have this fantasy that Twinkle Khanna reads my columns. On a Sunday morning, she starts to laugh uncontrollably, and Akshay Kumar asks her, 'Babes, what happened?' And she says: 'PKM is so funny.'
Akki says, 'Okay, let me have a look,' and pronounces, 'Kya bakwaas!'
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Even if such a day doesn't exist, it should. For, as someone insinuated to me recently, column writing is a dying art. By that I mean the general interest columnist (GIC), who isn't a specialist but a compulsive commentator on -- for lack of a better word -- life. The defence or cricket columnist still holds their ground. But GICs have been upstaged by the stand-up comic and podcaster.
But a column is a column. The columnist doesn't need to perform a structured ramble in front of a captive audience that feels compelled to laugh audibly and visibly. The e-book didn't kill the physical book, right? Besides, columnists rarely get into trouble with the law. No one reads the fine print.
Did I say 'art'? Is column-writing an art? In school, in our first economics lesson, we were taught that economics is both an art and a science. Ditto for columns. In the sense that a columnist tries to get at some objective truth, in the most subjective possible way. The quest for truth is not a prerequisite. Sometimes, a columnist might tell a story, a slice from their life. Like Adil Jussawalla used to in his Bombay columns.
GICs get plenty of suggestions from readers. 'Next time you should write on this...' Now, just because a GIC writes on anything and everything doesn't mean that everything and anything can be turned into a column. There's a process of trial and error.
In the pre-social media era, a certain kind of glamour was attached to columnists, an aura even. In my early 20s, when I was working at my first job and living in Delhi's Def Col, I'd go every Monday to the newsagent in C Block to pick up a copy of the Bombay Mid-Day's Sunday edition. It ran many columns.
Columns always fascinated me. The slug and strapline were so seductive. Like with any art form, one first consumes others who've been doing it for a while and observes how they do it. I could take names, but then I'll run out of space - and a columnist is first and foremost a miniaturist.
I had some delusions of glamour when I landed my first column with a Delhi tabloid. I was disabused of them when I went to buy brinjal and the shopkeeper gave me a paav of baingan wrapped in a paper bag made from a page that carried my column. I was amazed at the speed of recycling. The column appeared on Sunday, and it was a paper bag by Thursday. This is a true story.
Nowadays, a columnist must contend with another beast: the response on her own social handles. Earlier, one wrote, the column got published, and that was it. The writer had a romantic notion of a stranger reading it on a train or bus somewhere, chuckling to herself, then falling asleep.
Aaj-kal, one shares it on FB or Insta or X. There's an added layer of apprehension: the column will flop. That's also fine, because column-writing is a low-stakes game. In the sense that it's not like an expensive film flopping, or a botched surgery, a matter of life and death.
Here's the thing about GICs. Unlike stand-up comics, they don't form a close-knit community. They might not 'like' each other's work on social media. But I suspect they read each other secretly.
For instance, I have this fantasy that Twinkle Khanna reads my columns. On a Sunday morning, she starts to laugh uncontrollably, and Akshay Kumar asks her, 'Babes, what happened?' And she says: 'PKM is so funny.'
Akki says, 'Okay, let me have a look,' and pronounces, 'Kya bakwaas!'
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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
Palash Krishna Mehrotra
The writer is author of The Butterfly Generation