A stray comment I made sometime back on Facebook about the state of freelance writers in India brought forth a storm of reactions. From writers who had painful stories, some of them bordering on pure horror. Stories of being overworked and underpaid. Of being taken for granted either creatively or financially. I empathised with each one of those stories because I have lived them too. Even though, I have been an active scribe since 1994, I have not really understood or mastered the mechanics of success in media houses.
Conscientious motherhood and a upwardly mobile career do not mix or so I realised when I rejoined a newspaper job after my maternity leave. Only to be told that I may soon be moved to a night shift. I left and the second newspaper I worked for, thankfully allowed me to work from home and I did so for over seven years or more, churning out stories conscientiously through household emergencies, commutes to my son’s Montessori, issues at a nightmarish conventional school and the search for another one where he would not be bullied by the students and the teachers.
I was on the features beat and till he was old enough to go to school, I took him to almost every interview, every press conference, carrying almost three bags of my stuff, baby stuff and household stuff. I wrote endlessly, never missing a deadline. Never offering excuses. I have memories of Faroque Sheikh indulgently nodding at my son during a press conference and asking, “And who is that?” Of Shubha Mudgal giving him an apple to bite into while I interviewed her in her hotel suite. Of Shankar Mahadevan offering him a candy.
I was slowly building my equity as a writer but there was no matching financial compensation and I worked for a beginner’s salary for the next seven years because I was so grateful to be doing what I was doing while being able to take care of my son. There was also the fact of never being considered for promotions, junkets, increments and bonuses. It was not until I got a retainership with another magazine that financially, life became a little easy even though I knew I was in no way competing with the peers I had started out with.
Despite two retainerships, I was worse off than young scribes who had started years after me and had the luxury of working full time. There was also the matter of dealing with administrative changes at the newspaper when editors came or left. Sometimes assignments would flow unabated. Or I would be asked to stop something abruptly like a popular TV column I had been writing for four years or the film reviews that had connected me to scores of film lovers.
One editor asked me to write down the questions and answers of the first season of Kaun Banega Crorepati, every night so that they could be carried in a box the next day. Yes, really.
No, it is not easy being a writer in India. Especially if you are also a full-time mother. Anyone who has worked as a freelancer knows that delayed payments are usual and you are paid Rs 2 or Rs 3 per word for stories that take days to compile. The underlying message here is that because you work from home, your time, effort, energy do not count. And then there are encounters of the inexplicable kind where people actually hunt you down to use your integrity against you. Like when, I was asked to edit a yet-to-be-launched newspaper. As it turned out, it was an elaborate hoax and was never supposed to take off. I was taken on because I was just a naive writer who was not likely to smell a rat.
But if I look back today, would I do it any other way? I don’t think so. I would still take up the same jobs, do the same beats, scrimp and save and do without money because these jobs opened a window into a world I only could imagine as a small town student with zero prospects.
Through my work, I have met amazing colleagues and friends, spoken with actors, artists, activists, musicians, film makers I once admired from afar and most importantly, discovered myself as a writer and enriched my life with experiences that can not be summed up in the standard vocabulary of success. I have met amazing mentors who supported my passion for writing and readers who have become family. And I could be a mother who picked up her child from the bus stop every day till he asked me not to bother.
Am even grateful for the measly pay cheques. For the few people who professionally wronged me because they just strengthened my resolve to keep writing. They made me realise that I loved what I did too much to stop or to be stopped.
In retrospect, this is the life I chose and despite occasional set backs and running into situations that were exploitative or manipulative, I have loved the fact that life gave me the one thing every writer craves for. Opportunity. Am grateful that I still switch on my computer every morning with a hope that I will have a story to share and that it will connect with someone out there. More often than not, it does. What more can a writer ask for? Unboxed Writers is a platform that is about the limitless opportunity to write. And in a way it has empowered me to say ‘NO’ to jobs that are disrespectful to me either because they want me to be less creative or because they want to use my creativity but not pay for it.
It amazes me to see how far we have come with Unboxed Writers and some day soon, we will start paying ourselves and as one of our writers puts it, maybe then we will wear T-shirts that proclaim, “Writers don’t come free!”
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )
Inspirational! I was right, you are a machine! I don’t think that the “Freelance does not mean Free” applies only to India. I have the same experience in NZ especially in terms of payment!
so are you my dear, so are you:) lets just hope we will make this space fulfilling in the material sense too:) god willing..
… i could have written this one.
how did you get inside my head?
i painted a t-shirt that said, “Writer, wronged.”
Uma, you should paint another one, “you wrong me..I write you!”
And Rachna, yup, we are all waiting 🙂
Reema
I love you for what you wrote. How grateful we writers are just for an opportunity to write (what we want to write) and how wonderful it feels to find even one reader who connects with what you wrote. Pay checks come as bonus. Way to go unboxed. I’m waiting for my T.
A story of grit and determination…very inspiring indeed!
remembered how I took Mukta along to village camps.
now, whatever she eats, any water she drinks, she never never gets an infection 🙂
thanks anu and nadi ji..that must have been an interesting time..:)
So true!
Reema, atleast u are living your pasion, through ur writing through ur work. U go out watch movies, taste exotic food as a part of ur work. Ur work is ur celebration.
I’ve always wondered whether life is a schedule of works n duties, some sort of home work or a task to be performed willy-nilly OR it is a celebration,, a gr8 feast, a blissful festivity. Just sit near a road at 9 am and see how people are draging themselves burdened, with a heavy heart to their offices. Our life is confined between 2 places, our home n the office. “Hurry up” has become our watch word. I keep running ‘coz my neighbor, my frnd, my peer and the whole world is running and running out of fear that i might not left behind.
Is wealth a ticket to happiness. No noway, if a remember my childhood when weather used to turn good we used to pack tiffin and used to go to India Gate on our scooter n dine in its garden. It brought immense happiness and today even dining in a 5 star is just another day.
Then why i work so hard? Why am I toiling day in and day ouy? And when i’ll grow old and loose capacity to enjoy then i’ll complain “what a waste of life”
My story too Reema. Beautifully expressed!