I come from a middle-class Muslim family where almost everyone was educated and most of them were good at writing. Perhaps the influence is one of the main reasons for me to have taken up writing.
However, I started believing that I had a flair for writing when a satirical Urdu article was published in some newspapers and web-portals. It got more praise than I expected. This write-up not only boosted my morale but has also motivated me to write on issues that matter.
The familiarity with writing was limited to Urdu only because most of the published material around me was in that language.
Writing in Urdu was always my preference because my father is an Urdu journalist and the main language I would converse in on a day-to-day basis was Urdu. It was also a language which I was most comfortable in expressing my thoughts in because I had a good grip on it. The fact that I didn’t write in English or that I wasn’t fluent in it did not particularly bother me.
But gradually, things changed. Over a period of time, I started feeling that Urdu newspapers are full of ‘victimhood’ and most of its articles lack objectivity. For example, if you are lambasting a BJP leader, cursing Israel and glorifying a so-called ‘Muslim figure’, then the chances of your article finding its place at the op-ed space will be much higher. However, it must be kept in mind that these Urdu newspapers are the only place where most of the minority news get coverage.
The limitations of the Urdu press, the habit of reading a lot in English and a sudden surge in social media eventually turned me towards English journalism. Online newspapers and web-portals made sure that I got ample material to read in other languages as well. I can now sift the genuine issue from an unnecessary issue with little effort on the internet. This motivated me to write in a language where my community doesn’t have much representation. I wanted my voice, the voice of a marginalised minority, to be heard within a larger public domain. A writer from a privileged background can write on a social, religious and political issue in a chaste language but an ordinary man living among the marginalised section will give you the first-hand account of the suffering.
It was not that I only cared about my community. I just wanted to represent an ordinary Indian. To be frank, I still do not have very sharp skills to write in English. But I started writing without worrying much about my skill because, in the words of someone great – “If I waited till I felt like writing, I’d never write at all.”
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