This essay won the 3rd prize in the Kala Ghoda Flash Essay contest in February 2008.


The Essay is dead. Long Live the Essay.

 

There are rumors that the essay, that has languished for long  on the deathbed of outmoded literary genres, has finally succumbed to the capricious demands of the twenty first century reader. The essay has always lagged behind its cousins- the short story, the poem or the novel, in popularity polls. It lacked the crackle sparkle of verse and paled in front of the rainbow ridged lines of fiction. I can recall the rigors of essay writing during my school days. Whether it was ‘Why we celebrate Republic Day’ or ‘Compare and Contrast the land reforms and agrarian policies during the British Rule in modern India’ essay writing was an ordeal even for a diligent wordsmith. Crafting an essay  was not considered ‘Creative Writing’ but a pedantic exposition of others opinions or an academic accretion of someone else’s research. The essay seemed to typify the triumph of rigidity and abstruseness   over readability.

Ironically, the essay came into being during the Renaissance era as an unstructured, flexible, informal literary form that expressed a subjective point of view. From Montaigne’s essais to Thurber’s gently humorous accounts of daily life, the essay was more about the charm of the personality rather than the subject. The early essayists often wrote under assumed names. This lent a seductive glamour to the genre. Charles Dickens chronicled London life under ‘Sketches by Boz’. Mark Twain’s essays were signed as Sergeant Fathom or the improbable W.Epaminondas Blabb.   The essay was honest. No thinly disguised autobiographies masquerading as fiction here. The essay was generous. Books, pamphlets, letters and treatises – all were folded into its thick warm embrace. The essay was powerful. Consciences were nudged, cavities in the society exposed and winds of change were fanned by a flutter of words. Somewhere, the original essay got lost.

It seemed unlikely that in this age of  million dollar advances for novels and million page views on You Tube, the essay would ever survive. At best, it would be relegated to the dusty corridors of academia or recognized in sundry op-ed pieces in venerable newspapers. But the essay is clever. It has resurrected itself in a new avatar much like the Bollywood hero who comes back in his next life stronger, more powerful, hungry for revenge. The essay in its new form is a shape shifter, an amorphous being that is a throwback to the unstructured essays of yore. The blob has morphed into the blog. People across the globe are expressing their views and opinions on anything and everything; others, propelled by abundant curiosity, are reading.  The new essay is shorter, zippier, more personal. Grammar is not a constraint. Vocabulary  not a barrier. No topic is sacred. Publishing is not the preserve of a few. From the American soldier in Iraq to the suburban housewife in Mumbai, everyone is an essayist. Ideas foment. Thoughts explode. Fingers flash over keyboards .Words surge in the ether. Long live the Essay.