Hello Fiction.
Fiction
For decades, I’ve harboured the fantasy of writing fiction. I can’t explain why, and I guess it doesn’t matter. If I do put something out, it will speak, or sink, for itself.
What is relevant is why I have not been able to do so. I’ve written this weekly post - quite regularly - for almost exactly three years, and it has been a great discipline for me. My writing muscles have gotten regularly exercised, and that one time every week, on Sunday morning, the commitment to this post means I must stop surfing the ten different subjects that have piqued my attention during the week. It’s been really good for me.
In attempting a shift to fiction, I think I am inhibited by two factors.
The first is lack of confidence, the fear of failure. This is really silly, because the bigger failure is in not trying. And it is not as if I am sacrificing a career as a celebrated long-form writer for The New Yorker to switch to fiction. I am just one of hundreds of thousands of weekend hacks using the opportunities offered by Substack to put something out there.
The second is even more worrying - the containing of my imagination. Whether as investor, business advisor, or student of economics, I am dealing with reality all the time - how to understand it, how to adapt to it, and if lucky, shift it. This work has oriented my brain to dealing with given frameworks.
I wasn’t always like this.
In school, our English exams often gave us the option of writing either an essay on an important topic like patriotism, or a short story. Most often, I chose to craft a short story, typically about young folks - naturally about my age at that point in time - encountering criminals, and eventually getting the better of them. Very Enid Blyton inspired, very satisfying, encouraged by the fact that I always got excellent grades for my writing.
Somewhere along the way, imagination withered, and I now write only about important things. I don’t think my imagination died; it never does, but like my shoulder that was severely bruised by a cycle spill three weeks ago, it needs to be nursed back to life. I suspect it is going to be a long haul.
The road to fiction, or creative work, more broadly, is also not likely to be as amenable to a schedule, either. Or maybe that’s a cop-out, giving myself too long a rope. For a start, I will try to put something out every weekend. Unlike analysis, or reflection, creative work can probably not be slotted into a few hours every Sunday morning, so I will have to urge myself to spend more time writing during the week. Which can only be to the good!
You will be witness to how this works.
I will also not completely give up writing about important things - just set the internal bar higher. On that note, here are thoughts about two developments I discerned this week:
The Slowing Economy
The Emperor’s New Clothes - ‘Compassionate San Antonio’
If you’ve read this substack reasonably often, you know that I believe the Indian economy is nowhere near as robust as the government would have us believe. This view is now becoming mainstream, and investment bank Nomura* called the RBI’s projections “overly optimistic”. These are strong words for a major player to use.
For a change, they weren’t the only ones. The outgoing chairman of Nestle India, Suresh Narayan, perhaps emboldened by the fact that he is outgoing, said that middle income households are shrinking their expenditure*.
Swaminathan Aiyar questioned the inconsistency between a slowing of credit growth and consumption on one hand, and (reported) GDP growth on the other*. For my money, this is like someone watching the Emperor parading in his new clothes and saying - “I don’t see the clothes, but I’m not going to be the first one to say he is naked.”
‘Nuff said. It’s not pretty out there.
Nomura:
Nestle CMD:
Swaminathan Aiyar:
North India Choking
Of course Diwali sent the AQI meters surging past 999, the highest levels they typically record. And, yes, paddy straw burning adds fuel to the smoke haze, but those incidents seem to be gradually climbing down.
But the problem of bad air in Delhi, and north India more generally, has its basis in our topography and meteorology - slow winds in early winter, the Himalayan barrier to escape of polluted air, and the thermal inversion caused by cold nights and warm days.
Into this saucer occupied by over half a billion people, throw in fervid construction, fossil fuels, and the proximity to sandy deserts, and you have a public health disaster of unprecedented proportions, which will be largely ignored because the outcomes manifest over decades.
The only new insight I have to add to my understanding of air pollution in Delhi, is that economic development will help us clamber out of this mess. While the expected culprits play their part in Delhi’s pollution - transport, DG sets, industry etc., - in peak winter* the biggest contributors to particulate matter in our skies are household cooking and heating (32%), waste burning (8%), and open fires (3%). During this period, transport contributes ‘only’ 15% of the muck in our air.
Households burn wood and gobar because they can’t afford cleaner cooking fuel, while ‘biomass’ is practically free. Go for a walk in any of Delhi’s parks on a winter afternoon, and you will see women and kids gathering headloads of firewood. The men, of course, are already generating smoke from their communal hookahs.
Just to clarify, I am not saying that we don’t need pollution controls on vehicles, or better construction technology. But, poverty is a pollutant in many senses of the word, and a march to widespread prosperity is the best antidote to air pollution. I can afford both, cooking gas, and air purifiers. Millions in Delhi slums and lal dora villages can do neither.
Look at Figure ES 2 (b) here:
https://www.ceew.in/publications/delhi-winter-pollution-2021-case-study-on-air-quality-management
The pollution that is generated outside Delhi is not stubble - or very little of it is. Like in Delhi, it is a combination of transport, construction, dust, industry, and biomass. At the onset of the bad air season (late October), the air quality is moved by episodes - stubble burning, Diwali, etc. But, as winter sets in, it settles to a continuous blanket of grey smog, with wind speeds to low to tug it away from above us.
Looking forward to your fiction writing Sir.
Thank you for your insightful writing!!