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 [20/06/2024, 18:27] Amjad SXHS 76: Raj, I have always had this thought…  that you would have written such beautiful judgments, had you been a judge.

[20/06/2024, 19:27] Raj Mahimkar: Thanks for the compliment. As someone who has been writing for years, writing across different genres and subjects becomes relatively easy. The rules are the same. The important thing is keeping the reader in mind, sharing something that he or she can understand, relate to and benefit from. In an ideal world the writer becomes non-existent and only the message goes through and is remembered. Of course for this to happen, the primary quality of the writer is humility. 


It is not easy as most writers are guilty of giving out unsolicited advise or sermonising. With some popularity they get carried away and if the feedback loop is broken, they don't know when to stop. In other times, the biggest bane for writers is reader apathy. Here is a story of Somerset Maugham and how he dealt with this issue. 


He was one of the most popular British writers of his time. During World War I he worked for the Red Cross in France as an interpreter and medical assistant. In 1915, Maugham met an intelligence official, who recruited him to join the SIS, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. His first novel, Of Human Bondage, had just been published. The official suggested to Maugham that his language skills would benefit the intelligence service and that he could use his writing as a cover for his spying activities.


As an agent in the SIS, Maugham's first assignment was in Geneva, where he installed himself as a French playwright and succeeded in acting as an intermediary between other agents in the field and top intelligence authorities in Britain. Maugham sent coded messages, often embedded in a manuscript, which passed out of the country and back in without drawing the attention of the Swiss police. He worked for the SIS without pay as a patriotic gesture.


He diligently set out to send his manuscripts with the coded messages. They were quite frequent, but for months  there was practically no acknowledgement or feedback. He wondered whether his messages were even being read at all. He was fast losing enthusiasm for the work and at one point remarked, "The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless." He decided one day to test if his messages were being read at all and introduced some humour and nonsense material in the manuscript. As usual he did not expect any response but was surprised when he was promptly admonished for being flippant. He was more relieved than sorry!

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