Writers in Kashmir often complain that people at large are ignoring them. They claim that their opinion is no longer sought on matters of socio-economic importance. New players in the civil society, it appears, have overthrown them and they are what they claim they are now-impact less sidekicks. What brought this sky fall? What happened in the society that people started ignoring writers, poets and scholars?
One line of argument may be that contemporary writers and poets only write panegyrics to keep a particular wing happy. Though it may not be entirely true, but a vast majority among them does not wish to toe the tag line. The writers, it appears, want to play safe. They use symbolism so that the parties concerned does not understand what they want to convey.
Besides, the contemporary writers and poets do not write for the poor and the marginalized. They write about the doe-eyed beauty, the “arrows’’ of gazes that pierce the heart, the rosy-cheeked women, the flower and the bulbul and the lamp and the firefly. In short story writers, there is redundancy of thought, the unprecedented hurry to get more and more books published, the abject disdain to understand the socio-economic stratification of their people and shameless copying of plots from western writers.
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As a writer the primary job is to get an award. Writers plumb to great depths when it comes to bagging an award. A few do not hesitate to work in the kitchen of a high-ranking officer, some others willing offer being a house servant for some days.
At times the writer being ignored is not entirely true. The thing is that the writer and the poet have failed to provide a active commentary on the contemporary socio-economic changes and have thus plumbed to cul de sac of oblivion.
