From a man who hardly had any idea about his future and now the face behind one of the first literary pages on Facebook, named “The Anonymous Writer”, Abhijit Chakraborty is inspiring many young writers through his journey. He recently shared his story at TEDxBITSathy.
The writer talks to Guardian 20 about the inception of his page, writing and a lot more.
Q. How did “The Anonymous Writer” start?
A. I was one of those who gave engineering entrance exams but couldn’t qualify, so I decided to do a simple graduation and later decided to do an MBA. However, soon I was in my mid-20’s with a job and I hated. So, I took Facebook for rescue. With a good response to my writings, in 2012, I created the page, “The Anonymous Writer”. Anonymous doesn’t only mean nameless, it also means fameless, which I could relate to. Soon enough from social commentary I started doing stories which got a good engagement. Over a period of time, people started joining me and they were willing to write stories for the platform. Through all these years, many came and left. But today we have about fifty writers. We have published works of around 1500 writers and we have a base of around eight lakh readers spread across Facebook pages of TAW (English, Hindi and Urdu) and Instagram. Our team’s biggest pillars of strength have been talented writers like Anwesha Guru, Pramitha Nair, Arbaz Fahad, Sneha Surana and Nandini Kapur. In the past, members such as Eshwarya Khanna and Aashna Sharma, among others, have played pivotal roles.
Q. Your website puts special emphasis on grammar. Are you all grammar Nazi’s?
A. To be honest, we aren’t 100 % accurate in our writings, so we aren’t grammar Nazi. But we try to be as close to grammar rules as possible. We reject many submissions because of grammatical errors and even the selected ones get edited to avoid errors.
Q. Your regular readers consider you great writers. How do you take it?
A. I don’t think we are great writers. We can still improve by leaps and bounds. The only reason we are seen to be great writers is because usually the stuff around is pretty bad. We grew up hearing names like Tagore, Tolstoy etc, we don’t hear them anymore. Today, even the titles of bestselling books are grammatically incorrect.
“To be honest, improvement is mostly by reading. Everything I read, everyone I meet, gives me some perspective and gives me a story. When you read good books, you gain perspective. Secondly, write wider-perspective stuff to explore all the avenues.”
Q. How do you try to improve yourself?
A. To be honest, improvement is mostly by reading. Everything I read, everyone I meet, gives me some perspective and gives me a story. When you read good books, you gain perspective. Secondly, write wider-perspective stuff to explore all the avenues.
Q. You have hosted a few successful offline sessions, what is it?
A. Offline session is our initiative to meet people who have made us. We have had many people contact us saying that we have given them a new direction, as they were always stuck with just being engineer etc. After TAW, they understood their passion.
Q. Recently you delivered a TEDxBITSathy speech, how was your experience?
A. It was my first experience on stage and I was pretty nervous. I spent hours listening to Eminem songs, as he charges you up. The TEDx talk was on “Unmasking the Anonymous” and therefore, I was one of those few who were invited to speak. The experience was great with seeing people willing to talk to me about my work.
Q. How do you see “The Anonymous Writer” few years down the line?
A. I believe the future of our page is in hands of people who follow it. And as long as Facebook and Instagram are being kind to us, our reach remains good. Instead of being just a Facebook page, we would want to be a community which fosters reading and writing. We can also look at creating videos, standup poetry etc.