অবান্তর

Recently I took a taxi from one end of Paris to the other and got a garrulous driver. He couldn’t sleep at night. He had a bad case of insomnia. It all began during the war. He was a sailor. His ship sank. He swam three days and three nights. Finally he was saved. For several months he had wavered between life and death, and though he eventually recovered, he had lost the ability to sleep. “I live a third more life than you,” he said, smiling. “And what do you do with the extra third?” I asked. “I write,” he answered. I asked him what he wrote. His life story. The story of a man who swam three days at sea, held his own against death, lost the ability to sleep, but preserved the strength to live. “Is it for your children? A family chronicle?” “My kids don’t give a damn.” He laughed bitterly. “No, I’m making a book out of it. I think it could do a lot of people a lot of good.” My talk with the taxi driver gave me sudden insight into the nature of a writer’s concerns. The reason we write ...