V.S. Naipaul is my favorite writer of narrative – precisely for this reason. Incidentally, he gave the same advise to a young writer when asked how to write well.

The goal of writing a blog is to bring awareness to the reader. Awareness – the word used here is different from knowledge, information or data. If you write long-winding sentences – half the reader’s energy is spent in merely recognizing and putting together words. That is an awful waste.

In the case of Niradbabu – well the man was a scholar and academic, but very pretentious. His writing was not for the people. As an Indian – he gave me no sense of myself. He gave Indians very little knowledge of the world they found themselves in. I could not relate myself to his life and found nothing of myself in his books. Perhaps that is the failure. If you read Naipaul’s book Beyond Belief – you will understand why Pakistanis hate us without ever having gone to Pakistan. You will find a lot of yourself in the characters that he describes in his travel writing about India. That is the mark of a genius.