The Business of Adventures

I was six years old when I wrote my first high fantasy novel. It consisted of ten thrilling chapters, over which a brave warrior travelled on dangerous roads and vanquished terrible foes. Each chapter was one paragraph long. I carefully typed it out one afternoon, brought it into school, and thrust it under my teacher’s nose, apropos of absolutely nothing at all.

“It’s wonderful,” she cooed. “Can I keep it to show the headteacher?” I beamed and nodded. Two days later I found the value of my manuscript had increased substantially, with the addition of “this is brilliant, Vivek 😊” in red ink at the end (as any schoolchild knows, praise written in red pen attains a cachet far superior to that written in any other colour, even green).

Alas that was my only major contribution to the genre. If this really was the first notice given to the world of a precocious literary talent, then the bud is certainly taking its own sweet time to open out into flower. Life has led me on a different path, to medical school and thence onto the beginnings of a career as a doctor. Somewhere along the way, writing became something I used to do.

My younger self got through a prodigious output thanks to a dizzy sort of hedonism – the sheer unadulterated joy of transferring the thoughts in my head into sentences on a page. And if my imagination was full of quixotic heroes fighting ten-headed monsters on desert islands, well then that’s what I would write about. My readership consisted of grown-ups who weren’t demanding any further intellectual stimulation from my work; its very existence seemed to be enough to impress. And so, I wrote on.

The older me, however, got pre-occupied with something different; having something to say. I have laboured under the weight of regret that by the age of twenty-six I have not yet changed the world, as my subconscious once convinced me I would. So for years, in case I discovered I had naught to give the world but banalities, I didn’t so much as scratch out a sentence in anger. Recently I placated myself with the sweet poison-apple lie that there was no time left for writing anyway, what with having to chase around hospital wards at all times of day and night, and then staggering home to eat, sleep, and memorise lists of liver enzyme inducers and inhibitors afterwards.

The unlikely person who helped me find a third way is Rory Stewart, a politician who turned out to be too sensible to lead the Conservative Party of 2019. For several months he has been the only MP of note staunchly defending Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, an ugly-duckling deal which attempts to satisfy the public’s desire for Brexit whilst trying to save the United Kingdom from tumbling into economic oblivion. In championing the deal, Stewart has positioned himself as the zealous high priest of moderation and realism. In a recent debate at the Oxford Union, he decried Andrew Adonis and Nigel Farage, fervent Remainer and ardent hard-Brexiter, as being two sides of the same coin, united by their idealistic extremism in advocating for futile actions. Stewart eloquently argued that the responsible course of action was to play the hand that had been dealt by the 2016 referendum and subsequent events, by finding a compromise between all the angry voices.

Goodness knows I will more likely be Wimbledon champion in the next fortnight, than ever vote for a Conservative MP, under any leader. But listening to Stewart speak on this subject is one of those glorious moments of reverse empathy, when you feel that someone has reached from behind a book or computer screen, plucked out a piece of your soul, and laid it bare in front of you; your own private worldview unravelled and apprehendable to you at last. True courage lies in confronting the reality of the world in front of you, not the one you wish you were seeing. And compromise is not a destination, one where nobody will be happy, but is instead a departure lounge; the one place from which everyone could become happy.

Therefore, dear reader, now that I’ve given my adulthood permission to temper the adventures of my schooldays, I am going to start my journey over again, and write. About medicine and its place in the world, and about the world and its place in medicine. If I have nothing ground-breaking to say, at least I can try to say it well. And if you find yourself enjoying the musings of one unimportant person out of seven-and-a-half billion, then you are welcome here, and please, read on.