The hunger artist, when writing is a per diem exercise
Ernest Hemingway once said that he liked to look at Cezanne's paintings when he was ravenously hungry. In his 1964 memoir of his Paris apprentice days, The Moveable Feast, Hemingway writes: 'I learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry.'
Hunger sharpens one's critical faculties. It also sharpens one's ability to feel and seek out injustice. And then, I looked at myself in the mirror. No way could someone ever mistake me for a writer. There was nothing frugal about my frame. I looked like a well-fed bulldog just awakened from his siesta.
In India, a person who spends an average of ₹27 in rural areas and ₹33 in urban areas each day is considered living below the poverty line. While there is no verifiable data, a conservative estimate puts 100 mn people in the BPL category. That is almost on par with the combined populations of Britain and Canada. So, it's not as if I lack company. There are many around who are worse off than me.
While ₹33 seemed like too drastic a haircut, I decided I would try and survive on ₹100 a day. As Rama Bijapurkar calls in her new book, Lilliput Land: How Small is Driving India's Mega Consumption Story, I would become a 'Lilliput' consumer. Apparently, there are a lot of us Lilliputians in India lying in wait
