5 - Writing Fiction

Summary

With Piroska by his side, Raja showed a readiness to engage imaginatively with the new realities and exigencies of life. He was by now beginning to look for openings to supplement his income through freelance writing and sale of short stories to the literary magazines that were so popular at the time.

While he was still hazy about his calling, he was greatly attracted to the purposeful world of political writing. His friends already active in the field were more than willing to provide the contacts and opportunities.

Chief among them was his charismatic journalist-cum-politician friend, Michael Foot. According to Raja, it was this crusading leftwing journalist who first encouraged him to write for several publications in London.

Foot, who first contested the election under the Labour Party in 1935 at the age of 22, wrote for various leftist publications — the New Statesman, the Daily Herald, and Tribune — and achieved notoriety in 1940 by co-writing the bestseller, Guilty Men attacking the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government. He became even more controversial as the protege of the right-wing press baron and politician Lord Beaverbrook when he worked for his newspapers, the Evening Standard and the Daily Express, turning them into the voice of intellectual populism.

Raja cut his teeth in journalism by working for Beaverbrook's flagship newspaper, the Daily Express. Beaverbrook, who was minister for aircraft production (1940–41), minister of supply (1941–42), minister of war production (1942), believed in the power of the press and used it mightily to flay his political foes.

Eager for more action, Raja also freelanced for the left-wing cooperative paper Reynolds News, which was highly politicised as part of the labour press. He also wrote for some of Padmore's publications, which pleaded the cause of socialism and liberty. The experience and contacts he gained through his stints gave him a feel of the seductive power of political journalism.

The rudderless trajectory of his professional development took another decisive turn when he ventured into the literary world of fiction. It was a new and challenging area for him; not every writer could make a success of it.