A few days ago, an old friend asked me for a favor — to write down a story about how I got myself into writing. He was doing an internship which is focused on helping people follow their passion. I started wondering what to write down for him and after two days here I am writing it down, for everyone who ever asked me the same…this is my story.
When I was in 5th grade, our Social Science teacher (Najim Sir) used to make us act for dramas once a week in class, and he’d ask us to develop a team and write the script for the play by ourselves. While the whole class was excited about getting to waste one History class per week, I felt like I wanted to write something by myself for the first time. I wrote down a play about a girl who becomes an orphan after losing her mom to cancer at the hospital. I was barely 10 and here I was writing about pain and solitude. A few friends and I acted out the play. To be honest, it turned out like a joke with everyone forgetting their lines and me screaming at my fellow actors for taking it lightly. Although it did not go as I had planned, I was not upset because I felt like I found something that made me happy. Then it became a habit. I started writing down anything and everything I felt. I started writing diary entries, essays (even love letters ;p) and it gave me a kind of satisfaction I couldn’t find from anything else.
Just because I loved writing doesn’t mean I was any good at it. My spelling was absolutely horrifying and don’t even get me started with the grammatical stuff. So, even though I participated in a lot of writing competitions, I never won any of them. I went for those for the sole reason that I loved to write. I was scared to show anything I wrote down to anybody or ask for help, especially to my mom who’s an English teacher because I was ashamed of the fact that I sucked at something I love to do.
It was in 6th grade when I watched the movie Twilight that I decided to read something besides Balarama or Amarchithrakadhas. My mom found out that I was watching movies with kissing scenes in it and broke all the CD’s of the Twilight series that I had begged my dad to buy for me (this was back in the days when the internet was not available to everyone). But I wanted closure for the story, so I decided to read the novel instead of watching the movies. For some reason, my parents are very supportive of my reading habit. They don’t care if I’m reading a murder mystery or a love story which is not age appropriate, they’d always buy me any book I asked for. ‘Breaking dawn’ was the first book I ever read that did not have any pictures in it, and it made me fall in love with reading even more. And that’s how I started reading novels.
I cannot explain the change that reading has brought to my vocabulary. My spelling was good, my grammar was fine and even my writing style got better. In 8th grade I won for the first time in an English Essay writing competition. We were asked to write a minimum of 2 pages about the dowry issue and oh boy was I on fire. I went on and on about the topic for almost 5 pages when the time was up, and I remember the other kids telling me “This is not an exam girl…chill”. I still have that certificate with me and I believe it to be my first and greatest achievement. It has been a rollercoaster ride ever since. I started writing much more than just essays and love letters. I started getting selected for inter school writing competitions and more importantly I started to feel confident about my writing.
But after I graduated 12th grade, I kind of took a break from writing. Even if I tried to write something down I’d go blank as soon as I picked up my pen. It was the worst writer’s block I ever had. Maybe I was sad about the fact that I couldn’t go for competitions anymore, or maybe I did not have anything I wanted to write about. But when I got into college and people started asking me if I was into writing, it broke my heart a little. I absolutely love writing, but for some reason I felt like it had left me behind.
That’s when one of the stories that my mom had written got published in a book called ‘First bell’, and she told me that watching me write gives her inspiration. I don’t know what came to me that day but I felt like I wanted to write something down again. And when I sat down in front of my laptop, words started flowing through my fingertips. I was so happy that I almost cried. For the first time in two years I felt the high of writing again. I could feel the rush of blood in my body itching to note down the many emotions that were locked out for two years. When the pandemic started I finally had a lot of time in my hands so I started a blog page. From short stories to poems and essays I started writing again, and even more people actually started suggesting topics that they wanted to see me write down. If someday I’m fortunate enough I hope I can finish a book about my childhood, something fun to read when you’re bored, like ‘Totto Chan’.
For me writing is not a passion, it’s not something I’d do for money. To me, it’s an emotion often filled with love and hope, but at times with pain and despair too.
