I have always been a voriacious reader, I can’t really remember not having a book in my hand at any point in life. In fact, I was caught in school reading novels, which was not allowed, that’s how much I loved reading. Writing, then, was something I naturally gravitated to. My childhood dream was to become a librarian and a writer, simultaneoiusly! Unfortunately, reality got in the way and I actually studied something else and made a career in another field. But I was always writing.
I am an introvert and have always lived in a world that is unknown to others. I live in my imagination, wrote stories and screenplays in my head and when I was younger, I used to play dress-up and live the lives my favourite characters lived. I was part of the Famous Five and the Five Find-Outers and helped Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys solve their cases. Closer to home, I was part of the mythological stories my grandmother used to tell us and believe me when I say this – when I was told stories, I could actually see it play out in my head. This is probably why till today, I don’t really like watching a movie when I have already read the book. The movie in my head is way, way better than what I see on screen.
I remember in the late seventies and ealy eighties of India, as a middle-class family, we didn’t really have access to many books and my school library was my favourite place. In my school, there were two libraries, one for the primary students and the other, bigger one, for older students and the adults. I very quickly outgrew my primary library and would rush to the bigger library every day after quickly gobbling down my lunch. Even now, when I write this down, I can remember, rushing from the bigger library to my class when the bell which signalled the end of lunch ran. The bigger library was in level two of another building which was separated from my primary building by our school gymnasium and so I used to run down one flight of stairs, run across the grounds and run up another flight of stairs to hope to make it to my classroom before the teacher came in. I have slipped and fell during the monsoons, resulting in mud stains on my uniform, which I had to explain twice – once in school and once at home! But I still continued reading and then writing. Even when I moved to the secondary section and became friends with the librarian, I quickly started reading books way above my reading level. I remember borrowing books like 1984 by George Orwell when I was like 12 or 13 and when we used to have our library period, I would get special permission to borrow from the adult section, which was usually locked because I had pretty much read everything else. Even after our library period ended in upper secondary, I continued to borrow books, and think I was the only girl in our level who did something like this.
In school, English composition was my favorite period and when we had our English language paper, the first thing I would do would look at the last question which used to be the composition. I would see the choices and decide what I will be writing about and only then go and work on the rest of the paper and by the time I came to the composition, I had an idea on how I will write the essay.
I write because now, if I don’t, it feels as if something is missing that day in my life. I started blogging more than 10 years back, because earlier this year, WordPress informed me that it was my tenth anniversary on the site. Before WP, I had a blog on Blogspot, on which I wrote for a couple of years, so I think I must be blogging for a good dozen years. After reading this, if you are tempted to look for my blog in Blogspot, don’t bother. It was with a different name, and I can’t even remember it myself.
I write because I have so much inside me that I have to share it to a wider audience. I don’t know if I have shared this previously, but since I blog anonymously, I don’t share anything about this blog beyond you people. Nobody beyond my children (and now my husband) know about this space of mine and any readers who decide to stay on do so, hopefully, because my writing brings some value to them. This is why, even though I don’t have a huge readership, I write daily and cherish each and every reader who decides that they like what they read.
Sometimes I think back and wish, I had probably become a writer professionally, maybe for a publication even. Would I have been happier? I really don’t know. I do have hopes of publishing something, someday. Maybe that is a goal I should work towards and see if I can reach in the next few years. But until then, I will work hard on my craft and continue to write and hone my writing to take it to the next level.
Until then thank you for reading my writing, sometimes which verges on rambles and may seem incoherent. And also because writing is fun!
Memories and Such 