Why I love writing
I always wanted to take up something very dear to me seriously but never really got a chance to do it or I thought okay, this isn’t really important now, it can wait.. It can wait as if I have all my life to think about this and this one thing will never leave me.
Writing!
Yes! So the story goes back to my childhood when I used to go to school where first language was taken with utmost seriousness. By the way, I didn’t study English as my first language. I studied in a humble Marathi medium school in a distant suburb of Mumbai where there wasn’t much happening on educational revolution at that point of time. People preferred schooling their children in first language and not in high-funda English medium or convent or International schools like nowadays.
Both my parents loved reading books. My mother used to write poems herself at that time. They made sure that there is no dearth of books at home anytime. Mother being a teacher always had innovative ideas about teaching. She used to write short poems and paragraphs for me to read and no wonder she got me interested in reading too. I started reading many books in my first language then and used to enjoy it. I don’t remember when exactly but dad asked me to compile a list of books which I want to read in a year’s time and he promised, one day in a year we will go to nearby town and purchase all the books you want to read. So needless to say within few years I had enough books to start my own small library. Mom too, proudly started a library for me saying that other’s too should have a benefit of our books.
Then story goes like this, I had maintained a diary where I used to write short poems whenever I felt like writing. Also, I used to enjoy writing short stories and essays in my school days. There’s a special form of art in Marathi. We call it ‘Kavyavachan’ meaning, poetry recitation. I used to participate in competitions in school or perform my art in front of people in family get-together or functions etc. When people used to ask me ‘What you want study further and become in life’ with full confidence I used to say ‘Marathi Literature to become a writer and poet’.
But then life happened! After schooling, my love for STEM subjects took over all my interest from literature and poetry and as majority of people from my generation, I too enrolled for Engineering! Oh, there is nothing to blame the choice as I did justice to my education. I became an engineer with full love and respect to engineering and I did my masters too in the field. During engineering, poetry left my mind and it didn’t occur to me till recently. Reading and writing too, was in a different form like reading about technologies, research papers, course books etc and writing was restricted to academic writing. I disengaged with what we call ‘fiction’ completely and took up ‘Non-fiction’ as my new genre and instead of Marathi, English became my first language for reading books leaving my mother tongue to be second. I was fortunate enough to rediscover my love for reading at least in my masters where I started reading about entrepreneurs, non-fiction, essays, mythology, motivational books etc. And that was my come back to my most loved hobby, Reading!
Continuing reading from then, I always had writing on my mind. I tried starting a blog too during my masters but after 8 year long break up with the writing, I ran out of content just in few weeks. Promising myself that I will take up writing seriously sometime in future, I kept a close relationship with my books and soon again, I had a good filled bookshelf. I was happy like never before when I arranged my books for the first time in my new bookshelf!
Soon after, I again decided to start a blog but this time, I wanted to keep that for myself. I didn’t want to delete my blog like last time. In 2015, I started to write again and for next two years, again life happened and I wrote only about course contents, proposals, event content, project reports etc.
I resigned from idea of a ‘full-time job’ last year in early 2017 due to certain health issues and promised myself, this is the time to get back to my dream.. writing! Yeah, finally, I was there! I started with infrequent blogging and kept reading regularly for expanding my knowledge. But I could never engage with ‘fiction’ again. When anyone talks about ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Twilight’, I have a blank face every time.
Recently I took up MA in Education in eminent institute in India, ‘Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ to understand what is education is depth and it made me read like never before! For the first time in life, I was exploring so many different research articles, essays on philosophy or history, even psychology which we discussed in the class everyday during the contact classes. That stimulated my brain to ‘Think’! TISS not only makes us think but it also asks us to write assignments every week on the basis literature we study and what we think about it. It’s an academic writing but needless to say, I got better at writing week by week because of that.
Now, when I have completely rediscovered my passion for reading and writing, I am not willing to give up! I want to take my hobby one step ahead with writing regularly. Although I can’t build characters and think about weaving them with a story, I can write about my experiences, thoughts, explorations, books, learning, people and what not!
My WordPress blog is going good so far although I am not a pro blogger. I got two articles published last year in the annual magazine of the NGO I worked with one about journey of the space and other about people behind success of the community center
I am not good talker, I can’t express myself by talking to people much except to my family and selected close friends. But I have came to know that writing is the perfect form of expressionfor me. It makes me feel fulfilled and empty at the same time! I can relax by penning down my thoughts unlike by talking or anything else. It’s the way I can liberate my mind from unwanted thoughts!
It’s nothing less than a spiritual connect for me!
It’s hard for me to write negative. I always leave a positive thought with my writing. And I don’t do it intentionally, it happens! Whenever I wanted to express my anxiety or stress with writing, I wrote a poem and ended up writing it positively!
With writing I find a ray of hope, a reason for happiness and a way to move forward in life.
That’s why, I love writing!
Don’t find a hobby, find a way of expression!
