Why did I write?  I tried to hush this question with shallow answers. That did not do though. Unrelenting, the question would return with the whisper of a moonbeam or at a mood so uncharted by any object of interest. The lack of meaning in my identity ached to be recognised.

Finally, I realised I could no longer escape this recognition. The myriad shadows of thoughts crowding the edges of my mind needed to come out, to assume a body, to be seen. The following memoir is a purgation of questions and reflections long suppressed within.

What led me to think of writing as a profession?

1. Fame
   I confess with guilt now, that, the parade of successful writers who earned the respect of a flashy red carpet, and the eulogies of admiring readers from across the continents drew me to adopt it as a career (I was thirteen – not an age to be practical). This was my first reason – a most ignorant request from an activity, I knew not then to be…art.
2. A voice
   Still, even in those amateur days, I cannot fully say this was the only prospect I found in writing. Even then, a slightly nobler aspiration had been to acquire the strength of an immutable voice that is gifted to a writer. And I wanted from this loud voice, the power to rally men scattered across the for some positive change.
3. Immortality
   There was one final reason for my love towards writing. I wanted from authorship, a name in the cover of a book that would exist through time, gathering dust on the shelves even after my mortal life had fled.

I had begun to read novels with a conscious sympathy for the art behind the story. 
I began to breathe in the art, trying to learn all I could to hone my diaphanous skill. Before I knew it, it was starting to become a definition of mine.

I felt at long last, that I had earned, through earnest dedication, the early acquaintance with the skill of writing, and was now ready to set forth into the long quest of mastering it.

It was ignorance that led me then, I suppose, to associate writing with feelings such as mastery and pride.”

At about this time, a speech I heard transformed how I saw this art I had so long unknowingly pursued. It made me consider for the first time, the idea of a muse – that art was a separate entity of its own, merely blessing my soul by taking it for its shelter. 

The understanding was intellectual at first. Over time though, it began to carve its way within. Whether or not the notion was true, it felt valid to see the skill with a respect akin to divinity.

I began feeling something more powerful than I – a sacred element that required reverence and worship.”

What would I write about? There were  writers who wanted to catch the tide and write of popular things. I waited though. Tides were of a nature to pass- to rise and fall. In the end, it is the ocean that remains.

What was my obsession with the ocean? I wanted my words to feel immortal, and any object that thought itself strong enough to fight back the erosion of time must learn to speak in a tongue most fundamental to humanity and not in a tongue made by mortals. This language that I talk about, is not merely of words, but of deep truths that were born with the birth of time.

By now, although I knew not what to write, I knew the answer to a larger question – what to write about.

That rousing spirit of eternity that I had mentioned earlier was only a silhouette appearing now and then. When affected by it, poetry was natural; when not, it was a chore. Without realising what made the difference, I had been trying in vain – trying to imitate many a writer and their works, to seek inspiration far and across. Yet the inspiration diffused with the wind within days.

That led me to introspect on why I wrote, leading me to this moment – this memoir.

At this point, I am talking about the moment I am experiencing now, even as I am writing this. Having caught up with my understanding of my practice of writing so far, I am left with a weird kind of hollow. A dead-end.

Silent. I stand here, not knowing where to go further.
So I assume, this must be goodbye. For now at least.

6 Months Later…

“I can see still in my mind’s eye that moment when I finished the last essay after binging on the entire recollection for about four days. But in time, deeper doubts began to plague my mind.

What do you write about?’ people asked me. ‘I don’t know, a lot of things,’ I would say. But it wasn’t just a lot of things at random – there was some center to all that I write that inspired those verses to be born. Some forgotten purpose that was struggling to express itself.

Without that core, everything I wrote seemed like sundered strings drifting in thin air. The journey had so meandered that my spirit now was a wasteland where no art could flourish; passion had fled, the light was doused and mere hollow corpses of words remained.

I began to develop an aversion towards what used to be once a most sacred practice for me.

‘I am a writer, I have to write because I like it,’ I would whisper to myself in unsympathetic tones. Then I began, without my knowing, to seek an escape. What was once freedom was now my fetters.

Passion became an obligation and the pursuer began to flee. At last, suffocation crept in and I decided ‘I am not a writer anymore. I quit,’ I decided…”

2 months later…

I still remember, only about two months ago, I had finally given up. I transitioned across a periphery from a constrained realm to one of wide vision and unrestrained reality. I did not have to be a writer; I did not have to be  anything. Or to put that another way, I could be anything.

The metamorphosis I noticed in my being was as fascinating as unexpected. As I let go, questions I had long slavered to uncover now revealed themselves.

It dawned on me that my relentless approach towards innovation was fundamentally flawed. At once I had been drenching the flow from a river of ideas without letting back the water to garner. Soon all had been quenched – the reservoir used up.

I learnt from this experience, the value of letting things go, relaxing and giving my mind space to breathe. I realised I had to be ready to leave behind what felt broken. It was okay if I could not do this. This failure does not stymie the flow of my life.

I realised writing was not the end in itself but rather, the means to express my life in enchanting tone. Things had fallen apart when I had begun to use life as a chisel to sculpt my art rather than using art as a chisel to carve intricate meaning into my life.

Writing was not the end in itself; it was only the means. This answer materialised at last from the tempestuous pits of pain; at the end of an incubation.

Summing up the story so far, months ago rose a meagre question – ‘why do I write’. Yet the answers that were required to douse the flames were not destined to be shallow. ‘Why I write’ led me to ask ‘Why I am’.

To realise ‘I write’ and ‘I am’ were different things, I had to break out of the constraint of an identity I had created for myself.”

Questions like ‘why do I write’ or ‘what do I write’ could not be answered by themselves. They would make sense only when the pieces of a bigger puzzle were put together. I understood this much by now. But what were those pieces? Where were they?

The bigger puzzle, I sensed in my heart, would be the intricate understanding of who I am.

The hunt for the missing pieces that complete the vision of this puzzle would stretch into distant horizons and deep trenches. However, in this ultimate undertaking, I am certain that my words and the art of writing would play a part. As the puzzle is slowly uncovered, these words would weave the answers I find into art; into art that touches other humans, answering to their own independent journeys.

This understanding that my art is not to diffuse in the air, but is in fact guided by a greater purpose, vanquishes the paranoia that surrounds it. I know not just why I write but also what to write.

For long, a foreboding mist of darkness and doubt had obscured my passion and fettered my art. But now, those unlit days are left behind as the journey with words ends and opens out into a new world full of questions and calling.

Now the time has come to disembark onto those and find who I am in other angles. Nevertheless, this journey with words will always remain an unfading memory with its rich experiences and revelations that shaped me to understand who I am.