Finding Reasons

The blank pages invite me, the pens and pencils seems to be in a hunger to kill themselves, and when they call out to me I would rather die than deny them. It’s the hunger to bring out the best in me, it’s the never ending quest for knowledge, and it is sometimes a war with myself. Writing in its purest forms is pouring the heart out to an audience. An audience who bear different mind sets, who welcome my thoughts in their own special ways. Sometimes I receive complements, the other times rich criticism. What I serve on their dishes is not always delicious, there is often an imbalance in spices, and sometimes the garnishing isn’t perfect enough. But then again, that’s the way I learn. The medium in which I present myself. The perfect imperfection of ideas and emotions, the bared imaginations, the stripped mind. The conflicts, pain and joy I find them easier to be expressed in words, than a talk with someone, as you call it open-heart-talk… that doesn’t work much for me.

More often than never, I ask myself why I write, I compose, I create. I can’t label it as a mere hobby or a pass time. Simply because it is not. There was a time when writing was a hobby but that time is long gone now. Now it has become a blazing flame, anything that I see is fuel and the fire never ceases to burn. Sometimes it consumes me, it turns me into ashes as I pin down all the words that emerge in my soul. Sometimes it presents me with a new life, giving me enormous amount of energy to keep going happily and I begin living through the words I scribble. Every time the experience is new, the voyage is novel ….there are again no words. It’s splendid!

When I reread a few of my write ups, I can feel a void somewhere. Somewhere in my hidden self, there are unresolved issues. Every word I write paves way into myself. I am in a search. I am searching for who I am, what I want, where I am going. Innumerable questions as such arise in my mind on a day to day basis and I wonder. For simplicity sake I can define myself as a teenager with a mind full of unanswered questions. A girl who wonders about her existence and where the world is leading her. When I was young I thought that the elders are capable enough to answer these questions, but when I started developing a better conscience I learnt that every man on earth is searching answers for pretty much the same questions. The quest leads them ultimately to where they really belong. The path each one of us takes is unique to ourselves, for we all possess unlike destinies.

A very few among the thousands reach their destinies, for at times we are bound or pushed to follow a path that is not ours. Everyone travels on it when they cannot make out what they want, so some of us just follow the bread crumb trail. We reach somewhere for sure, but that somewhere was never meant for us. Some compromise, the others fight against the odds to travel the right track again. For me words are the track I follow.

Through words I discover what I want the most in life. I receive answers to those questions that I always wanted to ask, the answers are murky but they clear themselves with time.

There is a unique sense of pleasure when I do what I love the most. It is a solitary art, I prefer writing when the arena is silent. This is the one time I get to converse with myself. All the other times I am busy chattering away that I fail to hear my inner devils and angels crying for my attention. When I write, the noisy me, vanishes into thin air and is replaced by a mute person with distinct frown lines. All the while I keep talking to myself. The outer me and the inner me are at battle field, each stating their points.

When a healthy argument begins between them, I know that I am ready to write. Some words I write is intended to people who surround me. Poor people, they sometimes even don’t know that I am hinting at them through my art. Then again, I don’t want them to know.

There are times when the words do not interlink, they are reluctant to relate themselves to the other words surrounding them. Those are times when I feel that I shouldn’t write, not now! A recent article in the Hindu, by its editor gave me a hint at why this happens. He explained that the ‘Writer’s block’ is sometimes induced by ourselves. It is because we want to write something that has never been written before, we always search for a topic no writer has explored before. I found this very much true. When an idea strikes my mind I think it through, and then after sometime I find myself convinced on the fact that this is nothing new. I drop the topic, and a possible prospect of a good story flies away never to return.

If we just give it a thought it is pretty evident that there is nothing left in this world to be explored through words. Everything has been touched once or a million times over and over again, yet every piece is different from the rest. That is what I and many others fail to get. We may write about all those cliché topics but every single write up will have a different perspective. It will evoke unlike emotions to the same readers. Hundreds of love stories have been written till date, yet my favorite is ‘Love Story’ by Erich Segal. Just like that everyone of has our favorites, the same theme must have been portrayed but all depends on which one reached to us deep down, and which one failed to. No one else can view an issue or topic the way we do. That makes us capable enough to write about possibly anything we find interesting.

It’s the freedom of flying around. Lock me up in a room with a pen and paper, I would have traveled the world by the time I am freed. The feel of being a butterfly and fluttering around sitting in a single place. That’s what writing is all about.