How often have you felt the urge of bursting out all that you hold within? Does it ever happen to you that you just lose control over your body as your mind strays away in a million directions; each thought a single strand in a web of unimaginable size- entangling with every other strand as all of them pulsate together making everything around you fuzzy. Ideas, words, phrases, sentences that just won’t let go. All coming together- meeting, colliding, popping in and out of your head rendering you confused, anxious- frozen. And like a pedestrian hoping to cross a road during the rush hour, you move back and forth stranded in that sea of thoughts, trying to make sense of it all; but that struggle, that wait- seems endless. In this blur of movement, it becomes next to impossible to see the other side. When the screeching sound of silence in a room full of people takes over you, when all these thoughts in your head press down on you so heavily that the air begins to choke your very existence - finding a breather becomes a matter of keeping one’s sanity together.
When faced with a big problem, breaking it down into smaller more comprehensive pieces makes tackling them easier. Focusing on one single strand and following it through its length, untangling the knots it is ridden with because of the numerous encounters with other thoughts it has had, understanding the reason behind its vibration, its texture, the reason for its presence all make for that breather which for some might come as writing. Slowing down time in your head to make sense of the flood of ideas, laying them flat on a table top, spread like a deck of cards before the big reveal of a magic trick makes it possible to look at things with a sharper, focused and richer perspective. All this might well be the reason why someone would want to write. In fact, this is one of the many reasons why I began writing in the first place. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it?

Maybe it is or maybe not. Perhaps it paints the process of sitting down on your desk and picking up a pen or placing your hands on the keyboard to write something appear romantic. Maybe a lot of people write because they hope to gain something out of it. Maybe someone else writes because the process seems pleasurable. The act of writing might just be therapeutic for someone while for someone else it becomes a means of escape.
The very process is as malleable as words with its meaning changing, stretching depending on the context it is being used in. It is phenomenal in the sense that it can be what one wants it to be. A song, a lyric, a letter, a memory, a journey, a call for action or even a goodbye. When we write, I believe it is in hopes to search for answers to questions that make us uncomfortable. Answers to questions that stir up our conscience each time we look at the world around us. When I write, it is to understand the world that fights for survival every day, to comprehend the reason behind our utter ignorance to the signs of an impending catastrophe- one that is not just ecological, but also social and political. When I write I imagine myself documenting the fragmented reality of our present in hopes of being part of an archive that the future generations might excavate someday. To know who led the world where it is, to show that the ruins they live in is the legacy of their ancestors and that though we had all the signs before us, we still did not act.
I find it hard to pinpoint one specific reason behind my intention to write. Probably because there isn’t any one specific reason. Like the chaos of all that happens inside my head, like my need to hold on to one thread and through that trace the path of all the other bifurcations- I probably write to find strands that link the chaos that surrounds us. To work through the narratives that form debates over subjects like economic, humanitarian, political and ecological crises and question my own notions in all this. I write hoping that maybe in my search for a voice for myself someone else finds theirs and in my search for answers someone finds problems that need further addressal. That perhaps in the process of learning, reading and understanding that ultimately make it possible for me to “pen down my thoughts†or so if I may say, I come across ideas which otherwise I would have completely rejected or worse thought that they could not, would not hold any merit in the complex matrix that we live in.
I often think that writers are seen as people who hope for a world that exists beyond reality. That they wish for things which aren’t possible in the real world. That their worlds lie in a mystical plane where pain and sorrow are non-existent. Where everything ends with a “happier ever after†and their thoughts seem to be bereft of viewing the subtle, often overlooked complexities that otherwise exist in the world.
To me, however, such surface and base understanding of the subject of who a “writer†possibly is and the reason why he or she might “write†does not find any merit. These statements or assumptions might in fact be complete generalisations and quite often even borderline offensive. I do not think I am worthy enough to call myself a writer, however if someone were to ask me why I write I believe this is what I would say-
I don’t think I write to build an alternate reality that is devoid of human conditions of pain and sorrow. Neither do I know if I write to inspire. But the one thing I do know is that I write because I “hope". I write because I believe that it means something, because I have something to say, because I believe that words and ideas matter, and that one day my message might come across someone who is willing to sit and listen despite the differences we might have. Perhaps, I write because I believe that “hope†isn’t dead yet, or like Andy Dufresne in his letter to Red in Shawshank Redemption says, “... hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.â€