The year 1984 was a game changer. The extended family parted ways, leaving us with open wounds. We didn’t even know we were wounded. The emotional mould doesn’t break with a sound, just a lot of unexplained energy.

I started having migraines, forced out of the city of my birth, unsettled in the new land. I was no longer wanted or liked. I was looked upon as a Delhi girl in a smaller town, someone to ogle at but not befriended.

Then began the story of my multiple losses. I came back to Delhi in 1989, defeated and lost. I was straight A student till Class IX. Then, it rained insults and losses.

Around 1990, I started seeing visions of death and my right hand being cut off. I began to imagine a life without a hand. I thought it was my morbid circumstances, but I never realised that I was seeing something that lay within me, an energy that was speaking to me.

In 1994, I had a major accident and my right hand was the worst hit. Well, I had multiple fractures: face, left hand, left leg and a crushed right hand. The hand had been crushed from the elbow down. The elbow bone rotates our hand, but mine broke along with the main bone and the wrist. The doctor was pessimistic—it didn’t look like they could save the hand or maybe I would never be able to use it.

It was a long road to recovery, 3-4 years, multiple surgeries and then, finally the hand rotates but not all of it. However, the fingers pain if I type for too long, or fold them often. The wrist pains too. At times, I wake up with my hand curled up and I have to slowly prise it open, flexing it to let the blood flow.

Over the decades, I have learnt to keep my hand mobile, massaging it with pain oil and exercising to keep it flexible.

Luckily, in 1996, the computer revolution came to India. Before this accident, my handwriting was like little pearls on paper, now I could barely push myself to write clearly or fast. I couldn’t hold the pen for long.

I don’t type like the others with two hands, I use one finger from both hands to type, but I am in no hurry. I put my elbow on the table when I write, so it doesn’t pain or lose muscle.

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In 1998, my personal and family life fell apart. A friendly neighbourhood counsellor asked me, what do you think you can to do to get out of this situation? I didn’t know what I could do; I had never been trained to take charge, be in the forefront or earn. I said, I can write. I know how to write, my teachers said I was good at writing.

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In 1999, I started working for a New Age magazine. I didn’t know how to write features for media. I learnt it over the year there, albeit after much shaming. I think I was tolerated only because I was paid a measly amount of Rs 3,500.

In 1999, I met the man who changed my perception to writing and life. My mentor, K.N. Rao, the world’s finest Vedic astrologer and Director of the School of Astrology at Delhi’s Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, said that I should keep writing. I didn’t understand.

I was a reader, not a writer. Writing is a banal act, everyone can write. The statistics, as per UNESCO, show that 87% of the people, over the age of 15, can read and write. What makes me unique? Am I Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Leo Tolstoy?

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Over the decades, I have written content for marketing, highly idiotic pieces just for the income. I have written brochures, where your name doesn’t matter nor does your style.

I have edited books and tabloids. I have written for magazines, newspapers, websites. I have executed coffee table books, literally single-handedly. I have been offered writing gigs for 0.30 paise a word. I have seen the word get lost in the sea of videos, podcasts and photographs. I have seen AI revolutionise the word. Then why do I still write?

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In 2014, I was freelancing and I went to cover a senior citizens’ badminton club in Delhi for a Mumbai-based magazine. The club members welcomed me respectfully. I didn’t understand what it meant to be able to move your hands and feet at 60.

Two years later, in 2016, they gave me a call that thanks to the write-up I had done, their badminton club made it to the Limca Book of Records.

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In 2018, I travelled to a little town in Assam—Numaligarh. It was a work trip. I was covering the CSR activities done by a PSU. People below poverty line were the beneficiaries.

They took me to a young boy’s home. This 16-year-old boy had been electrocuted by the pole outside his mud hut. He had been burnt through and through, lost two limbs, including one arm. I could barely keep a straight head while talking to him.

I came out and looked at the pen in my right hand, holding it like the most treasured thing on earth. What if I had lost that arm? I wouldn’t have been able to tell the story to the world, at least not in the way I know best—through my writing.

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I started the blog when I lost work in 2011. At sea in the world outside a powerful organisation, I floundered. Did writing no longer hold value? The digital storm had almost wiped out the print media, at least the magazines. Newspapers were fighting for survival. But writing had not died.

The blog introduced me to different kinds of writing-some failed, some succeeded. People said attention spans are short, no one wants to read. But I loved length; I can write for hours. I filtered through and wrote.

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Over the years, I have learned that writing is not a mere act of putting together some simple sentences. It is a craft that is honed with love, an art that brings change, enchants, entrances and fascinates.

Writing is sacrosanct. Writing is truth. Writing immortalises a story.

People trust writers, people rely on good writers to control the flow of information. People write good books, which other people read and talk about. Writing is a heritage, a legacy that lasts millennias.

I kept writing, rewriting, changing, until I decided ‘my story, my style, my way’. I waved off the old hats, the badly paid jobs and insults to my gift—writing.

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I didn’t consciously choose to be a writer. I happened to be born in a century when writing is the norm, albeit all writing is not held in esteem. Then why do I still write?

I write to express my emotions, to exorcise my demons, to find a place among the writers who have long gone, yet remain alive through their words and thoughts. I write because maybe I have explored art, photography, languages and the written word can take them all under its umbrella.

It’s 2024 and I don’t know why I write, but I do know that it keeps me sane, my heart full of stories and my mind an active hotbed of imagination and creativity. Maybe, before I leave the planet, I will know why I write, till then I just write because that’s the blessing I have from the divine.

This post is part of the ‘The Write Path’ blog hop hosted by Swarnali Nath.