Spice of life: For love of writing, sorrows disappear, courage is reborn

A writer is a world trapped in a person, observed French author Victor Hugo.

Being a writer, you are constantly talking to yourself, revisiting episodes of your life, incidents that happened and things that couldn’t see the light of day. You are day-dreaming about the future, reminiscing and recreating pleasant moments or, perhaps, romanticising the pain. You live in your own world to which nobody has access to; you can open or close it at your command. This world created by you is your slave as well as your kingdom as you introspect on how you evolved, how people changed, how life has changed you, the lessons you have learnt and the ones you have ignored or unlearnt. And then, the emotion becomes so strong that you can no longer contain it.

As French-born American novelist Anaïs Nin put it: We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

There is enough cacophony in our lives, so I crave for moments where I get to sit with myself at my favourite spot, the jhoola (swing) in the garden that reminds me of my childhood home, where I would weave dreams.

When you are surrounded by people all the time, don’t you appreciate solitude the most? Such quiet moments represent stillness a wandering mind of a writer craves for! It instils the notion of slow living. I smell the roses, notice the flowers in all seasons, the subtle differences and the loud changes, and then my heart sings a poem to itself.

I pen down my musings in a dairy gifted by a friend or on my laptop that was bought to write the PhD thesis when I was a computer science lecturer. The doctorate never happened but little did I know I would use it to churn out three books, around 50 middles and a plethora of poems.

Life rehabilitated me to being a writer, a corporate trainer, a happiness coach and now an immigration consultant. I revisit all my decisions. When you write, you bare your soul to the world. Every poem, article, book is your baby that gives you immense pleasure when published. Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing, said novelist Norman Mailer.

Sometimes, life becomes hard for writers as we are a sensitive tribe so we feel safe in illusion, but as American author Ray Bradbury implored: You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I had written my first book waking up in the middle of the night, while my husband wondered about my idiosyncrasy, but then as Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow said: You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

We are writers, dear readers, we don’t cry, we bleed on paper as there is so much inside waiting to be shared and to know that somebody too relates to your story.

On a Sunday night, sitting on my favourite jhoola under the crescent moon, I can barely see the keypad but I type; inadvertently an insect jumps on the screen of my laptop, I realise why my parents named me Nazam (poem) and why I was destined to write. Celebrated diarist Anne Frank’s words resonate with my mood: I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.

The writer is a Hoshiarpur-based freelance contributor and can be reached at nazam81@gmail.com