on writing online
all my greatest writing starts with thinking well of myself and then I write myself all the way back
when I was fresh out of college, I started a blog. It was kind of a popular thing among kids my age who wanted to write. at that moment, I knew I was one of many. I didn’t have a lot of self confidence. there were plenty of my peers who had always scored more than me in subjects I felt more confident in, and so I always thought, I wasn’t as good. little did I know that was just school politics at play. teachers like to pick their favourites, and often it has very little to do with talent.
the blog i started was something I operated from a computer lab. in the drab heat of Rajasthan, I’d get fully dressed into a salwar kameez (as was the norm in my university) and i’d march my way through the heatwave, to the computer lab in one of the other college buildings. then, I would wait for someone else to be done with their computer work and once their system was free, I’d use my pen drive to open my blog and post the essay I’d written last night. the essays were long and about something sad usually, but that was normal. there wasn’t much in my life back then to thrive off on, and I wasn’t exposed to joyful enough things to know the difference.
that blog was a safe space. at the beginning, I made an effort to write about geopolitics. this is back when I still had hope. but slowly my personal life quietly took over. I wrote about school and friendship and college and feeling lost. I wrote about my family and my idea of shame and scarcity and my love of books. always, my love of books. that always seeped in. across two drab cities, my love of books saved me. the library in my school and my college and the bookstores with one shelf full of fiction saved me.
I devoured as much as I could. and I wrote. I found my voice and my personhood. I realised that as sad as my stories often were, they were also beautiful. and I kept writing. sometimes on the blog, and in letters to my friends in faraway cities and across internships and cover letters and copy for work and now, my notes app and my substack. writing was something that helped me dig a hole out of impossible situations. writing helped me land opportunities and jobs and roles. with time, I learnt more about people and wrote nice emails and made wonderful new friends and worked on life changing books.
over time, it became easier to write for other people and harder to write for myself. easier to work on other peoples books and harder to write my own. I took over work confidently but shrunk back when I had to work to make choices for the characters I wrote.
it’s been a journey. and there has been so much to learn. and most days i still struggle with putting sentences together about what i’d like you to know about me. but today is not one of those days.
today, I feel better about my chances. when you walk into a bookstore and see a hundred books you realise how many people have this urge. to string sentences together for their own sanity and their bank accounts and the story in their head that doesn’t seem to rest. and then you begin to calm down. you realise you’re not special. it just takes work and courage. i’m just trying to show up with one, hoping the second will show up on its own.