Sometimes a friend, sometimes a guide, writing helps me find my purpose in life.

Sometimes when I feel alone in the crowd, writing holds my hand and tells me never to feel lonely, for in solitude, writing reveals me the secrets of finding peace. Sometimes when I feel afraid in the dark, writing comes to me to enlighten the path and show me where to imprint my footprints.

Sometimes when I feel lost and think of giving up due to my frustration with the life I am living, writing, my friend, appears in front of me like a guardian angel and stops me from falling down, pulling me up to the higher sky of dreams.

Writing has always been my savior.

Every time I felt alone, lost and frustrated with the decision to be a writer, there happened a magic, and I found my Ikigai, my reason for being – writing.

In childhood, Maa taught me the Bengali alphabet, Baba taught me the basics of grammar, and Dadu, my paternal grandfather taught me how to write, scribbling down anything and everything that came to my mind.

At times, I feel happy and proud to be the granddaughter of my Dadu for I inherit my writer gene from him. Since my childhood, I loved smelling the books from our little library, adoring the moth-eaten books and even becoming lost in the thoughts of the books turned into almost dust. It was a great achievement for the Dadu-Natni duo, my grandfather and me, if we could read at least one page from them with the help of the magnifying glass.

Those were the precious moments for me when I perceived the power of writing – leaving the legacy behind so the imprinted words keep enlightening the path, generation after generation.

Writing, the ever-expanding universe of light.

Though I learned how to weave stories and how to write poetry from my Dadu, they were the basic lessons for me. The girl kept gazing at the star-studded night sky for long and long and long, and the conversation with the stars became her silent poetry.

And when she grew up, that conversation became the compass to guide her to an aurora where light never fades away.

For me, writing has been the tool for healing, self-discovery, self-love, self-awareness, embracing mindfulness, and finding my Ikigai.

I left my passion for writing during the period of my tenth to twelfth board exams. After that, when we got promoted to college, our school friends group started a little magazine named ‘Roddur’.

In Bengali, Roddur means the sunrays. For me, Roddur brought the rays of hope to restart my journey with writing. Two of my essays were published in consecutive issues. I was happy to be back in my writing zone.

But it stopped again because of the increasing pressure in my Engineering days. Finally, I started afresh after graduating from college. In 2014, I was preparing for the higher studies entrance examinations and government sector jobs. So, at times I felt bored due to the study pressure. At that time, writing came to me like a friend and promised me to never leave it midway.

That phase was like unveiling the closet of Narnia – I discovered the chronicle that was waiting for me.

That was the beginning of a new chapter of my life, as if, writing gave me rebirth.

I started writing down my heart’s untold words and slowly, weaving tales of the instances that made me fall in love with life. I explored my soul through the medium of writing and gradually, started peeling off the layers of the woman in me, one prose at a time.

In 2020, I suffered from trauma and at that time, nothing helped me heal like writing did. I started writing letters of light to an anonymous seeker who was wandering for finding a purpose in life, just like me, and those bunch of letters found home in my first book. I titled it, ‘Awaken the Story Within‘, as I felt like waking up from a sleep and embarking on the journey to rewrite my story.

Writing, a beacon of light.

Those who embarked on the write path, confessed that writing seemed cathartic to them. The same happened to me. At times, when I couldn’t express my pain through tears, I sat in a quiet corner of the house or locked myself up in a room and wrote in my diary whatever came to my mind. I cried while writing, but didn’t stop. I wrote and then fell into tears. I felt healed.

I asked myself questions that affirmed me of choosing the right path as I chose the ‘write’ path. “Why did I choose to be a writer?” I received a reply from my inner voice. “For this time, you surrendered yourself to the universe and let it decide your purpose in life. For this time, you had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing to fear, only surrender. For this time, you didn’t choose the path, instead, the path chose you, and you followed the signal.”

“But I can’t write what I carry within. I can’t express what I want to say. Maybe, I am not a good writer. What if I fail to build my career in the field of writing?” I asked my inner self, again.

The fear of failure was real. The thought of not being an excellent writer engulfed me and I waited for the reply from my inner voice.

Days passed but I didn’t hear it answering to me. I waited.

Then, one day, while writing a piece, I found my answer.

Sometimes, it’s not about what you write but how you write. And the other times, it’s not about how you write but what you write. But every time, it’s about writing from the heart.

ho zubaan koyi bhi, bol dil se tu bol

ya mishri si ho, ya shahad si ho

tu zariya, hoon main zariya

aur uski krupa dariya-dariya

(Lyrics from the song Zariya by A R Rahman)

The voice continued, “Write, write your heart out. Touch your reader through the medium of words, and send your light to the farthest corner of the world where someone is waiting for your words, your light.”

At that moment, life came as a full circle as I remembered the moth-eaten books from our library and what I realized reading those faded pages.

The pages may fade away with time but words will stay forever.

Little did I know, at that early age I learned the power of words. As years passed, writing became my instrument to dedicate myself to a sacred purpose.

The more I write, the more I unravel myself. The more I write, the more I go deeper to the soul’s surface. The more I write, the more I become aware of my Ikigai.

Sometimes like a speck from the yet-to-discover corner of the universe, writing brings me the echoes of oblivion. It seems like a pilgrimage to the unknown as if I am devoted to the quest of the infinity through the pursuit of writing.

And I see myself having a holy dip in the river of self-discovery.

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(This post is part of the ‘The Write Path’ blog hop hosted by The Blissful Storyteller. We are a bunch of 22 writers, joined hands to celebrate our reason for choosing the write path.)

Check the introductory reel here:

Read the ‘The Write Path Blog Hop’ entries from here.