Why Writing is Important to Me

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” – Anne Frank

If you have read my bio, it states “When I have nothing in mind, I read. When I have too much in mind, I write”.

There is no magic greater than ink immortalizing on paper words of solace.

It all started when I was in college and a mysterious illness defined my life. There was the constant threat of vanishing into nothingness, like the bursting of a soap bubble, like the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I was sick with something that eluded the greatest of the minds and the best of the doctors. My life was like that of a Hogwarts’s student deprived of magic, in the prison of Azkaban. Living life was akin to the kiss of death.

Irrespective of a degraded quality of life, I vehemently refused to lose my productivity. It just didn’t fit right to think of a condition wherein I lay in sky blue overalls on a hospital bed, only to be diagnosed as nothing. Because no investigative procedure existed on earth which could diagnose me.

The medical community is like a frog in a well. It refuses to acknowledge the vast ambience outside their well of knowledge. Anything which doesn’t fit into their algorithm is quickly discarded as ‘nothing’.

In order to be relevant, to have a meaning and a purpose in life, I started reading. I read fiction and non-fiction. I read about history, specifically the history of medicine. I read about psychology…