A passion...

A couple of days back when my brother asked me to suggest a topic for his yet to launch blog, I felt a deja vu or I would rather say revisiting.

What do I write?
What could make a good read?
What topic would appeal to the people?

These are some questions I have encountered long back when I used to write for the Hindu in Trivandrum and as a new blogger about 6 years back. My perceptions about writing have changed and so has my writing.

If 6 years ago when I was started writing for a daily, my intention was a name, decorating my CV for the pursuit of journalism and not to rule out money.I would look into minute detail for a topic.I would try to find a topic in everything I saw and heard. Then finally it would dawn upon me, a topic which pleases me. Would take up the phone and call my boss and ask if the topic is good enough. Sometimes the go ahead sign was spontaneous, sometimes I had to wait for a while. But in the end, the icing lay in the comments I got on the day the article was published. I would be excited if it was a front page one and how long it was and where my name is placed.

Time just rushed by, before I knew what was happening University was over, Delhi was over and I started my new blog after my old one was hacked. Now I see writing in a new light. Writing for me as much as anything else is a form of expression. I no longer search for topics, they just happen.The chicken vendor in front of my residential colony, a kid who held my hands to alight from a bus, a friend who once I had who later turned a fiend, the various expressions people throw at me in office, a bottle of beer, pink floyd and doors, a taxi driver who showed me what job satisfaction was, a hotel owner in Rishkesh, the priest at a temple near my office...all of them formed my topics rather unknowingly.I no longer think about what topic would interest others, I write what I feel about. I don't write to please anybody now or to get good comments. Writing is a passion as much as my many other passions. I don't like to write for anybody or for anything. The blog gives me my freedom to exploit multiple topics and I have the writer's license to write what I like. This is what writing now means to me. One of my friends once said...”You sound more genuine when I read you than listen to you”

At the end of the day when I go to sleep, when I see a small bit of my own writing, how much ever big or small it is, how much ever polished or raw it is... When I see that small bit of myself in it, I feel elated. Its all mine, the words used, the style, the perception and the quality...there are very few things in this world which I can call mine. But the piece of writing...Its entirely mine.