The Bearable Lightness of Being

“I don't want to freak you out, but I think I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice .Of a generation.”

Today, I feel oddly inspired for some reason. Inquisitive, curious and yes, I am also visibly anxious. I am happy because I have words at my disposal. That I can read and write, retort and emote.

I can lap up fantastically composed sentences and aspire to write like that one day. But I don't feel obligated to do it because I want to move people, as much as I have been moved. There is no urgent need to reach out and make them empathise with the experiences I have. Weirdly enough, I feel isolated from my own life. As though it were someone else's. I can relate to my unaccomplishments but also feel detached enough to understand that it happens.

I have one aspiration though. To keep doing what I do. To keep scribbling on paper and typing on the keyboard, like my life depends on it. To put out experiences because it makes you delusionaly light. At one moment you are cribbing about your frappe being horribly milky and in the next you are grinning like a monkey.

In a consumer-driven world, where we realise the worth of our bylines, our blogs or a profound status on Facebook only by the number of 'likes' or 'comments' they have got, it is high time that we go back to when and how it all started.

Perhaps to middle school, when a prude high-schooler broke your heart or when your mom grounded you for arguing with her, that in a fit of rage you locked yourself in your room and wrote for hours together. You were writing for yourself and letting words bleed into paper.

Experiences manifest themselves in different ways. But if you are a writer, you will be greedy for as many as you could possibly muster. And when you sign a bumper book deal with a leading publishing house, remember how it all began. Let it guide you and make you believe that if you can deal with snooty teenaged girls undermining your existence in class, a few bad reviews will only make you realise that you are not the only one reading your work carefully.

And let nothing change that.