Th’ scribe’s disease.

Why do I blog?

Because I want to express, and am too lazy to find a publisher.

Well there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story within you. If you doubt my declaration read through Girish Karnad’s nagamandala.

There is also another issue, every writer, particularly a story teller is a medium there stories that want to be told they find the bard who can tell it to the world.

Yet my journey to self acceptance from being a closet writer to published one, has been peppered with that little voice we call inspiration.

“either you can write or  you cannot ” grandpa Krishna Rao had declared, when my father suggested journalism as a career option.”Writing is something anyone can do, one need not train for it. Medicine is the only safe career ”this was the collective wisdom of the medical campus where I grew up.

But the song within had to be sung, I discovered the world of blogs when my dad passed away about 5yrs ago.  Today I write, and publish my writing as blogs, people do read them and acknowledge my writing. Sometimes I even get paid for it. Of course now from sometime it is most of the time I get paid.

Reactions from my “concerned teachers” today are amusing”Oh! You were always well read.””You could spin a great tale” the cynic in me is hears the sarcasm.

“Where do you get these ideas from?” is a great query. If I had  even charged a rupee for ever time I heard it I would be a millionaire twice ver. The temptation to say that I picked it up from Big Bazaar in an early bird sale is there. But when one is approaching 50 etiquette lesson’s raise their ugly heads and I only give a polite “bat my eyelids smile”

Coming to think of it, the impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not write, its usefulness is accidental. It  may or may not begin at the cradle, though I have felt compelled to tell a story as far as I can remember, and to write things down as early as I could. There people who are blessed, and will never do this, they would accept and be delighted with life just the way it presents itself to them. Unafraid to sleep and unafraid to wake up.  keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely, resistant re-arrangers of things, anxious, malcontents  apparently suffering from ADHD and having bouts of schizophrenia .

Then there are “they are such ordinary things anyone could write about ” kinds, so why don’t you? Again social graces come forte and I reply ”You should it is so much fun”.

Like I said before the agony of having a story trapped within is painful, it enters the system like a virus and gnaws finding a way to manifest, sometimes it is words, sometimes it is doodles, sometimes it movement but the idea virus infests, infiltrates and inflames until it manifests an expression.

Writing is hard. Not writing is harder still, it is chaotic, torturous, and a no-win battle.  A writer who writes knows peace, lives connected to truth. Not writing is an ache, betrayal, death of soul and imagination.

The only way to overcome this torture is to surrender and let the idea manifest, the consequences can go to hell.  The fear of treading on toes, ego’s and traditions seem so mundane next to the pain of the virus invading. Once the idea is expressed it is catharsis till the next infection.

At the end of the day writing is to taste life twice, once in the moment, and once in retrospect.