When I look back at the stats and insights in WordPress, I am both humbled and surprised how far I’ve come in this journey of six years. At some point I crossed 200 posts, 400 followers, 20,000 views and 10,000 visitors. It both awes and humbles me to see this and I will always be grateful to my readers whose feedback and comments encourage me to write more.

I started this blog in September 2016 originally because I wanted to dabble in fiction. I was writing at the time as a hobby for my friend Lakshmi who had launched her own women-centric content platform SiyaWoman. I wrote pieces for her that were snippets from real life, finding that my source of inspiration was always events and people who moved me in real life. You will now find these pieces in my #lifehappens section.

I then wanted to challenge myself and dabble in fiction writing to see how I fare, given that my top source of inspiration is real life. I love stories that end with a twist and found myself gravitating to that type of writing. My first attempt at fiction, Original Sin ended with a twist and the response I got from family and friends was very positive.

I then began to write another piece of fiction that literally took my breath away. I understood finally what authors meant when they said the characters spoke to them, tormented them in their dreams until the entire story was told. What was intended as a single piece became a multi-part story which my readers began to eagerly wait for. Meanwhile the characters lived with me through the entire time I was writing this.

Once I finished writing the story, I decided to use it as an experiment to self-publish. To work out for myself what self-publishing involves. The One That Got Away is available on the Amazon Kindle store and also free to read with an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription.

When COVID hit in 2020, words gave way to zentangles and mandalas. My family and I got together and drew over chat, laughter and gossip. It was a great way to cope with everything happening around us. My friend Sonali came up with the name for the section of my blog that I dedicated to artwork – Straight from My Art.

It has truly been a journey of building this blog piece by piece, section by section, story by story. A journey of learning, self-reflection, self-discovery and a lot many other things that come with managing something that is completely your creation.

I know a lot more about what moves me to write.

I know things happening around me have a direct effect on how often I write.

I know nothing can stop my train of thoughts when it comes together in my head. I just have to drop whatever I’m doing and write!

I know my words give solace to many.

I know my stories remind others of similar wonderful memories with their family or friends and takes them down a journey into their own memory lanes.

Whenever that happens, whenever someone writes back a note to me that something I wrote brought back an old and beautiful memory back from their own lives, that’s when I know I am one of the few fortunate ones in this world who has found their calling.

As long as those memories come knocking and those characters or people surround me demanding I tell their story, I will gratefully stay on this journey and keep writing.

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Illustration Photo Credit – Yos Photography