When I was ten, I realized two things. One—that life is not just a coin with two sides. If you are audacious enough to flip it, you can create a magical sphere with just those two sides.
Two—that if words are written in a particular alignment, in sequence according to some memory or some imaginary event of yours, it will be fun. At the age of ten I wrote my first story, but I didn’t know how to reach at the end. It was about a competition to tame a fierce wild horse; the winner could marry the Princess. A prince came. I knew this Prince would marry the Princess; but I didn’t know how to tame that horse. I never showed it to anyone. My family preferred me to be an engineer. So I joined Diploma in Electronics Engineering, later in life. My readers were a limited few in my class. But I wet their appetites with love poems, still. In the exams, my scores never improved. In some subjects, I even failed. It disturbed my parents and filled me with guilt. I thought I wasn’t supposed to spend time in reading and writing stories and poems. So one day, I took an oath inside a church in Iritty, a small hill town near Cannanore—I would never write again. I wanted to pass my course, get a job and be like all the others—mediocre. However, my grades still stayed low. I realized that the wild horse inside me, the gift of writing, should be tamed or else it will destroy me. And there was only one way—writing. So I joined B. A. English. That was the time in India when blogging became a sensation. I read articles about how people found a large number of readership and even book contracts through blogging. With no computer at home, I worked from internet cafes. I spent hours and wrote madly about my passions. The wild horse was now becoming my friend. After B.A, I joined the University for MA English. There was a free internet facility in the campus. That was when “The Indian Commentator” was born. By the time I finished MA, “The Indian Commentator” was a definitive voice I owned. With Facebook and twitter, now my blog can reach out to many more people and has about 122,205 readers while this piece is written. People from 179 countries already visited “The Indian Commentator”. I have been reviewing books in “The Indian Commentator” for blogadda.com and mysmartprice.com—meaning I don’t need to pay for my books anymore. Everyone is given a coin, in life. What matters is how you use it. With WALL OF COLOURS, I have achieved the dream I always cherished—to be an author. May all your dreams come true. With Love, Anu Lal |