Talk in Everlasting Words

Minal Sukumar

They slip into my ethereal daydreams

And whisper their stories into my eager ear

In return I carve the words in ink

So that all the world may hear

In 1946, George Orwell wrote about the “mere joy of words” in his essay ‘Why I write’. While reading his description of the appeal, I found I could very easily relate. Though literature has transformed and developed over the years, the brimming satisfaction from the perfect combination of words has remained the same. Ever since I was a child, words woven together to create stories have delighted me and the desire to be a writer flared even before my age got the chance to take on the double digits. That was how it began: a fascination with stories told just the right way that turned into a passion for reading which branched off into a need for writing. I can recall sitting on a footstool in the children’s section at the far end of the library, my Trixie Belden book tucked into my lap, thinking to myself how much I wanted to write words that would one day smell like paper. I went on to try my hand at writing and as I got older, this simple joy from putting down a set of words that magically flowed together as if they were synchronized swimmers only became sweeter.

Add to this the front row seats of a writer, and writing does indeed make quite the art. I used to be a great Enid Blyton fan and not knowing any better at the time, I often modeled my stories after hers in terms of setting, characters and language. At that age, I had not yet fully grasped the idea that my characters did not necessarily have to go by incredibly Western names or the setting of my story did not have to be in cosy English towns with names I had never heard of elsewhere. So the real wonder came when I did finally realise that I could write anything under the orange sun of this world or the magenta sun of my imagination and nobody could question it. In my position as bearer of the pen, I am the first person to watch the events of the story unfold. I am also the only person who could create it, twist it and even erase if I chose to. In writing, alternate worlds come alive and remain untouched by reality.

While growing up I managed to build quite a collection of books for myself. I’d like to say this happened from going to many sales and second hand bookshops, and I have a few times, but the truth is most of my books are hand-me-downs from my grandfather, my parents, my cousins and other people with old, dusty books that turned out to be my treasures. When I look at the collection of faded books mingling with crisp, new covers decorating the walls of my room, I feel a sudden rush of happiness that someday something I write may be passed down through a family from generation to generation in the same way. In writing we may live forever, tucked away in words and finding an everlasting voice when they are read at any point in time.

Writing has given me all this and more while it has come to mean many things to me and I have always found my way back to it. Its grand entrance into my life was in the form of fun short stories I used to scribble on A4 sheets of paper when I was lonely from having nobody to play with. This is another common experience that is featured in the essay ‘Why I Write’. Orwell speaks of ‘isolation’ and while his came from being the middle child of three, mine came from being the only daughter. Having an embarrassingly large number of imaginary friends as a child, I was already self-trained in making up characters and stories. In time my imaginary friends in their fantastic worlds escaped the universe in my mind and started to live on paper because I was telling their stories, our stories. A few years later, I discovered harrowing adolescent romance and writing became a way to express feelings I didn’t quite understand. I stumbled onto poetry around this time too and suddenly writing was about dramatic rhymes on matters I couldn’t express too well in speech. A couple of deleted blogs in the future and it somehow managed to also became a space in which I could escape the horrors of reality into a place that could be anything I wanted it to be, where the most impossible causes could have a chance. Today, the art of writing dominates most facets of my life. It has truly become an inescapable part of who I am.

To write is to create something magical and in a way I will always be the little girl with ink stains on her hands from writing up new creations all the time. There is something wonderful about being able to create absolutely anything you can imagine and have it live the way you envisioned in the words you brought together. To me it is a way of life, something that has never felt wrong. For as long as I can remember I have had a special sort of wanderlust for places in my head that only come to life at the tip of my pen. Writing gives us the power to transport not only our readers, but also ourselves.