Dilemma: To Write or Not To Write

It is 1:46 at night and I am wide awake. No, I have not been sleeping all day, neither have I woken up late, but, like every other day in the past ten days, I have spent hours trying to put a decent blog piece together and failed yet again.

The last time I wrote something was five weeks ago, it was about my love for Madras and Calcutta and how the two cities have come to be an important and inseparable part of my life. I was still a few weeks away from my trip to Chennai, and was excited to happy about it. 

The weeks went by sooner than I had thought and it's already ten days since my return.

I had expected this trip to give me a lot to write about. After all how often do you attend your best friend's wedding, meet a close friend after months, reunite with a schoolmate, visit your favourite city and travel through the length of the country -- all in a matter of eight days? 

And these eight days did give me a whole lot of things to write about: the thirty-hour long journey with the girls, the boys and girls I met at the hotel, the quiet afternoon with a friend, the noisy wedding, the long overdue meeting with people I had known only virtually until now, the three-day-long vacation. But there is a problem: most of these are very personal emotions, and I, somehow, have forgotten to write about how I feel. 

A year and a half ago, when I started to write, I dreamt of only two things: one, more and more people should read what I write, and connect with it, and two, my writing should be everywhere -- in the newspapers, on online forums, in magazines. In the last one year both these dreams have been fulfilled to some extent, but in the bargain I seem to have lost the art of writing for myself. Every time I pick my pen, a million questions cross my mind: Who all will read this? What are they going to think? Will my friends judge me? Will my family be discomforted by it? My pen stops midway.

And so, the strongest of emotions stay buried in my heart, keeping me up night after night even as the world sleeps. Hopefully, someday, I will sleep too. But until then, I shall keep trying to put my pen to paper, every single night.