Choosing My Dream.

Choosing My Dream.

I started writing when I was nine years old, class fourth to be precise. I remember I had a small orange colored diary (my very first), horrible handwriting and an ink pen that smudged everywhere. My first piece of writing was about how people are running after money and power and can go till any extent for it, referring to politics and corruption. It was a two page article in simple language, a couple of grammatical mistakes and lots of ‘ands’ everywhere, but my parents, (being parents!) happened to love it. I still vividly recall how each time any guest would come home; they’d call me from my room and make me read this article to them. Half of them would pretend to love it; the other half would just grin hardly listening to any of it. At nine, I didn’t care. ‘My parents think I’m so smart!’ This was truly enough to keep on cloud nine for months. The joy it gave me at that young age was absolutely incomparable to any other good feeling in the world.

That write-up was my start and then my interest in writing developed as I grew up. I remember I would write poems in the middle of the night right before my Physics exam, would often try to imitate the Victorian style of writing, and then soon by morning, I would dispose of the paper thinking that it was utter gibberish. In fact, I don’t have so many of my writings with me now due to this reason! I never wrote thinking that one day I would want to take this as a career but I wrote because it somehow gave me comfort.

Then came this phase, when I became conscious of what I wrote, getting afraid that people might make fun of it. I was bad at taking criticism, worse at taking praise. Appreciation started going straight to my head and criticism to my heart. That’s when I learnt my first rule of writing, while I was still at school. “Write for yourself, because you like it, because you enjoy it!” My sister said these words to me and till now I have been following. I began writing for myself like I used to when I first begun writing. I became my worst critic, thus when others would read what I’d written and comment on it, it didn’t hurt me that much. I wrote because I loved doing this. Nevertheless, I took criticisms a little more seriously with time, and tried my best to improve my mistakes. I wanted to be better at this. Excel at it.

My essays begun to be read in class by teachers (I never read them myself, I was a coward.) and they begun to get them photocopied to keep it as an ‘example’ for other students. Wow! I started to realize how good I was at this. Piece of cake, I would think before writing an essay an English paper. I would make up suspense stories and stories that could make anyone cry by the end. I wrote about my crushes, my heartbreaks and a lot of adolescent stuff as well. I don’t know if I started thinking I was too good at this or what, when reality actually struck me. I changed schools and stopped being in the limelight for my sole talent in my new reputed boarding school. Others begun to seem better and were more recognized, while I came in the sidelines. That was when I gave up my most priced gift, ‘writing my journals’. I am bad at this, it’s just the bitter truth, I started to tell myself. You know, how they say that everyone can’t take failure? Unfortunately I was one of them. Someone else got the position of being the editor of the school newsletter and I cringed, cried and hid in my own private shell of inferiority complex. I acted like complete loser.

College came then, I signed up for Honors’ in English. “This is the only thing you’re a little better at it that the rest of the things you suck at! You don’t have a talent for anything else, anyway” I would think. It took me an entire year to get out my complex of being a bad writer. I didn’t write anything for that period of time. Gave an audition in the second year for our College Newspaper Editorial just for fun and by chance or due to potential (It didn’t matter at that time. Really!), I became the Sub Editor! Soon I gained back a bit of my long lost confidence and started writing as a Features Writer for the Delhi University paper as well. I felt like I was getting back with a part of mine that had been missing for long. I was getting somewhere, I realized.

I am nineteen now and I’m going to start my last year of graduation in another four months. To be honest, I am seriously thinking on the lines of Journalism. I even wish to write a book later in my life. A lot of people come and tell me that writers are usually poor and that there is no money in this arena. Honestly speaking? It doesn’t matter. What matters more is that whatever I do, I truly want to enjoy that. I never want to wake up in the morning and groan over the thought of working. I want to look forward to it, really enjoy it. Even if I don’t take it up as a profession, never in my life would I want to give up my God- gifted talent. You know the clichéd stuff that they say about each of us having this gift, this passion for something? Well, it really is true. We all have something, only we need to find it.

The message that I want to convey to all you people reading is that most of us study to become something and to earn money and fame for ourselves. As much as that it is important, what holds more significance is that we’ll only be able to rise high and earn well for ourselves if we love and take pleasure in what we’re doing. Never ever let minor setbacks in life let you give up easily, instead learn from them. Prove your insecurities wrong! Ups and downs, highs and lows are going to keep coming, constantly pushing you down. Your attitude towards all of this is truly what matters.

I’ve learnt to reflect about what others say about my work, and I try to make improvements. It took me time but now, I take criticism to my head and appreciation to my heart. Every time I try to do better by competing against my own self than anybody else. I am very young and I know a lot of you must be thinking that I am not a big name with a hell lot of experience to say all this but what I know is that I ‘can’ be a big name by learning with the little experience that I have had till now.

Hence from now whenever I open my Microsoft Word Document to start something new, instead of worrying if the article or poem I am going to write is going to be fabulous or not, I think of something I read very recently that Sir Philip Sidney wrote in one of his famous sonnets – “ Look in thy heart and write.”

And therefore, I let myself flow.

Tarini Peshawaria

Eng Honors II Year.

Gargi College.