NIGHT 35 — Midnight’s Here.
And so I face the final curtain.
Alas, my friends, I say it dear.
I say the things of which I am certain.
I did it myyyyyyyyy…….wayyyyyyyyy.
Tan. Tan. Tan. Taaaaaaaan.
Well, it’s the last entry of the Nights.
(Which I am sure I have pretty much established with the whole doomsday title, beginning and dramatic bgm.)
Have you ever traced back your influences, for where you have arrived in a certain sense, all the way to where it may have originated?
For example, these entries.
How did I end up writing them?
Well, I wrote upto about ten short stories on Medium and I really enjoyed the writing process.
My hyperactive eccentric personality with my occasionally cute/dark/foreboding/innocent stories left quite a few wondering as to what exactly went on in my head.
Soon enough, I wondered, wouldn’t it be nice to jot down random things that I ponder? I believe one of the most accurate depictions of my thoughts would be the very short DAY 1 — A Terrible Idea and the few short entries that followed it.
(All the underlined people take you directly to their works.)
Few friends who were passionate fans of my short stories like Aswathy, Lakshmi, Aromal, Abhinav, Nikita, Vishnumaya, Arti, Anjali and more encouraged me to go on after the first entry.
I wrote the DAYS, started running out of material and decided to take an indefinite break.
After a while, my fingers started itching due to the inaction because apparently they had loved the constant 45 days of typing an hour everyday.
So I started typing out the NIGHTS, with a bias on fascinating trivia that I came across on a regular basis.
So we have established that writing the short stories got me into writing these interesting tidbits you read everyday (hopefully!).
How did I get into the short story writing business?
Well, I used to devour quite a bunch of books voraciously and wanted to read stuff that I would like, because some of the books I read had extensive imagery that I hated. I wanted to write stuff without all that and minimal imagery if it was being included in the first place.
A school friend, Jisha, a school teacher, Mrs Bismi, encouraged my short story writing as well as my open-minded Mathematics Sir, Mr. Nataraj, who had done some wonderful creative writing of his own.
I wrote my first short story via a YouTube video, in late November 2018.
More of my classmates loved the video story and told me to keep going like Pranav, Fathima, Jay and more.
One of my cousins, Maria, also, was extremely supportive and in tribute, I named a character in SOME THINGS IN LIFE after her.
After twelfth grade was over, I forgot about the short stories completely.
Then in college, a friend of mine by the name of Denin Paul, came across my stories and encouraged me to publish them on Medium, which eventually led to my presence here.
(He has an amazing Instagram page with the latest tech news, do check it out if you are into that kind of stuff.)
Okay, so reading books led me here in a certain sense.
How did I get there?
Here’s where I made a startling discovery.
(Well, in retrospect, startling to me.)
You know how you and your siblings are on different paths at different rates in their lives?
My sister, Serina, used to read a lot.
(I promise that’s the last name I am mentioning.)
And I absolutely copied everything that she used to do.
She told people she wanted to be an astronaut. I told people I wanted to be an astronaut. She wrote her personal diary and read it. I watched her write and demanded to read it. She even started writing her own short novel as a kid so I started writing my own short novel, which was basically a ripped off version of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven. A very annoying younger brother.
(I am a sweet brother now. Benefits of having a sweet sibling. No sarcasm.)
But it was the reading that was majorly inspired.
And after a while, I wasn’t doing it to copy her, I was doing it because I enjoyed it.
My parents were equally supportive of the reading habit (although I am sure they would have reconsidered had they known it would end up with me writing short stories and diary entries when I am supposed to be purchasing my Bachelor’s degree in Engineering).
My mother had the unfair advantage that my other schoolmates’ mothers didn’t have.
She was a schoolteacher.
This meant that she could borrow upto 5–6 books whilst students could only borrow a book a week. So I would dictate a bunch of books which she would go to the library and dig out.
That was how I foraged my way into the world of fiction.
My father would heartily buy books when I demanded it and when I grew older, he noticed that my reading habits had fallen lower. So, as a gesture that came as quite a shock to me, he bought me a Kindle out of nowhere.
The wide variety of books that popped up into my recommendations in the Kindle book store led me into the understanding that I needed to know something about the real world too and I began to establish a foothold in non-fiction.
I guess, whilst my pride and ego may not let me do so in person, my family created a formative phase for my love for literature.
Thank you, people, if you end up reading this.
That’s about it, I guess.
It’s a whole Butterfly effect in a sense, God’s grace as we call it fondly in my family.
It’s not just any talent I may possess, it’s a whole bunch of people who unknowingly shaped me too.
Strange, isn’t it?
Every talent you have, it had to have been recognized, cherished and celebrated by those you hold dear, be it friends or family.
Cheers.
Well, the NIGHTS are over, officially.
An indefinite break approaches.
From tomorrow, I will be rereading the NIGHTS one day at a time, to make sure I don’t forget all the cool trivia that I know.
(I was trying to be stylish, but this looks like an “In Memoriam” picture and I am torn internally over whether I should remove it or not.)
I will hopefully, be back with more varied stuff, and if quarantine alters me again, like in the break between the DAYS and the NIGHTS, then the next diary entry series will be a completely new and different side of me again.
Till then.
Ciao!
