Nazia Kamali works at Cactus Communications based in Dehradun, India. In their free time, Nadia likes to dabble in writing. Works can be read online on Rigorous, FemAsia, The Whorticulturalist, The Indian Periodical, and Indus Women Writing among other websites. Kamali’s novella Multi-coloured Muffler, a love story between an Indian research scholar and a South Korean writer, has recently been accepted by the Running Wild Press and will be published in their Novella Anthology in 2023.
Writing – A Spiritual Experience
Each one of us writes for different reasons. Some of us write because there are stories nagging at us, waiting for a chance to leap out. Some people write for money or fame, some write to win the Nobel Prize, while several others write to inspire or to share their life experience, thousands of writers – thousands of reasons.
Like everyone else, I too have a reason of my own – I write because it awakens my inner eye.
Whenever I see an interesting subject, I think about it, I internalize the idea of its existence and what it means to me, how it affects my surrounding, and how knowing about the same would change the point of view of my readers. The idea keeps on cooking as the two sides of me put forward their arguments and counter-arguments. They debate till late night and in the early morning, and also during meals and meetings. To strengthen their voice, I read more about the subject and observe it repeatedly – closely, from afar, and also from various angles.
The result may be a good write up or at times, the idea just vanishes but the entire process of working upon something that I had little or no knowledge of before helps me evolve.
A new idea takes root inside me. I then bury it underneath observations and insights. The thought thus grows from a seed into a sapling, and even if it doesn’t take the shape that I had expected it to, nurturing it enriches my soul. I gain enlightenment through its existence within me.
Every essay or story takes me on a ride where I meet a new me, a person who hadn’t yet trodden upon the path but who is now trying to illuminate the dark lanes and build something worthwhile upon its foundation. And when I touch the other side successfully, the experience of the journey and the joy of finally reaching the destination leave me with a sense of achievement.
Another miracle that happens during the journey is that when the idea transforms into an almost complete vision and I begin to write, a different persona overtakes me. It writes and writes until the words give shape to the abstract image in my mind and when the picture is complete, that persona retreats, leaving me to savour the delicious output of its hard work.
The manifestation of this persona has a very calming effect. It helps me relax as the tornado building within my soul upon undertaking a new project, is released on paper.
Writing thus becomes a spiritual experience for me, where right from the inception of the idea till its culmination in the form of an essay or a story, I am in communion with my inner self and from which, I emerge out as a different being altogether.
From the Editor:
We hope that readers receive In Parentheses as a medium through which the evolution of human thought can be appreciated, nurtured and precipitated. It will present a dynamo of artistic expression, journalism, informal analysis of our daily world, entertainment of ideas considered lofty and criticism of today’s popular culture. The featured content does not follow any specific ideology except for that of intellectual expansion of the masses.
Founded in late 2011, In Parentheses prides itself upon analysis of the current condition of intelligence in the minds of these young people, and building a hypothesis for one looming question: what comes after Post-Modernism?
The idea for this magazine stems from a simple conversation regarding the aforementioned question, which drew out the need to identify our generation’s place in literary history.
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By In Parentheses in IP Volume 7
32 pages, published 1/15/2022
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