Magic. Or is it?

If I believed in magic that’s what I would tell you writing is.



Yesterday, on my way to my native, I received an image from my friend and on seeing it on my drop-down notifications, I figured it was a picture of something that she’d written.

Even before opening and reading it, I got reminded of a phase where she used to write way more than me and did it well. And the more attractive factor for me, was her ease to write in her mother tongue which still remains a task in my case. As I thought, I realized that I haven’t read much of her writings ever since we left school and there I was - quite a frequent blogger!

I read what she wrote. I knew what she meant. Obviously being my closest, I could relate to whatever she was trying to portray. And it got me thinking.

The firing of specific synapses; 

The chemical cascade that transmutes the scent of a particular perfume into a short story;

The fall leaves into rhyming poetry;

Your brutal breakup into a novel.

Isn’t it?

A moment of inspiration, a conversation overheard out of context, a furtive look on the face of a passerby, a thing out of place in an ordinary setting - It would strike like lightning if that wasn’t so cliche. 

And then there is a flurry of magic words, scrawled on paper or composed on the blank screen, a flashing cursor moving endlessly ahead of letters; designed to cast a spell, a trance. And when it’s over we awaken, unsure of what we’ve done, feeling a satisfying loss, an emptying out. 

Maybe it’s too easy.

It’s a craft, you say, a practice, a discipline.

But I think there’s something worthwhile in believing in magic, just for a second, even for an unbeliever like me. Because magic is the world of make-believe and that’s where we, as writers, want to be. Magic reminds us of the unknown, the yet to be invented, the mystical, the sacred, the beautiful. Magic reminds us we are all connected to our imaginations, to our memories of things that never were.


To believe that moment of inspiration will come again, even if it’s been gone for years. To believe that we have a whole universe inside of us that’s waiting to be written, that we are connected to those ancient ancestors of ours who told stories because that’s what humans do. 

Maybe magic can be our placebo; the pill we take to tell ourselves that the headache is all in our heads.




I think it might be magic, so go on, and write me a spell, Architha Menon and all those who haven’t in a while because a whole universe is waiting to read it.