The Transformation

The only newspaper I used to read earlier, was ‘Times of India’.  But few years ago, my habit of reading newspaper died out. Nowadays, I prefer browsing through online latest news, rather than reading the previous day news. The newspapers were piling up at our house, entirely unread and one early morning, I simply asked the delivery guy not to throw anymore newspaper at our terrace. But one thing I must admit, the smell of the printed newspaper along with it's typical folding sound, is truly mesmeric. While reading online, whenever I liked any news article, I also enjoyed going through various comments, below it. There used to be a Agree, Disagree, Recommend and an Offensive buttons for each comment. Sometimes even I wanted to comment, but to do so one had to register with a valid email id, first. I did the same and started to comment in some interesting news articles. Sometimes I was thrilled to see my comment being liked by so many people. That was for the first time I started to write. It was fun; also there was no transparency and quite often people posted weird comments. I remember on a few occasions, my comments were among the top, most engaging, most agreed ones. Gradually I grew in confidence, but then interesting topics were very limited in Times of India.

Later when Facebook came, I was a little worried about the kind of transparency it had. Initially I was very apprehensive and refrained myself from liking and commenting. If I like anything, all my friends would come to know, how scary is that?  But some FB posts and also some comments were so interesting that I was tempted to like and to comment. Sometimes my comments were liked by some of my friends and I felt good about it. I grew in confidence and the fear was gone. I started to press the like button whenever I found anything interesting and also started to comment more frequently. Also, somehow I dared to post my own stuff on FB. A few likes and comments made me feel satisfied. I started to post more often and also joined a few FB communities, including our college group. I started posting some of our  humorous college life, hostel incidents and my friends really enjoyed those.

Gradually I became more bolder and entered into the daring world of blogging. I really enjoy writing about some of my unforgettable moments and feel utterly delighted whenever I see a comment on my post. All those Leibster and Versatile awards really inspired me to write more. I also took part in some of the blogging competitions organized by Indiblogger and had attempted to write a few short fictions. I felt glad that many people even enjoyed my fictional stories as well. I continued blogging and then one day something sparked in me. I thought of writing a book. Well, I might have overreacted to think in that way, but I started to work on a story. It was boring initially and I didn’t have any clue how my story would move forward. But I never looked back and continued to work. Guess what? I’ve completed writing my first novel and sent my submission with the first 3 chapters to some of the publishers, today. Still a lot of editing work is pending and I would really like to thank my schoolmate Arundhati Hazarika for helping me in editing my work.

It’s a simple story, about the amazing journey of life, with a little humor, love, friendship and some emotions. It’s purely a work of fiction and is not based on my blog. But readers who enjoy my posts are definitely going to love the story. I just hope some publishers would be interested in my work. It’s a wonderful experience, writing my first novel and I’m really enjoying it.