Anybody reading me? By Suhani Dewra

Not every writer wants to be read. There are some who write merely for themselves. Why do they go absolute? They tell us

Writing, often, people say is therapeutic - whether one writes with a purpose or for the absolute joy of writing. Those with a purpose to draft a news piece to keep the world informed or craft sentences in a book for them to be read and appreciated, sure are evolved for they need no soul searching. While some others write for the joy they derive from moving fingers against the paper, or on the keyboard as times today require. In the absolute form of writing, it is fulfilment that the writers demand.

Khushboo Dixit, a communication professional-turned-entrepreneur, documented her stream of consciousness every day for years. “When I had a 9 to 5 job, I had a reason to write, but after I left going to work, I missed writing. Which is why I started documenting all that was happening within me. I started with some 1,000 words on the Word document. Writing that every day felt good. Then I moved on to paper, and found that writing a thousand words on the paper was difficult. However, as days passed by I was able to write close to a thousand words. Over the period of time, the word count kept moving from 500 to 1000. Moving the pen definitely brought much peace to me. It also in some ways helped me in emptying the mind. But that was not the purpose I chose the theme for.”

Was it the pen-paper mode of writing that felt better or the keyboard typing? “Both. Pen-paper felt like a healing balm to the soul on the days I was hurting. There was something about the nib of the pen moving against the paper and leaving a dip in it. The process was soothing. Typing on the keyboard framed better sentences, for the mind has become attuned to thinking in front of a screen. The vocabulary was also better,” explains Khushboo.

Khushboo’s documentation of stream of consciousness reminds one of Anne Frank’s dairy that she started writing before she had to go into hiding. It was a journal her father bought for her as her birthday present. Much later during the hiding when Anne heard of how people were encouraged to document the then existing conditions, in whichever way they could, for people in the future to learn about the plight of Jews and the policies of the government, Anne began to write detailed entries into her dairy. Her absolute writing went on to serve a significant purpose in the course of human history. Of giving us an insight into human psyche through the lenses of a teenage girl unsure of life ahead. Her entries that are published in the form of the book ‘The Diary of A Young Girl’ covers a time period of about two years.

Like Khushboo and Anne; poet, filmmaker, and writer Avinash Denduluri observes absolute writing. “Writing down my stream of consciousness was not a conscious decision. It was like my body felt a seizure and it started writing by its own and I kept observing myself as I wrote,” he says. For Avinash, absolute writing casts on him an effect that mind altering practices like meditation or “psychoactive substance” would have. “In such a form of writing, there are no absolute rules. Nobody is going to read what I write. The work will never get published. It’s an activity that is a freeing experience from the limitations of reality. There’s always a narrative to life that we live with, that we have to behave and be a certain way which the world has established for us. While I write my stream of consciousness, I feel that I free myself from that narrative of life. Also, I feel that I experience time and reality in a boundless way, something what meditation or consuming a psychoactive substance would do.”

Could one say that it is a life changing discovery that one can attain the heights of euphoria. “Of course it is. However, with time the effect has subsided. In the beginning, the feeling was much more powerful,” Avinash clarifies.

To sum up, going inwards through absolute writing is rewarding.