I somehow managed to tell them that I wanted to be a writer. My parents raised their eyebrows. “You? a writer?” they just bursted out. They started putting me down on all occasions due to this fact. Still, I fought for my dream. I joined a journalism course. That day I realized that I lost all the love and a?ection from my family. I tried to survive. Survival of a life without love, care and empathy. I had a tough time in my college life. At last, I got my masters in journalism with high grades. Being in a third world country like India, unemployment was the greatest curse. I knocked at so many doors for a job. At last, I got an interview call from a newspaper o?ce. I felt so happy. But during the interview, the interviewer ripped me apart. He told that my English was “gibberish”. I thought at that moment I would cry, but I didn’t. I realized that I lost the art of crying also. I was numb. I still don’t know how I survived that phase. Somehow I got of his o?ce, broken hearted. At that time, I realized that life and dream are two di?erent things. They are two parallel lines. But I was always trying to intersect these two lines. I always tried to prove that things can happen. But being in a third-world country, who cares about life? Who cares about dreams? Unemployment,
poverty, and population are the curse of my country. Years passed, I kept an aversion towards newspapers. I got married to a software engineer and came to the U.S. My husband was a great reader, and he reads 3- 4 newspapers daily. But he always wondered why I stayed away from newspapers even though I was a journalism degree holder. He used to encourage me to start writing. He even quoted Paulo Coelho’s words that “Dreamers can never be tamed.” One day he left the newspapers on my table and I quickly took a glance at them. I picked it up. Newspaper! I was holding a newspaper after four long years since the interview. Again, the dreams within me started spreading its wings. My heart again started to beat according to my dreams. I took a pen and my ideas gushed out after the long imprisonment. I believed in the power of my words, that they would travel all over the world and one day people would come to know me as a writer, as a great writer, who overcame her challenges and even changed the meaning of the word ‘gibberish’ through her life!
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