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The Bengali novelist Manik Bandopadhyay once said he wrote because it was his only way to communicate. I feel exactly the same way. Writing is not a planned hobby for me. It is simply how I talk to the world.

I write because I feel a deep need to hold onto moments before they disappear. Every single second is a story. We are always floating on millions of them, surrounded by things that are alike and things that are completely different. We move through life every day, but we rarely pause to actually feel anything. Writing helps me stop. It lets me take just one piece of life, hold it still, and look at it closely.

This strange need to write has a long history. Franz Kafka did not write to build a career or to please anyone; he wrote late into the night just to make sense of his own mind, and even asked for his work to be burned after he died. Gabriel García Márquez ignored his daily family duties to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, simply because the story inside him demanded to be told. They wrote because keeping quiet was too difficult.

I do not see writing as a profession. In the real world, that is just not a practical path for me. I do not write for fame, either. Do I write for readers? I am not sure. So far, my writing has never depended on having an audience.

The push comes entirely from within. For me, writing is a physical relief. It feels like lifting a heavy stone off my chest. It is the act of letting out a thought that refuses to stay quiet. Once the words are finally on the paper, the weight is gone, and I can breathe.