The world needs us

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

-Rabindranath Tagore


The world of a writer is unbiased and translucent.

A few days ago,I had visited the 2nd Edition of the Kolkata Bloggers' Workshop held on the occasion of the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival;listening to prominent bloggers who had shaped their lives in the light of words was a refreshing experience.Every blogger comes from a different background,someone is an engineer,someone is a flight-attendant;someone is a homemaker,but writing had united all of us,that day and we had all pledged to change the world through our writings,inspire the people who fear to write to rise up and shine.

One of the topics that came up during the discussion was the unfortunate murders of the Bangladeshi bloggers, who had dared to go against the tide and express their views against the religious fundamentalism.The exiled author Taslima Nasreen has spent half of her lifetime outside her homeland in order to avoid the same fate as these bloggers.But is this the end to writing?

This century has observed the rise of atheists all over the world;every person who had once adhered to a set of beliefs,has refused to be blindfolded by the lies preached by orthodox priests and live a life on their own terms.

I believe that in order to write you need to be an atheist.

By atheist I do not mean the traditional atheist who doesn't believe in god,but who doesn't believe particularly in anything that people consider true,blindly-a writer needs to cross the boundaries of faith,one needs to sacrifice the burden of religion and god and find the truth,the eternal truth without any social inhibitions.

Writers don't seek the refuge of political parties to flourish,nor do they seek permission from a community to publish their views.There was once this novel called "The Satanic Verses" that was banned,it never got published but today's rebellious generation of non-believers has fought for freedom of expression and has been able to sell copies of the e-book on the internet.

There is a dialog from the movie "Nirbashito-a woman has no country",
"in between the sword and the pen,it is the sword that always wins".
We often speak about the strength of pen,how it is mightier than the sword,the pen inspires,encourages,frees the minds,but the sword takes lives.But writings transcend life;you can destroy a life,but the thoughts live on.Think about the Vedas;they were never written but they have been transferred through voice;how century-old knowledge has never died with the death of their authors is a wonder.


Life is nothing but a small part of the infinite timeline,but knowledge conquers the brevity of life;it only proliferates with time,no sword can destroy it.



 As I have mentioned before,the world needs us,it needs our voice to end the corruption around us,it needs us to behold the light in the times of darkness,every time the world takes a step back towards primitivism,we swear to restore normality by pouring words of wisdom,modernism and freedom.

To be a writer we need to be belligerent in our hearts,but tender in our language.

Someone once said,life is not counted by days but what we do with the time that is given to us.So,it's important to abandon the comfort of appeasements and write.

Stop hiding in the shadows and start writing.

Write my friend,write.