I am a writer

Growing up, I was a math kid. Math was concrete – there was a right and a wrong answer. On the other hand, any English class felt too subjective. Writing felt too free-form, so I never considered it as something I could enjoy.

Yet, I always had stories in my head. They’d brew up as fantastical nightmares or video game ideas, all of which I would ramble on about to my parents or to a handy sticky note. My first taste of fiction writing came from Michigan’s annual writing exams. As a third-grader, I remember entering that writing flow state and racing through a 30 page short story in an hour or two. Even then, I ran out of time before I could get the entire thing out of my head. Later, in high school English class, I wrote flash fiction based off my dreams. I had never been more proud of something I turned in for a grade, because it was purely from my own brain.

The best part was that it really was the right answer, or at least each twist and turn in the story was exactly the way I knew it should be. It was a formula that I created myself. Still, I was a math kid, so why would I write outside of school?

I eventually went to college for computer science – just like every good Indian American kid. I enjoyed it, and I was good at it, so I never thought about anything else.

Until late fall of 2020, when I was stuck at home and finally bored of playing video games and procrastinating online lectures. I decided to make a video game myself. My dream game: a beautiful 3D action adventure masterpiece, with a story loosely based on an idea I had as a kid.

The thing is, making games is difficult, especially when you have no artistic capabilities. I tried learning Blender, and I got as far as modeling a few swords and rough (and I mean rough) player animations. I started to procrastinate the development of the demo by working on something easier: world building and my characters. All I needed for that was to stare at a wall and write down whatever popped into my head. I researched the Astras and the Vedic and Puranic myths and the few sentences of plot in my brain ballooned into an entire world. The other stories I grew up loving as an American, combined with early Indian mythology, seeped into this world until I discovered a mythology of my own.

Many, many wrong and right ideas (and a few years) later, the story sprung from a sticky note into the several books that will make up Astradhari.

I was a writer from the start, but it just took a while to believe it. Now that I’m here, I know that I will always write down my dreams, whether it’s the world of Astradhari or any others that I find.