Some loves arrive loudly. Mine arrived quietly, on the pages of a notebook.
To me, writing has always meant one thing: inspiration. My earliest memories of it go back to childhood, long before I wrote anything of my own. I used to collect thoughts from great writers, copying their lines carefully and keeping them close like treasures. Those words fuelled me. They inspired me, pushed me, and nudged me to go a little extra mile every single time. Somewhere between those borrowed sentences, I began to believe in my own.
And then came my Nanu.
My maternal grandfather saw something in me before I could see it myself. With his quiet support, and his timely rescues from my mother, I began writing on my own. I wrote about my dreams, my desires, and everything that inspired me. Those pages became my safe place. Writing felt like meditation. When the world felt too loud, a pen and paper made everything still.
I still remember him telling my mother, “She could become a TV anchor, or a journalist, or a writer. You never know.” At the time, it sounded like a grandfather’s fond exaggeration. Today, I understand it was something far more precious: belief, offered freely, before I had done anything to earn it.
Slowly, my words began to travel beyond my notebook. I won my first prize at an inter-school competition organised by the Indian Academy of Pediatrics. The topic was “Impact of Television on Young Minds.” I was just a child writing about other children, trying to make sense of the glowing screen that had quietly entered every home.
When I look back at what I wrote then, it feels surprisingly powerful. The screens have changed. They are smaller now, and they live in our pockets instead of our living rooms. But I see the very things I wrote about happening around me, in the children I meet every day. That’s the power of writing. It makes you see the unseen, sometimes years before the world catches up.
More prizes followed for fresh ideas and thoughts. I found myself on stages, speaking to rooms full of people, and somehow I became a good orator. That surprised everyone, but no one more than me.
You see, by nature I am an introvert. I am the girl who listens more than she speaks, who feels deeply but says little. Writing changed that. It gave me a space to be vocal, to be heard, and to be seen. It brewed a different me: braver, clearer, and more sure of her voice.
And then, as it often does, life happened.
Responsibilities grew. Days filled up. Somewhere along the way, without any goodbye, I stopped writing. There was no dramatic ending, just a slow drifting apart, the way old friends lose touch without ever meaning to.
But here is the thing about a first love: it never truly leaves you.
Every thought that crosses my mind still arrives shaped like a sentence. I still notice the way light falls through a window and wonder how I would describe it. I still collect beautiful lines in my heart. The words never stopped coming. I only stopped writing them down.
So this is my way back.
Girly Tales is me picking up the pen again, the same pen Nanu once believed in. You never know, he said. Perhaps this is what he meant. It may feel rusty at first, and the words may not flow the way they used to. But I’ve realised that coming back to something you love doesn’t require perfection. It only requires showing up.
If you have a long-lost love of your own, maybe music, painting, dancing, or a dream you quietly set aside, I hope this reminds you that it’s still yours. It has been waiting patiently, exactly where you left it.
It’s never too late to return.
With love,
Jyoti
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