Back in my school days, I wrote poems.
My favourite poets were Rabindranath Tagore and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Tagore's words taught me to observe life more deeply, while Shelley's poetry showed me the power of imagination and ideas. Through their work, I discovered that writing was more than a way to arrange words—it was a way to understand the world.
I also tried writing stories, but I could never finish them.
Then life happened. Studies, responsibilities, and work slowly pushed writing into the background. For many years, I neither wrote poems nor stories.
I thought that chapter of my life had ended.
Discovering Blogging
In 2011, I discovered blogging.
For the first time, I found a platform where I could express my thoughts through writing and share them with the world. Blogging combined two things I loved: creativity and learning.
Then came something unexpected.
My first payment from Google showed me that writing could do more than provide personal satisfaction—it could also create opportunities. The idea that someone could earn money online through writing fascinated me.
Although life took me in different directions and I couldn't fully focus on blogging again until 2018, the seed had been planted.
The Rise and Fall of Niche Websites
By 2018, I had discovered affiliate marketing and niche websites.
Those were exciting times. Bloggers could build websites around specific topics or niches, write helpful content, and earn commissions when readers purchased products through affiliate links.
Well, I never made millions from niche websites, but I really enjoyed every part of building them. Building websites, learning SEO, researching topics, and writing articles gave me a sense of purpose.
Then came 2023.
The arrival of AI turned the blogging world upside down. Almost overnight, many bloggers discovered that the traffic they had spent years building disappeared.
My own websites were affected.
The path I had spent years following suddenly seemed uncertain.
Returning to Writing
After stepping away from niche websites, I found myself returning to something I hadn't done in years: writing poems.
To my surprise, the joy was still there.
But I also realised something else.
Poetry helped me express emotions and reflections, but stories offered something different. Stories allow us to experience lives beyond our own. They help us understand people we may never meet and situations we may never face.
That is the power of storytelling.
Why Fiction?
Writing stories is not similar to blogging, especially considering niche websites.
Writing informational content on a niche website and writing stories require very different mindsets.
Don't get me wrong!
Fiction is also built on facts, but facts alone rarely move us. Stories do.
A niche website might help someone choose a product, but a story explores fear, hope, love, loss, courage, and the choices people make when life becomes difficult.
Writing fiction lets me explore human nature, which an information piece on a niche website never could.
Among all forms of storytelling, thrillers have always fascinated me.
What interests me most is not superheroes or extraordinary people. It is ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances.
What happens when someone's livelihood suddenly disappears?
What happens when a family faces an unimaginable crisis?
What happens when an ordinary person is forced to make impossible choices?
These questions intrigue me because they reflect real human struggles, even when the stories themselves are fictional.
My novels may not be autobiographical, but many of them will be inspired by challenges, fears, hopes, and decisions that ordinary people encounter in real life.
Why Stories Matter?
I do not write fiction to teach lessons or to satisfy my ego.
I write because stories allow us to explore realities beyond our own experience.
A good story entertains us, but it also does something more. It invites us to step into another person's world, see life through different eyes, and ask questions we might never have asked otherwise.
Most of us will never face the situations that fictional characters encounter.
But we can imagine them.
And sometimes, imagination helps us understand reality better than facts alone.
Looking back, every stage of my journey—from poetry to blogging to fiction—was connected by a single thread: a love for writing and a curiosity about people.
The medium changed. The purpose remained the same.
I still write because I want to explore life through words.