Why I Write?
- Madhukar Dama
- 11 hours ago
- 13 min read
Prologue: The Drug Without Side Effects
Some people run to the bottle.
Some bury their heads in pills.
Some drown themselves in blue screens that never sleep.
I run to the page.
Writing is my intoxication, my sedation, my stimulant, my healing ritual. It sharpens my mind and softens my heart. It keeps me alive, without damaging me in the way the world’s “solutions” do.
I live in a time where every discomfort is immediately medicated, every silence is filled with noise, every unease is labeled a disorder and prescribed away. We have built an entire civilization around avoiding pain instead of listening to it. Yet, the pain does not leave. It only burrows deeper.
I learned that I do not need those poisons. Writing is my drug — a pure one, without side effects. It does not rot my liver. It does not shatter my nerves. It does not empty my wallet or enslave me to dealers in white coats or grey suits. Instead, it steadies me, unclutters my mind, lets me hear myself without distortion.
When I write, I feel the world realign. Confusion rearranges itself into clarity. Fear shrinks when translated into sentences. Anger burns cleaner when allowed to spill into words rather than wounds. Writing does not eliminate my struggles — but it transforms them into material I can carry, even reshape into beauty.
This is why I write. Not because I want to be a writer in the way the system defines it — published, reviewed, awarded — but because I want to stay human. Writing is not career, it is survival.
Others have their pills, their parties, their therapists, their gods.
I have this page.
And it is enough.
---
1. I Write to Stay Sane
Sanity is not something the world hands to you.
It is something you fight for every day.
The system thrives on madness — on keeping people busy, anxious, restless, distracted. We are surrounded by endless noise: advertisements selling happiness, experts prescribing identities, headlines screaming catastrophe. Even in the most remote corners, that static tries to creep in.
But I have learned: sanity does not come from running faster inside that machine. It comes from stepping out, and then finding a way to hold yourself together when the silence feels too wide.
For me, that way is writing.
When my thoughts scatter like frightened birds, writing gathers them. When fears multiply in the dark, writing shines a small but steady light. Each sentence is like a stitch pulled through torn fabric. Slowly, line by line, the chaos inside me begins to take form, and in that form, I find calm.
Without writing, my mind would devour me. It would loop endlessly in unfinished questions and unspoken fears. But when I write, the cycle breaks. The words hold the weight so my body doesn’t have to.
Some people believe sanity comes from conformity: dressing the part, saying the right things, moving along with the herd. But I’ve seen what that kind of “sanity” costs — numbness, resignation, a slow erosion of self. I prefer my sanity raw, fragile, wrestled into being each morning at the desk.
Writing is my therapy that charges no fee, my meditation that requires no guru, my medicine that needs no prescription. On the page, I meet myself honestly. I see my flaws without flinching, my fears without running, my doubts without denial. And in facing them, I stay whole.
Sanity is not the absence of madness. It is learning how to speak with it, how to walk alongside it without collapsing. Writing gives me that conversation.
And so, I write.
---
2. I Write Because I Refuse the System
I was born into a system that wanted me to forget myself.
It told me what to believe, what to want, what to fear, and even what words to use when describing my own heart.
It promised security if I obeyed.
It promised belonging if I conformed.
It promised heaven if I surrendered.
But all I saw was theft: of land, of labor, of language, of soul.
The schoolroom taught me obedience, not curiosity. The economy taught me debt, not abundance. The news taught me fear, not awareness. Even religion, which should have whispered wonder, shouted commandments until mystery itself was strangled.
I refused.
I do not march in protests with placards. I do not scream slogans until my throat burns. The system knows how to absorb that noise, how to turn revolt into spectacle. But the one thing it cannot fully digest is silence filled with words — words not written for its approval, not polished for its markets, not censored for its comfort.
That is why I write.
Writing is my rebellion. Each page is a refusal. Each paragraph says no: no, I will not surrender my imagination to your advertisements. No, I will not surrender my speech to your authorities. No, I will not surrender my truth to your statistics.
I know the system has stolen language. It uses words like “freedom” while building prisons. It uses words like “progress” while poisoning rivers. It uses words like “education” while teaching only how to obey. The dictionary itself has been weaponized.
But when I write, I take those words back. I tear them from the billboards and balance sheets and place them in soil, water, sky. I reclaim them. I give them meaning again.
The system wants me silent or speaking its tongue.
Writing is my answer: I will speak in my own.
And even if no one reads it, even if these words rot in notebooks, they are still my resistance. Because refusal does not always look like fire in the streets. Sometimes it looks like ink on a quiet page, a man alone under a lamp saying:
I do not believe you.
I do not belong to you.
You cannot own me.
That is why I write.
---
3. I Write to Remember
The system is built on forgetting.
It erases faster than it creates.
Children forget their wonder once they are drilled into obedience. Workers forget their dreams once they are chained to wages. Communities forget their stories once television and internet feed them packaged myths. Even our own lives vanish as quickly as they pass, swallowed by routine, blurred by repetition.
Forgetting is not just accident — it is design. A society that remembers too clearly would revolt.
So I write.
Writing is my act of memory. It is how I fight against erasure. When I put words down, I am refusing the slow theft of my days. Each morning spent sowing seeds, each evening when the fireflies return, each laugh of my children as they learn outside the walls of classrooms — I write them so they do not vanish.
Without writing, even I would forget. The human mind is tender, porous. Moments slip through as if they never happened. We think we will remember, but we don’t. Days dissolve into nothing. But when I write, even the smallest fragment of life is caught and preserved. A bird’s call at dawn, the sound of rain on tin, the silence of the forest when night swallows it whole — all of it survives in words.
I also write to remember what the system wants me to erase:
That happiness does not come from money.
That knowledge does not come from degrees.
That love is not what they show in advertisements.
That freedom is not what they print in constitutions.
Writing becomes my archive against the lies of civilization. It is my counter-history. Historians will tell of kings, wars, markets, elections. I will tell of soil, hunger, learning, silence. Both are history — but only one keeps us human.
Sometimes I look at my children and wonder: if I don’t write, how will they know what really mattered? How will they know their father lived, not as a cog in the wheel, but as a human being who chose another way?
So I write to remember, and to help them remember.
Because memory is resistance.
And forgetting is surrender.
---
4. I Write for My Children
I chose not to hand my children to the system.
Not to classrooms where curiosity is suffocated by schedules.
Not to textbooks where knowledge is reduced to lifeless facts.
Not to examinations where worth is measured by numbers.
Instead, I chose to keep them close, to let them learn from soil, sky, water, and story. But homeschooling is not only about freedom from school — it is about giving them something else in its place: a different inheritance, one that cannot be confiscated by governments or markets.
That inheritance is writing.
When I write, I leave them a trail of words. A record of thoughts, questions, struggles, victories. Something they can hold in their hands long after my voice has faded.
I do not want to give them blind faith. I do not want to give them ready-made answers. I want to give them a map of doubts, questions, possibilities. I want them to see that their father wrestled with the world instead of bowing to it.
I write for them so they will know it is possible to live otherwise. That they do not have to consume the packaged lives sold to them. That they can question, resist, imagine, and create.
The system will try to seduce them. It will promise comfort, status, belonging. It will threaten them with failure if they do not comply. My words will be their reminder that all of this is illusion — that freedom is worth more than approval, that truth is worth more than success.
And even beyond philosophy, I write for them because words are intimacy. Long after I am gone, my children can still sit with me in these pages. They can see my fears, my loves, my confessions. They will know me not as a distant figure, but as a fellow traveler who left behind his footprints in ink.
Other fathers leave houses, land, savings, jewelry. I may not leave much of that. But I will leave words. And if I have written honestly, that will be enough.
I write for my children because I want them to inherit not possessions, but possibilities.
Not orders, but questions.
Not dogma, but courage.
This is why I write.
---
5. I Write to Keep Company
Solitude is a double-edged gift.
I chose this life — away from the neon noise of the city, away from its constant bargains, away from its parades of ambition. Out here, the forest breathes without rush, the nights stretch unbroken, and the silence can be so deep it feels like eternity itself.
But solitude is not always gentle. There are nights when it presses down heavy, when the silence stops being music and becomes weight. Days when no voice answers, no eye meets mine, no human touch interrupts the vast stillness.
In those moments, writing becomes my companion.
When I write, I am no longer alone. The page listens. It does not interrupt, does not judge, does not wander away. It receives everything: anger, confession, longing, joy. It holds my words more faithfully than any human ear could.
Sometimes, writing feels like a dialogue with myself. Other times, it feels like a letter sent into the future, addressed to some unknown reader — maybe my children, maybe a stranger decades from now. Even if no one ever reads it, the act of writing itself creates the illusion, the comfort, of companionship.
Because what is loneliness, if not the absence of someone to witness us? Writing is my witness. Every sentence says: I see you. I hear you. You are not invisible.
Paradoxically, writing also connects me across centuries. When I put down words, I join a silent fellowship of all who have ever done the same. The monk in his cell, the rebel in prison, the mother scribbling in secret notebooks, the wanderer under a lamp. None of us have ever met, but we speak to each other through time. Writing collapses the distance between solitudes.
The system sells companionship in screens, in virtual likes, in temporary conversations that vanish with a swipe. I have no interest in that. My companionship is older, slower, deeper. My companions are my notebooks, my sentences, my stubborn words that stay.
So yes, I live off-grid. Yes, there are nights when silence howls. But I am not alone. Writing keeps me company. Writing reminds me that even in solitude, I belong to a vast invisible conversation.
That is why I write.
---
6. I Write to Be Free
Freedom is a word the system loves to use but hates to grant.
It waves the flag of freedom, sings songs about it, writes it into constitutions — and yet every citizen feels the leash around their throat.
They tell us we are free while they bind us with debt.
They tell us we are free while they script our education, dictate our labor, and sell us our own survival.
They tell us we are free while they monitor every movement, harvest every thought, and punish every deviation.
I know better.
Freedom is not what governments print or corporations sell. Freedom is not the choice between two brands, two candidates, two illusions. Freedom is not shouting what they allow you to shout.
Freedom is inner sovereignty. The right to name your own truth without permission. The ability to live by your own rhythm without apology. The courage to say no when the world demands your yes.
And for me, writing is that freedom.
On the page, no one can stop me. No teacher with red ink. No boss with rules. No priest with commandments. No politician with laws. Here, I answer to nothing but my own conscience. Here, I breathe without censorship.
Writing lets me dismantle the cages they built inside me — the cage of shame, the cage of obedience, the cage of ambition. Each sentence unlocks another bar. Each paragraph breaks another lock.
On the page, I travel without passports. I leap borders, ignore visas, erase checkpoints. I move through time freely — yesterday, today, tomorrow, eternity. I live multiple lives, speak in multiple voices, die and resurrect as often as I like.
That is the true revolution: to create a space where you are untouchable. Where they cannot buy you, measure you, or silence you.
And I have found that space. It is here, in the ink, in the quiet, in the act of writing.
The system thrives on cages.
Writing gives me wings.
This is why I write: because without it, I would remain chained.
With it, I am free.
---
7. I Write Because I Am Human
To be human is to hunger for more than food.
To thirst for more than water.
To ache for more than survival.
Animals graze, hunt, sleep, and vanish. They live nobly, but silently. They do not carve their grief into symbols or sing their joy into air. Only humans tell stories. Only humans wrestle their confusion into language. Only humans leave behind trails of words so the unborn can still hear their voices.
This is why I write. Because it is the most human thing I can do.
I do not write to impress. I do not write to sell. I do not write to build monuments of ego. I write because silence alone cannot contain the fullness of being alive. I write because I must testify — not to a court, not to an audience, but to existence itself.
I want to shout to the void: I was here. I loved, I feared, I struggled, I dreamed. Even if no one listens, even if the void swallows my words, they were spoken. That is enough.
Writing is how I resist becoming a number. A file. A statistic. A consumer profile. The system reduces human beings to data — trackable, predictable, profitable. But words refuse to be reduced. They carry mystery, contradiction, soul. They remind me I am not a machine, not a cog, not a product. I am a creature of language, imagination, memory.
And I am not alone.
When I write, I join a lineage of humanity itself:
The first handprints smeared on cave walls.
The chants whispered around fires.
The poems scratched on clay tablets.
The journals hidden in drawers.
The voices censored, smuggled, silenced, yet still surviving in ink.
To write is to stand with all of them. To say: I too am human. I too add my voice to the chorus.
And it is not only about me. Writing is a gift across time. Long after I vanish, my children or strangers may stumble on these words. They may find themselves less alone, less lost, because someone before them dared to speak. Writing collapses the distance between hearts, between centuries.
That is the most human act I know.
So I write. Not because I must succeed. Not because I must be remembered. But because to be human is to express — and to write is to live twice: once in experience, once in words.
writing is my drug
I write because the world
is too loud when I listen,
and too empty when I don’t.
I write because pills are sold
in every color,
every promise,
but none of them tell the truth.
I write because sanity
is not delivered in neat packages,
not a prescription,
not a headline,
not a therapist’s nod,
but something fragile you build each morning
with trembling hands,
like fire from damp wood.
I write because the system
has stolen every word I grew up with:
“freedom” now means debt,
“education” means obedience,
“progress” means asphalt poured over rivers.
So I take the words back,
wash them in rainwater,
hang them in sunlight,
and let them breathe again.
I write because forgetting
is the quiet death.
Most lives vanish
not with violence,
but with erasure —
days dissolving into
blurs of screens,
jobs that consume decades,
routines that leave no trace.
I will not be erased.
I write to remember
the rain on the roof,
the eyes of my children,
the weight of silence
when the forest stops breathing.
I write for them too —
not to give them answers,
but to give them questions
sharp enough to cut open lies.
Not to hand them maps,
but to remind them that wandering
is holy.
I write because solitude is heavy.
Nights stretch like steel cables,
mornings echo like hollow caves.
There are days when silence feels
like a hand tightening around my throat.
But the page listens.
The page does not leave.
The page has never betrayed me.
Ink becomes company.
Sentences become voices
that answer back.
I write to be free.
Not the freedom they sell in commercials,
but the freedom of saying
I will not bow.
The freedom of leaving cages unlocked,
of naming truths without permission,
of flying through borders
with nothing but thought for wings.
I write because I am human.
And humans tell stories,
even when their mouths are sewn shut,
even when their bodies are crushed,
even when no one listens.
Writing is proof.
Proof I was here.
Proof I lived,
not as machine,
not as statistic,
but as soul,
as hunger,
as voice.
I write for the unborn stranger
who might one day stumble on these lines
and whisper —
I am not alone.
I write because silence
is too expensive.
Obedience is too poisonous.
Forgetting is too easy.
I write because it is the only drug
that steadies me,
the only prayer
that doesn’t demand a priest,
the only revolution
that does not rot with slogans.
And I will keep writing,
even if no one reads,
even if every word
is swallowed by dust.
Because each word is victory —
small, stubborn,
quiet as a seed
that splits stone.
And sometimes,
quiet victories
are the only ones worth winning.
