I never planned to be a writer.

My mother took me to buy books.

The earliest memory I have of myself is telling my mother that I wanted books. I do not remember saying it. I remember her telling me about it afterwards, and about a book stall in CST where books were cheaper.

I do not know how long it took us to decide to go. What I remember is the two of us walking, asking every other person on the road to point us the right way. Two confused women. Really I was a tiny girl, and my Amma was catering not to my needs but to my desires. Despite a rough childhood, these are the gestures of hers I remember.

Eventually we found it. Not one stall, but a whole lane of them. We did not come from a lot of money, so there was a budget. One shop was selling ten books for three hundred rupees, and it felt like a deal because it was. We bought the set and went home happy.

₹300 for the ten of them

I devoured them. I read them like my life depended on it, and in no time I wanted more. That ache has never left me. I still walk those lanes, where a young woman once took her baby to buy her a desire.

She was catering not to my needs but to my desires.

I did the work well and questioned it the whole way.

Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think about becoming a writer. A superwoman saving the world? Every single day. A writer, never.

I came from an English background, so I decided teaching would be my fate. In honesty I still think it might be. I started tutoring two young boys and I gave myself to it. I did my homework. I read the materials. I learned things for them. I gave up my Sundays during their exams.

And every single time I walked the fifteen minutes to their house, I questioned everything. The money was good. I did it for two years.

Something in me was deeply unhappy. I have always felt I was more than my situation, and I have always behaved like I was less.

I felt I was more than my situation, and behaved like I was less.

So I went looking, and then I quit.

I went looking for God. I knew him. I knew his name. I worshipped him. I did not feel a connection.

My answer to every search is to study it, so I took a two year diploma in theology. I understood him. I still could not connect. Then he put people in my life who taught me not theology but spirituality, and everything changed.

They say love makes you do crazy things. My faith made me quit a well paying job, and it gave me back more than the confidence. It gave me my family.

The last of the money.

The money ran out. I had spent most of my life being carried by my parents, and I felt a shame in asking them for more.

On the thirty first of December I had five hundred rupees left. That was all of it. I had nothing to spend and no plan at all. I prayed for a clear path, and I gave the five hundred away.

₹500

Everything I had on the last day of the year. I offered it, and asked to be shown a path.

Six days later, a message arrived.

I opened LinkedIn because my partner told me to. I am not sure I had even posted anything. I had done nothing to promote myself as a ghostwriter, because I did not believe I was one.

I closed the client that day.

Actually, God did.