How a Health Scare Taught Me to Value my Writing Life More

by Mandira Pattnaik

Mike Von

My writing life began in 2019. So I am a five-year-old kid-writer. For me, I feel the same awe and bewilderment as a kid in the world, newly discovering things. I have sad days and happy days. I feel tired like a five-year-old after school. I feel elated when an editor (to me, a teacher) praises my work. Like a five-year-old who collects pebbles and fallen leaves, I collect (and gratefully safekeep) editorial notes, reader comments, notebooks and precious emails. They remind me of milestones in my writing journey, important events and things that I have experienced. Along with my print contributor copies sent to me all the way from across the world, I have a folder for all the envelopes the print copies came in. I label and preserve my journals of handwritten notes. I love my writing life.

All this however came to a jolting halt this July — when I landed in emergency. I had been feeling dizzy/nauseous through the weeks before. At times, I could not keep my feet one after the other to walk, the floor seemed uneven. Rising from bed, I had to grab something to steady myself. On some days, my vision got blurred in spite of wearing my reading spectacles or while doing something as basic as cooking or cleaning. But I had kept ignoring the symptoms, blaming them on one thing or other, because I thought I was leading a healthy life — I don’t smoke, drink or keep late nights.

It was a Wednesday morning. The world was rushing to work. I was walking to the clinic, barely able to keep looking ahead. The doctor was particularly alarmed, saying my blood pressure levels were so high I might have had a fall on the way to the Emergency Room, and it’s only owing to my relatively less age that I could walk to the clinic on my own, without help, without having a heart attack. His words made reality sink in. He ordered a battery of tests. Turned out, I had Stage 2 hypertension, besides the genetic rheumatoid arthritis I had already been dealing with.

I am not obese and didn’t have any inkling this was coming on the health front. The situation had boiled down to a lifestyle cause — a combination of stress and lack of exercise. At no point did I think my life was stressful — so this was particularly revealing. The diagnosis had only proved I had been taking on too much engagements, forever striving to balance my writing life with the other life I have.

Anyway, alongside medications, I cut down on as many things as possible in order to lower stress. I had already been nearly absent on social media. I now take periodic complete breaks announcing the same so that no one is inconvenienced by my absence. Being cut-off in a connected world seems obnoxious in many ways and weird in others. I have cut down on my own submissions too, strategically offering my work only to venues I have dreamed of working with or those where the themes particularly speak to my sensibilities and align with my creative process. I am spacing out my writing time too.

All these are bearing fruits. I feel less stressed, and taking time off the constant cycle of acceptance emails and decline notes (that have been my constant and relentless companions for five years) seems new, but exceedingly pleasurable. It feels odd when I wake up to no emails at all as I have been so used to waking up to at least one each day of the past five years.

I also took an impromptu brief holiday in Darjeeling when the opportunity beckoned. The idea of staying so close to nature away from the hot, humid city weather was too good to resist. Once there, I realized the futility of chasing and running around we are accustomed to in our modern daily lives. In the hills of Darjeeling, people are so laid back — earning less, spending lesser, but generally enjoying the pleasures of life way more than we do. The serenity and contentment reflects on their faces and in their gentle smiles when they gather at the center place Darjeeling Mall, to have a cup of tea with friends or join others for a walk around Mall Road. Evenings are for music and food.

Author photo

For the first time in my life, I was in a place I did not want to leave. Some holidays are such that though they are enjoyable, you feel you are done with the place and long to get home soon. Some holidays are such that the place makes you want to visit again, even though for the moment you want to go home. Some, very rare ones, make you feel that you don’t want to go home, and want to stay there forever. This trip to Darjeeling (though it wasn’t my first, but my fifth visit there) was in the last category.

I did not hope to become a writer. Ever. I did not train to become one. I did not plan to become one. But it happened. And then the possibility that anything could change any moment, and that I could return to being ‘not a writer’ again, was a shocking realization. Now I value my writing time more, value my words more, and my publications more. It is the NOW I must live in.

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

— James Michener