When stories find us

 I stayed up late last night reading a book. Bollywood adapted Phanishwar Nath Renu’s story long ago, and here I am, only some seventy-odd years late in reading it. Though I wasn’t even born for forty-four of those years, that does nothing to diminish the magic of the world Renu created in Maare Gaye Gulfam.

During vacations, we used to visit our Nani’s house on the outskirts of Ranchi. Back then, Ranchi was a hill station—at least in my childhood. It rained almost every evening, and power cuts were frequent. But they never bothered me. I had no mobile phone or iPad to charge, after all.

All the kids would gather on the chowki under the mango tree in the lawn, and my Nani would sit in the middle, one of our heads resting on her lap, as she began telling stories—stories of all kinds. Demons, kings, fairies, magical animals—her world had no limits. She sang dialogues in our local language, changed her voice for each character, and her face played out every emotion. Oh, what a storyteller she was!

I still remember her telling me the story of Sonibala, a little girl who wanders alone into a jungle and meets a bear family. I was so fascinated by it that when we returned home, I begged my mother to tell me the story the same way Nani had. I was heartbroken when I found the same tale in my school library—only in English, titled Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Since my school days, I have been deeply drawn to mythological stories. Ramayana, Mahabharata, Shiv Puran—they fueled my imagination. I never read the texts, but I devoured the TV adaptations. As I continued watching, reading, and consuming stories of all kinds, I gathered knowledge, but along with it came curiosity—and confusion.

If Manu and Satrupa were the first humans created by Brahma, then who were Adam and Eve?

If Vishnu, in his first Dashavatar, took the Matsya Avatar to save the world from the flood, then who built Noah’s Ark?

If Savitri followed Yama to bring her husband Satyavan back to life, did Orpheus take inspiration from her when he traveled to the underworld for Eurydice?

If the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s White Nights lets go of Nastenka, why does it remind me of Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s Usne Kaha Tha, where the hero sacrifices his life to save the husband of the woman he loves?

I have yet to find a plausible explanation, except for the belief that all of humankind shares a common ancestry. Not just a biological one, but a lineage of thoughts, emotions, and stories—where love and grief may be written in different languages but are painted in the same colors across humanity.

Everything one writes has already been written. Everything one thinks has already been thought. But does that make thinking and writing a redundant exercise?

I believe it doesn’t.

Instead, it gives us more to think about, more to read, and perhaps, more to write. It turns a Maare Gaye Gulfam into a Teesri Kasam. It allows a reader sitting in rural Bihar to pick up a story seventy years after its inception and imagine the beautiful, untouched world of rural Bihar that the writer once wove.

And that, perhaps, is the true magic of stories—they wait, patiently, for the right reader, at the right time. They travel across generations, across geographies, carrying pieces of their creators with them. Some remain unnoticed, gathering dust on forgotten shelves, while others find new life in the hands of those who see them not as relics, but as living, breathing worlds.

Maybe that’s why we write—not because we hope to say something entirely new, but because we long to be a part of this endless conversation, to leave behind echoes of our thoughts for someone, somewhere, to discover.

That's why we write.