When Nilu begins to write, she feels as though she isn't just crafting a story, but rather lifting the heavy stones piled up inside her chest, one by one. Today, she is writing about a young girl who pedals her broken bicycle for miles every day, just to sit in the school library and lose herself in a new book.
Her mother came and stood beside her, holding a bowl of puffed rice.
"What's the point of writing those stories for far-off lands, Nilu? Will they ever truly understand the struggles of our impoverished home?" There was a pinch of doubt in her mother's voice, but her eyes were overflowing with affection.
Nilu smiled and took her mother's hand. "Ma, struggle exists in every corner of the world. The language of a person's tears is the same everywhere. When I sit here and write about the life under our broken roof, someone thousands of miles away might read it and find their own life reflected in my words."
Nilu wants every one of her words to pulse like a living, breathing human being. No artificiality, no mechanically arranged sentences—just something as pure as a heavy sigh or a sudden flicker of a smile. She knows that these writings will one day bring a smile to her family's face and cover her younger sister's education expenses.
As evening began to settle, Nilu looked at her laptop screen. In her story, the young girl had finally reached the peak of a high mountain on her bicycle. Before her lay a horizon that stretched forever. Nilu thought to herself that her own life was just like this story. One day, she too would break through the cage of her limitations and soar into that vast sky on the wings of her own words.