writing

Not So Strange Feeling in A Mountain Top

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Launching Winyu Blog and Winyu Media Web for 2022

Searching New Horizons ( Photo credit- Prakash Luitel)

I was standing in an elevated place some where in Mount Kosciuszko National Park – Blue Lake Walk.

Adventurous things come to mind in elevated places . This time it was during a hiking trip with family and friends. What a memorable experience and what a good new year’s resolution I could come to afterwards.. ” Winyu ” ( meaning Sun in the Aboriginal language of Ngunnawal people) is my newly re-launched blog and web media site.

Strangely the mountains prompt this bold, adventurous feelings, Re- launching of my blog came to me during the Blue Lake Hike. I was thinking about it for sometime, after abandoning my blog some time back. Strange this came as a new year resolution to my mind. Good times, natural environments and strange talks… That is what makes life’s new adventurers.

When my friend Prakash-A deep rooted mountain man, lover of visual cultures and places, an off beat anthropology and film maniac(sorry buddy!), and guess what a Nepalese oozing out mountain breath, talked me over to make this family get together and hiking trip to mountains, I did not think twice.

It was a well-deserved trip for two families -My family and his-whom shared a lot of things together over the years while settling down in this beautiful country Australia, where we live in the bush capitol called Canberra- originally in the home of Ngunnawal people.

The hiking trip was partly planned to celebrate my success finally in to the writer’s circle in Australia as an Emerging Writer- as my short story- ” Rosy Dreams and Rubbish Bins” was selected for publishing after getting through the SBS emerging writers competition in 2021 as one of the 30 selected entries to be published in an Anthology ! It was a surprise and a joyful thing after a long but on-and-off writing journey,

My writing drive has always amazed me as it comes back to me again and again. I have journeyed through print and web media especially writing on environment and science topics in my early years. I have experienced a life of a journalist and a writer as a freelancer. lt was truly rewarding as I always did it partly as a hobby and partly as a side profession whenever time let me in. My effort in this web media is to share my ” fun” and ” good time” in writing and journalism for a wider public and like minded people.

So Welcome to Winyu blog.. In which I hope to share stories about .. say life experiences and perceptions specially about books, writing, people, places ..and…what not. Also , it will be an initiation of a media web, in which I would like to invite my fellow writing enthusiasts and journalists to be guest writers as well.. big dreams in a mountain top.

Here comes 2022!… New name in air Winyu Blog

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Saga of Silence,Colour of Blankness and Writer’s Solitude

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I remember the river bed.. one can climb down to the edge of the river and gaze at the slowly flowing water for hours. I do not remember the reason I climbed down and sit there on the edge of the water where no one was present. It was the river, riverbed and the silence. The silence.. that was what I was looking for. This was years back. But I still remember the silence. The silence which spoke to me… My soul was searching somebody to speak to… Yes, the silence spoke to me…

Growing up near the sea in a beautiful island was a privilege we took for granted.. Where people spend thousands in foreign currency to come and be on the same place we grew up and neglected every day. But I remember those moments, where you can see the blue ocean taking up the blankness of the sky… What I gazed at was the blankness. The blankness of nothing… Yet there is everything in blankness, everything you dream of…

I often wonder how the poets get their inspiration and novelists get their creativity. How artists put their emotions to take a form of life on a blank canvas. Yes, the blankness of nothing can create everything. Silence speaks to you thousand words. When you read a novel and admire the art, you can see the silence come into words. The blankness creating the various forms in the life’s canvas.

I remember a moment when my father took me to his village when I was small. I remember the tiny cottage up in a small hill, surrounded by fruit trees and fragrant flowers. I was lying in a straw mat at the night and listening to elders talking in a slow pace. Yes, the pace was slow… It mingled with the darkness and the small oil lamp spreading a balmy light. The right pace of life to retire into the luxury of good night’s sleep, where the five-star comfort of the world’s best hotel would not offer.

I think every one of us searches a moment of solitude in our lives… That moment gives us our own space in-universe. Today’s life is full of chaos and responsibilities… Gone are the days you have a moment to listen to the silence. Gone are the days to gaze at the blankness. Finally, I end up in a developed country where most people on that island I grew up, would be dreaming to live in.. Finally, I am walking in one of the big cities in the world, regarded as one of the best places to live.

Suddenly in one moment, I craved for the silence in my solitary riverbed. Suddenly I wanted to gaze at the blankness of the sky and sea… Suddenly I wanted to sleep soundly cradled in carefree darkness, listening to elders speaking quietly… That pace of life you feel the inner security and mind is free… Those moments of solitude you get connected to the universe

This is why suddenly I decided to become a writer…

(P.S.- The tropical island which I grew up is Sri Lanka, surrounded by sea, never short of flowing rivers and riverbeds full of fragrant flowers. Distant villages where the time still stands still. The pace of life is calm and quiet. I feel the craving for those moments and places while living and working in big cities in Australia.. Above prose penned by me in a very short time, during that brief time I re-lived the moments and spaces of my childhood. Do you agree writing is a process to heal? Don’t you think writers search solitude in life by re-living those moments?)

Memoirs and Tips from An Accidental Journalist #2 : Story of A Dying Prawn

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I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. –James A. Michener( an American author)

I remember my first piece of investigative writing to a newspaper. Having brainwashed by a science degree (less equipped with common sense), I was trying to put together a story about the vanishing prawn industry in Sri Lanka as a result of a viral disease.. The “X” virus effects the prawns and “Y” number of farms are closing..

“ Who wants to read this sh*t scientists boast about?” looking at my jargon, one of the old hands of journalism expressed his concerns., . “Dig what people have to say first”.. It took time for me to comprehend his concerns..  We write to the public… A writer who does not understand the reader, simply will not get a readership.

After all, Einstein is a human being.. Stephen Hawking’s life story attracts us to his thinking about the universe.. We all have experiences and emotions. We relate to them and not normally attracted to the abstract facts in the first place… unless you are some kind of a nerd. It is easy to attract to the facts with a background life story with emotions.

One week after, my conversation with my “ mentor”  I was traveling in a coastal route with him- of course listening to his remarks about women in his life- to meet some prawn farmers. There came the stories of their life.. Of their miseries and vanishing bank accounts.. True that scientists are pointing to a virus and accusing it …Despite the comments from  Environmentalists “ serves them right”.. What about the true impact to the life of this farmers..

I see journalists garnish their articles with literature and storytelling in good pieces of journalism. Journalism is not merely fiction. It’s a core of facts coated with fiction- after all chocolate coated biscuits are more edible… If you can establish that human connection you are a successful journalist. The story becomes vibrant and living. Story breathes the life.. that capture your audience.

When prawn farming industry went downhill in Sri Lanka within a year or so because of a viral disease called “ white spot disease”, the truth came out with feelings. Once regarded as a lucrative business for small and large-scale investors, became an investors nightmare. The viral disease spread through farms because of the unplanned, environmentally in-correct farming practices. It was too late when people realized harming environment will create your own downfall..

I understood that telling the life story of these farmers will convey the message more emotionally about what happened to this industry. I named my article as “An unplanned industry- a suicidal mission” (of course I wrote in my native language). A blend of science, emotions and true facts mixed with fiction. A story I remember as one of my first attempts to establish my self as a budding journalist. A story of a dying prawn and emotional expressions of a writer.

I regard myself as an Accidental Journalist. Never did it as a profession but continued it for pure passion. . even though some people paid me for my hobby! These are the memoirs and some writing tips, I wanted to share with you, which I gathered from my journalistic journey in my “ on and off” career as a science and environment journalist.

Memoirs & Tips From an Accidental Journalist #1: Let The Passion Lead You

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It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.
– Ernest Hemingway

I believe myself as an Accidental Journalist. My first article published on a back page of a  science magazine in 1997 in my native language in Sri Lanka. (Apart from my family and few friends nobody ever noticed it!) To keep the memory I have kept this piece until today. After several attempts to put together 50 words in a journalistic way, finally, one editor had given the green light for that!  What kept me writing ever since was the passion and excitement.

One day, over 20 years back,  I met a stranger “ accidentally” in front of a library, who was a university student doing some freelancing for a science magazine. To pass the time we were chatting.. Hey.. why can’t I be a writer like you? I went with him to meet his editor that day itself and poured out my passion for writing in front of his desk. A few weeks later, my first article appeared on the back page of that magazine, as the editor got nothing else to fill a small space!

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
– William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Shakespeare whom I struggle to understand still ( as I have no structured literary training, rather I peruse it with curiosity), has said: “Lunatics, lovers, and poets all are ruled by their overactive imaginations”.  According to him, sometimes poets do not see the reality because of that. Taking away the reader from reality to capture the attention is one tactic writer put together with imagination.

My “on and off” writing journey passed through encounters with scientists ( as I was mostly a “ science journalist” ) who spoke too much boring technical stuff that nobody wants to hear. My passion for writing and my imagination gave those science stories their form and kept the editors accepting my jargon.

As writing is a craft as well as an art, one has to learn on their way as a writer. Most of the crafty things of writing have to learn on the way. Well, it’s none of your readers business that you had to learn the fine craft of writing on your writing journey, as Ernest Hemingway said. Let the passion lead you to try new things and you will learn the rules naturally.

If the storytelling is your passion, let that lead you on its way. Good storytellers do it with a passion. Their passion will come into life in their stories. That passion glue the readers to the pages of their books.  Look what one of the popular authors in the history of storytelling  had to tell:

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.
– Edgar Rice Burroughs

So why don’t we- you and me- tell our story? Let passion ignite the desire.. Let us be lunatics and lovers of words and make a form out of nothing like true poets as Shakespeare has put it.