Art Chooses You

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This is a story of a writer from Singapore who, as a teenager, has a big dream of getting away from her homeland for a while and pursue studies abroad.

She knew exactly where she wanted to go. The US. And not just any university. It has to be Harvard.

So, she spent weeks and months preparing essays why she wanted to go to school. That school. After writing and re-writing, she finally drafted it on a typewriter. There were no computers at that time, which means there were no ‘Delete’ buttons for her to rephrase her sentences. She could make no mistakes.

The essays were finally sent. She waited, sometimes with fear, sometimes with hope. The verdict came. She got it with a full scholarship. She quickly set her eyes on becoming a writer. After all, it was her writing that got her into Harvard.

But, her parents said ‘No’. Being one of the few privileged, a-little-lower-than-middle-class kind of girl that was accepted in such a coveted school, she must do something more worthy- like Law.

And, she obeyed. A few years later, she graduated and became a high-flying corporate lawyer with frequent trips to New York, London and Paris to meet rich investors and bankers.  But her writing dream was never shelved. In-between flights, when she felt jet-lagged and couldn’t sleep; she wrote.

She wrote- stories after stories- while being chauffeured, while waiting for coffee, while waiting for her hair to dry. Boy, did she write- of Singapore, of people she met, of life. Then, she showed them to her friends and to some publishers.

Her friends loved the stories. The publishers did not. She never heard from them. But, she never stopped writing.

Then one day, she decided to quit her job for writing.  Her love for writing was so strong that her job was getting in the way. So away with it she did- and gone with it was her five-figure paycheck, and the posh lifestyle that everyone was chasing after.

Nonetheless, she was happy. She felt liberated, and writing has never felt this exciting, this good. Time passed. One day, she received a call from a friend who read her stories. A publisher whom her friend knew liked the stories, and wanted to publish them into a book.

She thought the waiting was over. Finally, she made it as a writer. It’s a good start for many to come. But, no, her book didn’t turn out to be just one of the books in a store. It went on to win an award in the Dublin literary circle.

Right from the beginning, her instinct of becoming a writer was right after all. In her story that she related to friends later in life, she said, “I come to realise that you don’t really choose art at all, Art chooses you.

Once it found you, you can never run away from it.”

I thought it was a really nice story.

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Filed under Artsy-Fartsy, Letters to my brother