To you who are reading this, hello. Been a while. Maybe you’ve been reading since I was a blogger in a dorm room. Maybe you’ve been reading since the days of Stranger Fiction. Maybe you started reading more recently. Whatever it is, I’m grateful to be able to write to you. Thank you for reading.

Over the ten-odd months since I last published, I’ve been writing. I’ve been well. I’ve been wondering why I write as much as I do and publish as little as I do.

It’s likely because I think of my writing in the way a novelist does*. The arcs of my pieces are long; I like to explore themes until they’re laid bare. It’s why I write rather than make reels. It’s why I write rather than do podcasts. This is just what it’s like, I’ve come to realise, to be me.

If you have been waiting with breath bated or otherwise, there’s so much I’ve written and intend to publish. I intend to start by publishing part one of a three-part novel I’ve been writing for the past few years. It’s called Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai. Part one is called, rather predictably, Barcelona.

If you’ve ever paid for or supported any of my writing, I can proffer the following reparation for my absence: there’s more for you to read than there is for others.

I can’t wait to share with you all the things I’ve been writing.

Akhil editor@akhilsrivatsan.com

* I write because I must. After writing several essays over the years exploring the question why do I write?, I believe, in my core, that that is true. It’s how I deal with the feeling of looking out of my window and seeing things nobody else appears to me to be seeing. It’s how — to borrow an American cliché — I make sense of the world. It’s why I would, needless to say, never use genAI to write creatively.

Through the seventeen-odd years I’ve been publishing, however, the answer to the question why do I publish? has been harder for me to answer. It’s only in the last ten-odd months of writing and not publishing that the answer to the question why do I write? has been so clear to me. So clear that, for the first time as a writer, I haven’t needed to write an essay to explain why. I’m hoping to get there with the question of publishing as well.

I’m hoping to say, and mean, I publish because I must. On the off-chance that someone else might be seeing the same thing I see out of my window out of theirs, I’d like to reach them.