e^(iπ) + 1 = 0a² + b² = c²E = mc²F = maA = πr²
Tabish A.
Back to Writing
Mathematics••5 mins

On Writing

By Tabish Ali Rather

Hi. These are my thoughts on writing.

Until I started working on this article, I had not written much other than what I have had to and few scribes here and there. I have not kept a diary, or journal. Although I have been wanting to keep a journal for a while now to record my life. By most measures, I am living an interesting enough life that is worth recording, to say the least. I have been fortunate enough that be able to live in different countries. First I moved to Melbourne, Australia for about 4 years(2/2022 to 8/2025) and to L'Aquila, Italy for 6 months (9/2025 - 3/2025) now I am living in Hamburg, Germany (3/2026 to 9/2026). Then in September, 2026, I am planning to spend at least 6 month in the southern coast of France, a city called Nice (pronounced as Niece). I have been told more than once that I should record these experiences and I think having a record of my experiences would be interesting to look at once these days are gone; "When you are old and grey and full of sleep" to borrow from Yeats. Then, a million dollar question is why have I not been writing? and there are few plausible explanations.

  1. I don't think it is worth it. This is to be rejected because as I have explained I do believe that life is at least worth writing about (living, I cannot say for sure)
  2. I am just lazy. The evidence for this is lacking. In general, I find that I do work on things I consider important and worth doing. If I was to dedicate 1 hour per week to writing, I thin I'd have written something meaningful by now. On this basis, this argument is rejected as well.
  3. Writing is hard. Not only in the technical sense but it in the sense that it is heavy on the soul. To be less dramatic, writing is a cognitively demanding task. To write is to think; to write well is to cogitate. It is not a trivial task to think about ones daily experiences with the medium of writing. It challenges us to confront my existence, to say the least. What if to subvert this challenge, I become dishonest in my writing? Would it be able to fool myself or would I be able to claim, someday, to borrow from Faiz Ahmad Faiz
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Substituting " میرے لوگوں" by "میری" , to say the least. I don't know the answer to this question, all I can say is, I would like to give it "a fair go". For those who don't have the good fortune of speaking speaking Urdu language, you are welcome to reach out to me and I will (try) explain the couplet by Faiz Ahmad Faiz (fun fact: He was arrested after reciting the poem from which this couplet is taken in public)


Having said that, then why am I writing at all now? Precisely because most things that are worth doing are in fact, hard and heavy. I anticipate writing, especially in the public domain, will be a rather meaningful exercise on many fronts, such as:

  1. Allow me the opportunity be honest and precise with my thoughts, arguments and beliefs.
  2. I will have a record of "the life I lived" to look back at someday
  3. Perhaps, I will come up with "an original thought" so to say
  4. Perhaps I this will become a way for me to meet interesting people around the world.

As a disclaimer, I will not use Generative AI in writing these posts. Yes, not even to improve the structure of my sentences(haha).

Thanks for reading

Regards

Tabish Ali Rather