Spotlight On Writers
Dibyangana
- Where do you originate from?
I come from India—a country that feels like an entire world held together in one place. It’s deeply rich in history, layered with diverse cultures, languages, and traditions that coexist in a way I find both fascinating and grounding. What I love most is its sense of balance between ancient and modern life, where stories from centuries ago still breathe through everyday spaces.
India, to me, is also incredibly alive in its landscapes. From mountains to seas, forests to bustling cities, it feels like there is always something new waiting to be discovered. I haven’t explored even a fraction of it yet, but that’s what makes it feel endless in the best possible way.
- What do you cherish most about the place you call home?
What I cherish most about home is that it is not confined to a place or built only of walls and familiar corners. I once read a line in a book that said, ‘Home is not where you have been, but where the people you love are‘, and over time I’ve come to feel it in a much deeper sense.
Home, to me, lives in people—in my parents, my family, my friends, and the quiet presence of those who continue to care for me in ways that often go unspoken. They are the ones who stay, who hold light in moments when everything feels heavy, and who make comfort feel like something real and reachable and I am so grateful for them always.
But home is also larger than that. It stretches beyond what is visible. I find it in the universe itself—in the stars that feel like they have chosen me just as much as I have looked up to them. Even in moments of struggle, there is something strangely comforting in the way they remain constant, as if silently reminding me that I am not alone in the vastness.
So for me, home is both intimate and infinite: it exists in the people who love me, and in the universe that feels like it gently chooses me back.
- What ignites your creativity?
What ignites my creativity began with my relationship with the English language, though even that feels too small a way to describe what it has become for me now.
I didn’t begin writing with intention or direction. It arrived quietly, almost like instinct. In moments of hurt I didn’t yet understand, in silences that stretched longer than I could hold, in emotions I couldn’t give shape to out loud. I wasn’t trying to create something meaningful. I was only trying to survive what had no language yet.
But slowly, something within that chaos began to settle. Not into perfection, not into resolution, but into form. Writing didn’t take away what I felt—it simply gave it somewhere to exist without letting it consume me entirely. It became a space I could return to, where I didn’t have to translate myself into something easier to understand.
And somewhere in that process, I realized something quietly profound: I was not alone in it. There is an unspoken thread that connects writers, readers, and anyone who has ever turned pain into language. We may not carry the same stories, but there is a shared recognition in the fact that we have all been shaped by what we don’t always say out loud.
That is what makes this space feel so deeply human to me. We break in different ways, but we also return in different ways. We rebuild, we continue, and we carry traces of what we’ve survived—not as something to hide, but as something that proves we made it through.
For me, words became more than expressions. They became something like a tangible version of myself—something I could hold onto when I didn’t know how to hold myself. A safe space that didn’t ask me to be whole, only honest.
And maybe that is where the real connection lives—not in flawlessness, but in recognition. In the quiet moment where someone reads your words and realizes, even briefly, that they are not alone in theirs.
- Do you have a favorite word, and could you incorporate it into a poetic phrase?
My favorite word right now is resilience—though I have to admit, I carry many words with me, and it is never easy to choose just one. They shift, they return, they linger differently depending on what life feels like in a given moment.
But at this point in time, ‘resilience’ feels closest.
It is what remains after the storm has already been survived, when the sky no longer needs to cry but the ground still remembers how it felt. It is learning to sit with the weight of what cannot be undone, and still choosing not to become less because of it. Deeply human in that way—tender, fractured, and quietly resistant in its refusal to disappear.
Resilience is not the absence of breaking. It is what prevents breaking from becoming the final sentence.
It is what stays when even hope feels distant—when mornings arrive uninvited and heavier than expected, and yet you still gather yourself from the edges of yesterday. Not whole, not untouched, but still here—becoming something softer in the place where endings once lived.
“Resilience is what remains when even hope forgets your name—
when silence grows heavy enough to echo inside your bones,
and mornings arrive like something you never agreed to survive,
yet you still rise from the wreckage of your own thoughts,
hands full of fragments you never asked to carry,
heart still learning how to beat in a language pain never taught you.
Not healed. Not whole. Not untouched.
But still here—
standing in the aftermath of everything that tried to end you,
becoming something unrecognizable from what was broken,
yet alive in a way nothing could fully erase.”
- What is your pet peeve?
My biggest pet peeve is probably anything that disrupts structure when I’ve already built it in my mind. I tend to be more of a planner, so when things don’t go the way I’ve mentally organized them—whether through unexpected interruptions or avoidable mishaps—it unsettles me more than I’d like to admit.
I also find it difficult when people are unkind without reason, or when words are used carelessly. Things like broken promises, or phrases thrown around without thought, especially when they affect someone deeply, stay with me longer than they probably should. I’ve come to realize that words can either hold someone together or quietly undo them.
Of course, I know I’m not perfect either. I have my own flaws and moments where I fall short. But I’m trying, in my own way, to become more aware of them and grow through them rather than ignore them.
And maybe that’s all it really is—learning, slowly, how to be better without expecting perfection.
- How would you describe the essence of Dibyangana?
I don’t think I sit still long enough to be defined in one way. There is a constant movement within me between grounding and lightness, between depth and simplicity, and I am slowly learning that both are equally real parts of who I am.
Some days, I turn inward. I write out the heavier thoughts, the ones that feel too layered to carry quietly, and let them spill onto paper so they do not stay trapped inside me. Writing becomes a way of holding myself steady, of making sense of what feels too large to understand in silence and also in a way connecting to the world outside in my own way. It is less about creating something perfect, and more about creating space—space where emotions can exist without needing to be explained away.
And then there are other days when I am lighter—almost unburdened—just a teenager being a teenager. Watching movies without dissecting every meaning, reading books for comfort rather than analysis, tidying small corners of life, laughing at things that do not need depth. Existing without constantly translating everything into feeling.
I think both versions are me. The one that feels deeply and the one that learns how to breathe without weight. The one that holds silence and the one that fills it. And I am beginning to understand that neither needs to be fixed or reduced for the other to exist.
I also do not think of myself as someone who has everything figured out. In many ways, I am still becoming. I still have days where I question myself, where uncertainty feels louder than confidence, where I struggle with things I thought I had already learned how to carry. Like everyone else, I have moments when the road ahead feels unclear. But I think there is comfort in remembering that difficult seasons do not last forever. If there is night, there will eventually be morning. If there is rain, there will one day be sunlight. Life has a way of moving forward, and I try to move with it.
I find strength in the idea—that no feeling is permanent, and that healing often arrives quietly, long before we realize it has begun. One thought that has stayed with me comes from the lyrics of my all time favourite singer, Taylor Swift: “You gotta step into the daylight and let it go.” To me, that is not about forgetting what hurt you, but about choosing not to build a home inside your pain. It is about allowing yourself to keep walking towards the light, even when you cannot see all of it yet, and to keep forgiving yourself and others along the way.
Somewhere within all of this, I am learning to be like a phoenix—living, burning, turning into ash, and still finding a way to rise again. Not perfectly, not without scars, but repeatedly choosing to return. Learning to dance in the rain, to find meaning in small moments, to make the best of life even when it feels uneven or uncertain.
And if I am being completely honest, there is a part of me that has always felt like a bird with restless wings. Sometimes I feel as though I am carrying old thoughts in a young heart, and other times I feel as though I have only just begun to understand the world. There is still so much I want to explore—so many places to see, so many stories to uncover, both within people and beyond them. I want to listen to the untold stories hidden inside hearts, and the countless ones waiting in the wider world. Creativity, for me, is one way of unfolding those wings. It allows me to travel beyond my own experiences, to connect with lives different from mine, and to keep discovering what it means to be human.
And maybe essence is not about being complete. Maybe it is about continuing to become, while holding on to wonder, kindness, and gentleness along the way.
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