I Don't Remember When I Decided to Write

I don't remember when I decided to write. I'm not even sure there was a moment. There was no grand announcement. It happened much more quietly.

Maybe it started when I was in college. Not with stories. With people. The friend pretending he wasn't heartbroken. The couple fighting outside the canteen and sharing fries ten minutes later. The professor who always looked a little lonelier after class. I noticed things. (Probably too much.)

And somewhere along the way, I started writing them down. Little observations. Half-finished thoughts. Conversations I overheard. Feelings I couldn't quite explain. Nothing I would have called "writing" (not then). It was just my journal. A place where ordinary life somehow became interesting.

Then college ended. And life became... life. Work. Responsibilities. Love. Heartbreak. Marriage. Family. Bills (these definitely got serious). Arguments. Goodbyes. Sunday afternoons. People arriving. People leaving. And without realising it... I had more to write about than ever.

Because eventually, I wasn't only observing people anymore. I was becoming them. (That changed everything.) I knew what it meant to love someone. To disappoint someone. To miss someone sitting in the same room. To laugh in the middle of a fight. To watch time quietly change the people you love. And writing stopped being something I occasionally did.

It became the way I made sense of things. Of relationships. Of families. Of growing older. Of the things we say. And especially... the things we don't. I realised I wasn't interested in extraordinary people. I wanted to write about us.

So, hi. I'm Arjun Setia. I write stories about ordinary people living ordinary lives... and the extraordinarily complicated things they feel along the way. Love. Marriage. Parenting. Friendship. Family. Memory. Growing older. Sometimes heartbreak. Sometimes humour. Usually a little bit of both.

I don't want this page to simply be a place where I tell you about the books I write. I want it to become a place for the stories I keep noticing. The lives we almost lived. The letters we never sent. The conversations we never had. The homes that made us. The people who still live somewhere inside our heads. Maybe you'll recognise someone here. Maybe, occasionally, you'll recognise yourself. I hope so.

So I still don't know exactly when I decided to write. Maybe I never did. Maybe I just kept noticing life for long enough... that one day, I realised I had been a writer all along.

— Arjun, still noticing.

A note from Arjun

Hi, I’m Arjun.

Welcome to this little space I’m building.

I’m a writer, a storyteller, an observer…
someone who believes that thoughts...no matter how silly, ridiculous, bold, uncomfortable, or completely illogical...deserve to be expressed.

Because when they aren’t…

they burst.

And the noise of a thought that has been kept inside for too long can be louder than any explosion you’ve ever heard.

I say this because I’ve experienced it myself.
And I’ve seen it in the people around me.

The things we wanted to say but didn’t.
The stories we wanted to tell but kept postponing.
The feelings we buried because they seemed too small, too strange, or too difficult to explain.

Somehow they stay with us.

I feel incredibly lucky to have been gifted with the ability to observe people, to notice the little things, the pauses between walks, the silences between loud conversations, the beautiful messiness of being human...and somehow turn some of those observations into stories.

And that’s what this space is about.

Stories.
People.
Thoughts.
Feelings.
And all the things we don't always know how to say.

Stories about characters who might feel strangely familiar.

Characters who might remind you of someone you know.

Or perhaps…
a little bit of you.

Maybe, through my stories, you’ll laugh at something you’ve lived through.

Maybe you’ll see a part of yourself you never knew how to put into words.

Or maybe, just for a few minutes, you’ll get to live a life you always wondered about.

So, if you like stories that are rooted in ordinary people, complicated emotions, little moments, and the wonderfully imperfect business of being human…

you’re in the right place.

Welcome.

I’m Arjun.

And I have a lot of stories to tell. ❤️