Yesterday I got to talking to someone about magic. He maintained that magic is only another name for anything we cannot explain. It started me thinking about magic in ways I never had before.

If one dissects the word ‘magic’ scientifically, I suppose his definition is true. In fact I could not refute his argument nor come up with an alternative explanation. It however struck me that the word is filled with something else. It’s not just what it seems to be. It’s swollen with mystery and beauty and romance and divinity, nature, creation … it’s such a beautiful word that a definition like that does to death.

Talking about creation led me to thinking about writing – now writing is something magical. One can be grammatically correct, use all the right words at the right place and have a vast vocabulary on display, and yet not produce a spark of life in the writing. On the other hand I see some very simple writing come alive with a life of its own. This is magic – simplicity and beauty combined.

I am a complete romantic – creation in any form seems magical to me, though it may be explained, though it may be simulated in test tubes, though it may be represented through formulae. The magic here lies not in the explanations or the discoveries but in the process of discovery and eventually the joy that it brings. I guess it is the process that is magical and the end result, the beautiful creation. A spark exists amidst it all that seems elusive though we may have explained away the world. Its this elusiveness that is magic.