That writing schmiting stuff

So, there's this fiction magazine. Of short stories and poems, by Indian writers and writers from other parts of the world too, like Ireland and the UK. You submit your stuff and if the staff votes for it, it gets in the next issue. I think my poetry is bad. So I had to write a short story.

I did. And I sent it in. And then I saw all the epic stuff all these epic writers had sent in and thought, nah I don't stand a chance. But hey at least it made me sit down and write for five hours and churn out nine pages of a complete story: something I've never had the focus to do before.

Anyway.
I get this email.
And it's the Editor and he says I'm getting published.

It's an international e-magazine that'll be available on Amazon among other places, and they're attempting to get it sold physically too. I'm not gonna say anymore, I don't wanna jinx it! Maybe I sound silly. But it's a really big deal to me. It's not like seeing my work in newspapers or ordinary magazines, it's an actual compilation of stories distributed to the public, like the real thing. It's one of those things that makes fools like me hold on to that pipe dream of turning into a successful novelist some day.

Here are some extracts from my short story. It's called Finding Peace.

Nala wasn’t like the other girls in her village. While at the age of thirteen, they started wearing long skirts and tied their hair up in long braids and learnt to smile demurely like a proper young girl should – Nala cut her hair like a boy and wore elephant-pants and sneakers and laughed as loud as she wanted. Once the naïve farmer’s son Yudish pointed at Nala’s head and laughed - ‘well look at her hair, it’s like a boy’s!’ he exclaimed – Nala simply responded with a ‘so what!’, her defiant dark eyes flaring out at him, before she gave him a hard clouting on the shoulder. ‘What a strange girl that Nala is,’ would be the often-heard remark made at the village square – a remark tinged by that distinct tone of disapproval closely associated with the elderly among us – in a conversation between old women who had gathered to discuss the day’s affairs. ‘Don’t know how her poor mother is going to find her a husband!’ -someone else would throw into the gossip, before the women would burst into good-natured laughter. [...] 

Nala grew up with an avid appetite for stories, poetry and all kinds of things from books [...] – and she was very clever – too clever than is proper for a proper young girl, some might add. [...] 

The older Nala got, the deeper her fears and doubts seemed to provoke her, and it was in her eighteenth year that she found herself seated pensively below the avocado tree next to the window – listening to her mother and aunt inside, talking about her marriage. ‘He is a very nice boy, from a good family – very well to do! He has a farm on the North side of the village, a large paddy farm, it has been in his good family’s name for almost a hundred years now – just imagine!’ her aunt was saying. ‘He is also a good age for Nala – he is 32, so mature and serious and grounded, I think he will know just how to control those wild childish ways that she has not yet grown out of…’ Nala’s mother did not say much as her sister went on, except to offer a murmur of agreement every now and then, as she sipped her tea quietly. ‘It is a perfect match! I have talked to your husband already,’ Nala’s aunt continued. Nala’s father had, indeed, been spoken to about this proposal made to the daughter he doted upon – and since then, he had begun to make himself scarce at home, meeting Nala’s enthusiastic ramblings and occasional queries with an air of awkwardness where previously he had responded with equal zeal, as though he were now ashamed of something – and he would then rush out of the room to ‘attend to some work’. [...]

He gave his daughter a wide smile, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘You will be happy,’ he said, before looking at her one last time and leaving the room – whether he said these words to assure his daughter of the nature of her future, or in fact, to assure himself of it, one cannot be certain.

Nala stood in the middle of the study, looking at the shelves of bound books rising around her. How she wished, she prayed, that the ground would open up its jaws right now and swallow her whole, like the Earth had swallowed Sita. She heard the trumpets sounding from outside – the band for the wedding was practicing for the pleasure of the crowd. There were cheers, and drums and a loud, joyful, upbeat tune – sounds that now encircled Nala in her solitude, as though to say to her triumphantly, ‘Ha ha! You are sad? It doesn’t matter, the show will go on!’ [...]

She lifted her heavy choli, and climbed over the gate in her backyard – the one that led to the private road behind her house. She had to make sure nobody saw her. The road was empty – everyone was at her house, celebrating the change that her life had been decreed to take. Everyone is happy about the wedding, but the bride herself - she thought, smirking at the irony. She lifted the choli and made a run for it. She was not sure where she was going – all she knew was, she had to get away from it all. No, they would not - could not - take her, not without a fight. [...]

AND SO IT GOES. Cool no? It's my first short story. Philip Sidney once said being a writer is like "being with child", labour pains, the pressure, oh the agony. But it's so worth it when the thing finally comes out, all fresh and new-born. 

So you're a housewife?

Women today can work if they want to, there's plenty job opportunities and much more options out there in the world for us than our foremothers ever even dreamed of, thank god. The 21st century Ideal Woman, therefore, is in heels and suit, a CEO maybe, for whom marriage and children are no more pressing concerns, who if she wants, can tackle nurturing babies and looking beautiful and still get back to that board meeting at 9am.

The housewife is a thing of the previous world - she stays at home and looks after the kids, while the husband goes out hunting and brings home the bacon. And I don't know about you, but where I come from, housewives are looked on as exactly that - as remnants of some outdated trend, and they are often even viewed as uneducated, unmotivated, ambitionless and not deserving the same respect a working woman gets. I mean, what do they do? someone would say. Just sit around at home ironing shirts and meaninglessly whiling away the time.

I, however, think housewives are awesome.
They're not glorified maids - they do a lot more than just cook and clean, they're caretakers. 

Now, I'd never be one. Firstly, my ironing is average at best, I'm too much of a sloth to cook for anyone, and when I see used diapers dramatic horror music in the style of violins plays in my head. I have trouble properly taking care of myself much less anyone else. Plus I can imagine the reaction from the family if I stated housewivery as the whole of my ambition - I KNEW I SMELLED SOMETHING FUNNY IN YOUR ROOM, YOU'RE DOING DRUGS AREN'T YOU?!

Secondly, I'm obviously not for the idea of forcing a woman to get married and stay at home. But when a woman chooses a housewife's lifestyle of her own accord, I think it's admirable.

Being a housewife is not easy. It's not meaningless either. I don't know how it works in all households, but I've seen a few housewives in my time and their lives are full of hard work, dedication and patience - sometimes even more so than any working woman I've met.

Let's follow this fictional account of the life of the typical efficient housewife, who wakes up at 6 in the morning on a weekday. She cooks for the family, she gets ready their clothes, she kisses them each before they leave home. She then proceeds to clean the house from one end to the next, sweep the floors, mop the kitchen, wipe down the tables and mirrors. She checks the mail, gets the bills in order, makes phone calls about things that need fixing, has a quick lunch. She has to prepare dinner for visitors, she drives to the supermarket to get the groceries, she drops the clothes in the washing machine while the chicken boils, she reads the papers while the clothes dry. She checks on the baby, feeds it, changes it, straps it in the back of the car. She drives to school to pick up the kid, she goes to see the other one play his first tournament, then she stops at the supermarket to recharge her teenager's phone. She guides the gardener to re-do the backyard, she gets the plumber to fix the leak, she rearranges the library in the study. She collects the dried clothes in a basket, she makes tea for the evening, checks her emails, rocks the crying baby to sleep. Quickly takes a shower and gets ready for dinner, she manages to look nice for her family, and manages to churn out an excellent meal. She entertains the guests, she puts the dishes in the washer, she checks on the children, pep talks and homework help, she's a disciplinarian and a teacher, gets them to wash up for bed, tucks them in. Joins the husband in bed, who's spent 9 to 5 in a leather chair in an air-conditioned room, talks to him about his day, helps him with his project concept. She falls asleep at only 2am, has four hours of sleep before it all starts again.

So what you might have noticed about this housewife, and probably the reason why her kind is a dying species, is that she serves. All through the day, she is giving, to her children, her husband, her house, to people who visit her home. Although she is in control of the household, she is doing less for herself and more for others - it's sacrifice. And women everywhere have now realized that they no longer have to sacrifice anything for anyone, that they don't need to serve, that they can be as self-serving as men have the opportunity to be.

While it's great that women don't have to be so self sacrificing anymore, I find women (or men for that matter) who choose to make a lifestyle sacrifice, out of love, in order to provide happiness for others - extremely admirable. In a world that has increasingly put such a great value on notions of self-interest, self-serving and every-man-for-himself in this rat-race, I think it's beautiful that someone would choose to be at home to watch over their child all day, not wanting to miss a moment of his life, or spend time and energy and creativity in producing amazing meals for the people she loves, or making the house perfect just so her family can enjoy it - it's beautiful that some people want to dedicate their lives to the happiness of the people they love. In the 21st century especially, you don't always need a degree or go to an office to be an educated person and to experience a full, passionate life of contentment.

Housewives are unsung heroes, who slave away all day (I have an aunt whose life is almost identical to the one I've narrated above - she's one of the most intelligent, strongest and happiest women I know, and has accomplished nurturing her kids into amazingly disciplined trophy-winning all-rounders - I thought she'd have time on her hands and I said 'read this book' and she's like 'when? I never have any time!') receiving barely any appreciation, as their roles are so often taken for granted, and viewed in such reduced terms by most of modern society. So here's to yall. I wish I could be as selfless and hard-working as you. 

When In Rome...

I brought my palms together and said namaste, aunty to the landlady - she and her husband were taking me and the housemates out to dinner.

The neon sign said 'Sethi's Restaurant', it blinked in bright pink and green. It was an outdoor eatery, and we were seated under the sky in white plastic chairs. On my left was a black metal fence, with a sign that said SMOKING STRICKLY PROHIBITED. On my right was a mishmash of colourful signs from different shops and joints. In front of our table were some bushes, randomly planted in the middle of the eatery.

Next door, Gaurav was being wed to Gunjan - or so the big sign had said on the main road. A huge colourful tent had been erected, a facade that gave the impression of a gold and red palace, and the wedding music was on fullblast, involuntarily providing us over here with a soundtrack to our dinner. By wedding music I mean every popular song from the latest Bollywood movies, remixed to a sickening disco beat.

They placed a tray of onions on each of our plastic tables first, appetizers I think. One bowl had some dip for the onions, the other had thin slices of onions, and the other had small, round, full purple onions. My housemate picked up a whole onion and put it in her mouth. So I tried it too. I've never put a whole onion  in my mouth, it was weird.

We were in the semi-dark, with only the lights from the road and the outdoor kitchen (of mostly child cooks) to illuminate the evening, and barely. They switched on the white light bulb that hung far up above our heads from a lamppost so we could look at the menu. Then the landlord was saying to the waiter in Hindi 'switch it off! switch off the light!' and we were plunged into semi-darkness again. This puzzled me for a while till I discovered that the light bulb apparently attracted the flying bugs, which would buzz about before passing out and falling into things on the tables below, so you see, people preferred the bulbs be kept off. But, well, they still kept those bulbs up there, just in case anyone took the bugs-falling-in-my-food option.

However this didn't keep one determined tiny insect from falling into my roommate's glass of water. She pointed it out to us and everyone shrugged it off. Insects from bulbs fall into drinking glasses all the time, so what?

Next, they brought us fish sticks and chicken kebabs and a white sauce. After this was the main course: naan and butter chicken and such, while I enjoyed a dish of vegetable fried rice. Everything was delicious - the best food that I have had in ages. I dug into the food and water and Pepsi, completely putting aside any concern for insects or the open air kitchen or the fact that I could hardly see what I was eating or the crazy Bollywood music or the firecrackers booming behind me.

Yes, firecrackers. Trumpets, trombones, big white lanterns in a procession, white horses, men in red uniforms and big turbans playing drums, people's hands emerging from the jubilant crowd and poking the air to the beat of a song -- all for Gaurav and Gunjan's wedding. To top it all off, the firecrackers were going off in the sky, on the road, all over the place, explosions and smoke and the whole works.

Everyone here was least bothered. Please pass the fish sticks.

After a hearty dinner we had something they called 'sof' - lots of tiny little colourful beads that left a minty fresh taste in the mouth. 'Don't drink milk now,' warned the landlady, 'you shouldn't drink milk after eating non-vegetarian food.. it'll give you white spots on your neck!'

We drove around then looking for 'paan' - which I found out only later was betel leaf. There are all kinds of variations of paan, though the most popular one has areca nut and tobacco in it -- ours were sweet so no tobacco (I think). I looked at it hesitantly, it was almost three inches long and a neatly wrapped triangle of betel leaf - what was in it I was not sure, and was not sure I wanted to know. It was the 'meeta' variation however, which means sweet. 'Just put the whole thing in your mouth,' said a housemate, 'and chew'. It didn't look very chew-friendly, I thought. I mean, it was wrapped in a leaf.

But I managed to bite off 3/4th of it and, I don't know how to describe it to you. At first it was like.. putting a sugar-cane tree in your mouth. Wikipedia says the stuff in it is 'an addictive and euphoria-inducing formulation with adverse health effects'. An excess of sugary water gushed out of it, it was basically like gulping down a bucket of diluted syrup, it did give a rush but not a particularly 'euphoric' one. It was weird and interesting, and even kind of gross. Instead of spitting this stuff out like I've seen ordinary betel chewers do, however, they said I was supposed to swallow it all. So I had to actually eat this leaf full of weird. Unpleasant. Parts of it tasted like detergent, and parts like cinnamon, and parts like, well, LEAF. I am definitely not cut out to be a herbivore.

They played loud Punjabi music in the car on the way back and I got my Punjabi on, poking the air with my fingers with as much zeal as I could muster. We wound up in the park in a circle where I was made to sing the only Hindi song I learnt the lyrics to and I sang it off-key too.

Could those firecrackers have exploded in my face as we crossed over from Sethi's? Possibly. Did I unknowingly drink Pepsi á la bugs in that semi-darkness? It's very probable. Am I going to have digestion problems? I don't know but I never say never.
But hey, when in Rome... 

Religion & Gays: The Awkward Dispute

I'm not gay, and I'm a Muslim, so obviously like all orthodox religions mine forbids homosexuality. But if you ask me what I think about the situation of the universal gay community today, I will tell you that I won't stand against them nor will I stand for anyone bullying or ostracizing gay people. Please remind yourself that this is a personal blog - I am not speaking on behalf of any religion or group, I'm only speaking for myself. I may be wrong according to you, but so what?

This seems like a big contradiction - your religion says gays go to Hell and you support them? - first of all, I don't think it's that simple. I don't believe Islam or any religion in fact, at its core, is so simplistic and reductive to say 'you do A - and you go to Heaven, you do B - and you go to Hell' -- even though a lot of religious people are so fond of being just that simplistic and reductive about their faith. Let's look at the basics. I'm not clear about other religions, but at the very core of Islam is love and peace - the very word 'Assalamalaikum', a greeting on the lips of every Muslim person as commonly used as 'Hello', means 'Peace be upon you'. It also explicitly says in the Qur'aan not to bother people because their faith or lifestyle is different from yours, to leave them be as long as they treat you with the same respect. I am also a strong believer of the notion that genuine religion is not a matter of blindly following rituals and heeding rights-and-wrongs from a rule-book - it is an extremely internal thing, and at the end of the day, your fate is between you and your god -- not between you and the society around you. 

There's a story narrated by the Prophet Muhammed, about the prostitute, who saw a dog dying of thirst and filled her shoe with water for it to save it, and God loved her completely for her goodness. So you can judge all you want about who's doing it right or wrong, but ultimately you don't have the right, because you can't possibly see what's really going on on the inside, where it matters. 

So then we already know the arguments made by homophobes, and the arguments made by gay people, and all that jazz. And we can hypothesize all we want and be proud of our convictions - but what really happens outside our heads, in practise, in the real world? Too often, people who feel they are gay (regardless of whether they are born with the feeling or decide to be gay) are bullied. They are ostracized, they are hated, they are ridiculed and hassled and are forced to struggle between the person they feel they are and the person society wants them to be. I've heard of enough real life stories about gay people who have tried to 'un-gay' themselves - for the sake of their friends, their families, their 'reputations' - only to be forced to live an empty meaningless life, plunged in despair and loneliness, only to seek escape in drugs or crime or even suicide. 

For a while, I thought I could stand on the fence about gay people, because it's confusing - when you meet nice, wholesome, kind gay people, and then your religion says their lifestyle is wrong. I thought I could say 'I won't stand in their way but I won't join them in their rallies either' and I was going to be in that weird neutral grey area, avoiding the responsibility attached to forming a strong opinion. 

But I realized that whatever my uncertainties, I am 100% certain of one thing: that cruelty against a human being is cruelty - there is no justifying it, not by my religion, not by me. Whether you believe that gay people are wrong, or that religion is wrong, or whatever -- it doesn't really matter what you believe. What matters is that you don't use your beliefs to perpetrate criminal acts on other human beings, that you don't use your opinions to cruelly attack people. Look into the essence of any doctrine and tell me truly if any of the prophets or gods or whoever would stand -- for making a young boy contemplate suicide, because the world around him hates him for who he feels he is, for making a person cry and feel alone and depressed, for making all these people feel like criminals for being a certain way that feels natural to them? Even if you feel like the lifestyle of a gay person is wrong by your standards - hating and hurting him or her is not going to make anything better, for anyone. Think of a humane way to convey your thoughts. 

So stop the violence against gay people. If you can't support them in their parades, that's fine - just don't support cruelty against them, because people are more than their sexualities, they are still flesh and blood and mind. Whatever your convictions about homosexuality - ask yourself, will you allow bullying to become justifiable? Are you the type of person to support cruelty against people in the name of beliefs? Would Jesus or Muhammed stand by and smile and nod, as you knock down someone who says he is gay and tell him that he is now somehow sub-human and does not deserve any respect or happiness? 

The man without eyes

I realized today, that I have a crapload of work to do. But I painted the man without eyes instead of doing any of it. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I got through first year in university with such a penchant for indulging in bullshit that has nothing to do with the important stuff (what they say is the important stuff, anyway). 

Once I met a man without eyes. I stuck my finger where his eye should have been. He said, that's not very polite. I said, I'm sorry... How did you lose your eyes? He looked at me - well he would have looked if he could have - and he said, I never had any to begin with. I went close and I peeped in, through where-his-eyes-should-have-been. 'Looking for me?' said a little man sitting inside his head. 'Who the hell are you?' I asked. 'I'm the man without eyes', said the little man sitting inside the head of the man without eyes. 'No you're not! You're a little man sitting inside his head!' I argued. 'What's the difference between the man and the man inside the man's head?' said the little man, and went back to his knitting. The man without eyes said, have you been talking to the little man in my head? I said, yes. Don't listen to him, he replied, he's mad. Okay, I said, but why is he knitting? The man without eyes said, why wouldn't he be? This is weird, I said, you're a man without eyes, and there's a man sitting inside your head, and he's knitting. This is very weird! And very random! And doesn't make any sense at all! The man without eyes said, yes, but so is life! Then suddenly the little man poked his head out through where-the-eye-should-have-been and said, 'Aha! There's the punchline!' 

Arty farty it's all a party!

I don't even know what I was thinking with this blogpost title.

I went to Mandi House today with H and M, two of the very few people in my batch who give a crap about culturally refining themselves. I am such an arty farty elitist bastard

Mandi House is da bomb. Let me elaborate on that since people besides me have stopped using 'da bomb' in sentences since the 70s.

It isn't really a House so much as it is a section of the city. It is the art hub of Delhi. Well, I haven't explored Delhi enough to call it the art hub, but it definitely felt like it. A lot of auditoriums line up the streets, promising all kinds of theatrical productions, posters and billboards of arty events everywhere, men with funny earrings and accents, some silly hipsters, and quaint cafes scattered about.

Wait, I know what you're thinking, oh god Shifani is turning into a pretentious art fag.

WELL I still hate those hipster glasses and I'm not wearing a beret, so YOU'RE WRONG, OKAY?

Sure the place, like anything to do with art, is bound to have its share of annoying pretentious pseudo-intellectuals, but overall - on the contrary - it seemed really, really nice. Mostly because it's a place that celebrates unique Indian art, in distinctly Indian style, form and languages, and it's not trying hard to be anything else than that. It's full of variety, and I found it so stimulating how as you stood at the top of the main street, you had your choice of stories to choose from - each auditorium promised a different one, in the form of artists and lights and drama.

Something else that was stimulating was the LASSI. Do they have lassi in Colombo? I don't know, maybe they do, by another name, and I've just been a noob. It's basically just yoghurt, water and sugar, whipped to a thick delicious cream. I held my glass and said to it lovingly, you make life worthwhile, lassi, while H and M advised me to stop talking to inanimate objects (it's only gotten worse since the scandalous chair incident).

We went to the cafe attached to one of the auditoriums -- and for 50 Sri Lankan rupees, I got a very tall glass of awesome lassi. For about 80 Sri Lankan bucks each, we got a whole plate of spring rolls, and a giant bowl of chillied potatoes. Things taste so much better when they're not ripping up a hole in your wallet. We then went to the National School of Drama in the evening, stood in queue and watched the people lying on the green lawn and the dragonflies like helicopters filling the summer air, before sitting down for a satirical play by Vijay Tendulkar. The ticket was 100 SL rupees. Next week I'll get to watch a classical Hindustani dance performance by renowned artists, for free.

The point of my babbling about le adventures at Mandi House is that I want to see this shit in Sri Lanka. I don't mean to sound unpatriotic but really, what does Colombo have in terms of drama and art? We have Lionel Wendt, the Harold Pieris Gallery above, Park Street Mews, the National Art Gallery, Punchi Theater, and a few school auditoriums. People who go to these places are very, very rarely the common masses. They're usually an exclusive crowd of the privileged, the upper and upper middle class, the English speakers. We are still too busy glorifying Shakespeare in our heads and acting out his 16th century plays-for-England, to come up with any solid dramatic literature ourselves. Art and drama in Colombo, if you ask me, is selfishly boxed up for a hi-fi minority - art has become, like in the Victorian era of England, a thing associated with only a small posh class. Some, like the lovely artists on the pavement of the Viharamahadevi stretch, create art too, but because they are not part of this special class they must sell their stuff at 1/100th the price of some awful crap that's being sold inside a Gallery.

What is the art and theatre scene like outside Colombo? Is there one?

But anyway, yes. I know, as a Sri Lankan, I'm supposed to be like, 'OMG INDIA SUX SO BAD!1111' (where does the patriotic animosity stem from anyway? cricket?) but we can sure learn a lot from the art scene here. I want to see a Colombo that has theatres and exhibitions and plays overcrowded with The Average Somapalas and Somalathas! -just because it's an important thing to propagate cultural refinement and intellectual evolution in our masses, and not just that - but to use art as a tool to churn out issues important to our national society. Where we don't cut out whole classes of people from the chance of flourishing at art. Where the tickets don't cost a fortune, and the food costs even less. Where funding is arranged to give students everywhere a chance at enjoying theatre and art, for free, just because that stuff is that important. Where Sinhala and Tamil plays are just as numerous and popular, if not more, than the English ones. And we need to put lassi in all the shops goddammit.

Overheard in college corridors

16th Century girls were so stupid. 

That's because they were subjugated by men who kept them from using their heads!

Why? 

Dunno.. probably scared that if the women started using their brains they'd notice just how dumb the men were!