Open mouthed and open ended

Last month I wrote here on the distilled wisdom of five years of writing, well I have been writing all my life really, but that was unaware putting down of words on paper, whereas last few years I have approached the writing a little more armed and aware;  a little less emotional, more in control, but of course only just.  And I said in that post that the endings I liked were a bit messy, a couple loose ends here and there, something that could go on in the reader's head after s/he had shut the book.  Open ended stories, in other words.

Just after I posted that nugget, I had the rare fortune of having a short of mine critiqued in detail by a publisher.  The patron goddess of wisdom, who is also the patron of writing incidentally, obviously has a wicked sense of humour.  The critique I received, itself about half the length of the story, a thorough job! and its message was that my story had a beginning, and a middle, but no end. It apparently failed to deliver because it left too many unanswered questions.  If this had happened five years ago, I would probably have been reduced instantly to a wreck.  But that is irrelevant. I hadn't submitted my work for publication, and so perhaps the 'rejection' for it was definitely a rejection, didn't feel overwhelmingly catastrophic or anything.  More like a quiet joke life was snickering at.  "Open endings, hah! Take that!"

Coming back to the point - the whole thing made me wonder, are open ended stories such damp squibs really?  Forget  my short, it might have other flaws apart from the unanswered questions, but generally? Didn't the father of the modern short story Chekhov himself favour open ended shorts? So many other writers seem to do too - take at peek here, and I am sure there are readers who do as well.  I mean, I'd understand a reader who wouldn't want to be left hanging after reading a 200 page novel, but a 2000 word story? What do you think? Do you feel cheated if some of the questions are left unanswered? Does an open ending deliver any reading satisfaction for you?

How to write a story: five guidelines gleaned in five years

Think of a story. Then cut it in half. Then in quarters. Pick up each quarter and isolate it. Bundle it up in such a way that it feels kind of complete in itself.  And then choose from the second, third or fourth where you're going to begin, maybe a point where the emotion's a little intense; or maybe cool, reflective. Pick a happening event and start in the middle of things.   That gives the story the narrative space to vault into the back story, which is not the back story at all, but the beginning.

In media res. In the middle of things.  Even the epics are written like this. What's good enough for Homer and Krishna Dwaipayana is certainly good enough for me the paler mortal.

Guideline no 1:  Never begin at the beginning.

Beginning anything is difficult.  Once a thing starts moving, it pretty much keeps on moving unless an effort is made to bring it to a stop.  Who said that? Newton, I think.  Ask any machinery operator, or an entrepreneur - start-ups require the maximum energy and attention.  Once things have started going, momentum carries them along, purring nicely.  What holds good for the entire solar system certainly holds good for me the tiny speck.

If the story begins in the middle somewhere, in the thick of action or plot, when it is three-quarters over in the writer's head, then obviously it is already more than half-done and done well.

Guideline no 2: A story well-begun is half done

Whatever it is you are writing, it must grab the reader's attention and keep it. The story must hook the reader with its beginning, and not let him go till the finish. Collude with him so that he is part of the action, part of the characters' psyche, living inside their heads almost as much as the writer.  Show him that only the paths are different but the choices and challenges, the indecision, the heartbreak, the triumph and tears, are the same.

Each of us lives in our separate bubble of time and place, with its own micro-environment, culture, mega-issues and stress. But a good yarn must break through all that and take him out of himself, engage him in another, perhaps unknown place, an imaginary bubble that doesn't exist in the physical world. Ensure familiarity by telling him mini-tales he already knows, motifs so familiar in our collective culture that he recognises them instantly and unconsciously. But also challenge him by not spelling out every little detail, let him fill in some blanks himself.  

The epics do it by referring to well-known oral traditions, crystallising them and embedding them into the narrative.  Modern writers do it by drawing upon the epics, on the collective art and literature of the world.  And like I said, what's good enough for Vyasa...

So, Guideline no 3: Collude and allude

A short story does its work in max 7500 words, most of them less than half that amount nowadays to accommodate changing tastes and shortening attention-spans.  Micro-stories pare it down to less than 100 words sometimes, poetry even less.  

The reader however sees a couple of pages, reads it in a few minutes. He doesn't even get a whiff of the internal madness that has gone into the making of it, however short or long.  The agony of where exactly to start, how to build the tension, what motifs to stud into the narrative, the meticulousness that has gone into choosing one particular word over another, he will see none of it. A tale well-told must always appear effortless, but there must be madness in the method. Otherwise the story will be lifeless and dry. That is the covert madness, the writer's passion.

What the reader will see is the conflict and the climax, where the story peaks, the characters and action go a little mad.  And then they make their choices, the action falls gradually away into the end.  Things going a bit mad in the story somewhere is what makes or breaks the middle.  Unless the plot 'thickens' the story flags and the readers yawn, put the book down, or click away to another site.

Guideline no 4: There must be madness in the middle, and in the method

Ever notice that a story is supposed to be an arc? Even a storyline is an arc, because a straight line is really a curve, a segment from a circle of an infinite radius.  Everything is a cycle, a circle, a loop. The show always goes on.  With or without you, the narrator.  The show must go on in the readers' head, there are no endings; only a point where you must judge your exit and finish speaking. Timing is crucial.  

All good stories stop short of an ending and let the reader carry on with the denouement.   And if the beginning has been chosen well, the ending is a piece of cake.  

Sometimes, even the writer himself can pick up the threads and carry on - writing a trilogy or septet as is the favoured mode nowadays. 

Guideline no 5:  In my end is my beginning.

Let me just say here that these guidelines, and I use the word guidelines loosely, apply outside of fiction as well.  To poetry for instance. They even apply to blog posts. Actually this blog post starts with Guideline 5 and not 1. But I sliced it up and started with the end.  Which could double up as easily as an actual ending too.  See what I mean?

A bit of babble, but not much squeak

For the last three months, words haven't poured out of me as they normally do.  I like to think that it's because my patience and/or my control has become better, but I suspect it's more to do with knowing to shut up when at a loss for words. Is that an improvement? Never mind.

The biggest thing that's happened in the past months was the vacation and the book launch. The IB-HCI anthology was finally done and released on Aug 1st.  Two separate launch events were held, sadly none at Kolkata, so I had to be satisfied with photos and reports and emails, but that didn't matter so much because I never expected that I would be attending anyways.  It just felt wonderful to see it all come together and to hold it in my hands.  And it has been a thrilling and a huge learning experience all the way - from presenting the contest ideas through to being mentored by Ashok Banker and the whole process of edits with the HCI team.

It's available from various retailers, here's the link from Flipkart. 

No babble, no squeak

Sometimes, a lot happens but doesn't exactly produce a pile of writing.  Looking back, a lot has happened since I wrote here last - I joined a writers' group, I submitted poems, I got through some final edits of the final edits of the anthology, I started off a new story which is taking its own sweet time to get to the end, I wrote a guest post on a blog that I admire (wow!), I sat myself sternly down and completed the first draft of a poetry manuscript,  and I wrote a bunch of poems for my blog and just like that.  All the usual stuff that one can't really write about, they don't lend themselves to a dramatic narrative anywhere.


Then there's the other stuff -  how the son did something right when he had the choice of easy on a platter, and both heart and head got swollen up to the point of bursting with pride and happiness and concern too.  An old friend said she was coming to a neighbouring country and asked if we could meet up there? and how the stars and the universe and the immigration bureaucrats aligned up their wills to make that happen.  A close relative suddenly made a gift that took the breath away with its generosity and love, and another said bitter things that made for discomfiture and bafflement.  No amount of dramatic narratives would do these justice, if I wanted  to write them down, which I don't. I keep these hushed inside myself for as long as possible, away from the sunlight, away from the babble and squeak of everyday meaningless noise.

In love with love

It never ceases to amaze me that English, which is one of the richest and oldest languages, certainly older than Bengali my mother tongue, and richer with a vocabulary of more than a million words compared to Bengali's 100,000; but English has just one word for love, okay two if you count affection. Neither of them are nuanced, neither of them indicate the nature of the emotion, the object to which it is directed. Clipped and curt and businesslike, it gives you the state of the one who feels it but no further details. In the Indian languages I speak/know, and in Arabic which I try to speak and know a little, there are several words for love. In Bengali, there is general love, there is romantic/sexual love, there is the affection felt towards someone younger, there is the love of a mother towards a child, there is spiritual love directed at a divine being. And portmanteau words, which are an integral part of the normal language, no neologisms there, yield unending variants: mother-love, brother-love, son/daughter-love, friend-love. Does this say anything about the speakers of the languages?  I mean, apart from the fact that Bengalis are dreamy navel-gazing idealists in love with love?

Last couple of months have just zipped by - the child went on his first independent, international trip with his class to France, and all my energies in the days of his journey and leading upto it were taken up with not unravelling with worry and spoiling it for him. He managed fine though he did not wear as many layers as I had required and entreated and begged him to.  Once he reached, there was no way to communicate directly with him, but I survived somehow.  Glued to the updates that his teachers provided.  

Also the alternative medicine didn't work, not an iota of improvement after 6 weeks of relentless and fussy doses of pills and restrictions, so went back to the regular ENT and got regular allergy medicine, which seems to be working fine so far.  Breathing in, breathing out.  What more does one need? Keeps it simple, the priorities, love it simple. Wonder if there is a word for that in Bengali?

Tomorrow, or rather in a few hours, the A-Z Challenge starts, and this time I am better organised about both the reading, writing and visiting.  I am not sure whether I should sign up with this blog too, I had originally thought I would, because then I could plan the ones on M-i-V and this could be completely spontaneous, I am a pantzer by inclination! But then again it might be better to wait for the third year to do that.  

Minor epiphanies

Is it enough time now? To look back on the year 2014 with some perspective, I mean.  It's been a very mixed year for me personally. Joyous family occasions and visits in the first half of the year made it go down sweet and smooth in one long, breathless swig.  But then a whole lot of things happened in the second half, some mere irritants and some rather awful. They steadily drip-dripped all through, eroding morale and mood. So I kept putting off the stock taking, the mental toting up of pluses and minuses. Meanwhile we are already halfway through January and the first few global disasters have already muddied the waters - Charlie and Boko Haram. And while je ne suis pas Charlie, je suis Ahmed more likely, and je ai eu some sort of epiphany definitely. There is never going to be a better time, for anything. This is the way it is, warts and all, and if I want to sum up, it will have to be done with them included. I can't slice into time, hold up a skein to the light, turn it this way and that, to make the past look or feel better than it was.

The worst of course was death, and last year it happened to come in threes. First a friend, then an aunt, then a friend's mother who I called aunt, and who had once done up my hair as a child, which incidentally my real blood-aunt had never done. That's how my life has been, strangers and friends have done for me what relatives normally do, and I see this repeated in my son's life as well, the perk-pitfall of expathood. But I digress. In between the deaths, there were the usual annoyances of relocation - the shipment took ages to arrive, a couple of books were slit into halves by the customs while checking for contraband, a few possessions of no particular value but prized nevertheless, got lost or broken.  

Somewhere along the line, my connect with Bahrain snapped, a place where I was happy to be previously, now feels vaguely strange, strangely claustrophobic. On the other hand, my connect with Egypt, which seemed to have snapped clean as I had got ready to move and pack over the long summer, I now find hasn't really, ragged threads here and there persist and surprise me still. Even the usual remedy of going away on a holiday and then the return, that coming back to own spaces and the aha moment which usually drives the nail home as to where home really is, failed to work this time.  The son was supposed to go on a school trip, a strategy I had thought would settle him in, but backfired big time as the visa didn't come through in time.  At the very start of our holiday in mid-December, he had a nasty fall and hurt his ankle, and we ended up going to the airport via the orthopaedic surgeon's clinic. Fortunately it wasn't a fracture, but a ligament injury can be almost as serious.  He is a total trooper and happily trudged on with an ankle brace for the holiday, but our enjoyment was rimmed with concern and initial panic.  A mixed holiday to round off a mixed year.

But it's not all bad.  It never is.  There have been highs as well.  Writing-wise, and family moments; spikes of enjoyment and laughter with friends. I have finally taken control of my health, and have resolved to sort myself out in 2015 once and for all. Trying some alternative medicine right now, which admittedly isn't working, but we'll see.  A time frame of three months, and then I dive into more intrusive treatments, which I have been avoiding for the past five years because I am a bit scared of it. Wealthier and wiser seem elusive, but healthier is an objective I can do something about! And I'm going to get a grip on the anxiety and the needless panic.  

I know I feel this every January, I felt this way about 2014 as well, and boy, was I right! This year too feels important somehow, meaningful in some obscure way, as if I am just months or weeks away from something greatly significant.  As if the changes haven't finished with us yet. I don't know whether that change is going to be for the better or worse, I hope it is for the better, but I know as long as we hang in together, we will manage to cope if, by chance, it is not.  

Unfinished and unbalanced

This year, as in all years, I try to tote up balance sheets, the profits and losses, the learning and the opportunities lost, and it seems overall like a hard year to sum.  It has been a hard year, harder than usual, difficult in complicated ways.

I have travelled back and forth, I have moved home, I have battled with my usual, baffling, allergy-related illness and ye olde spirit is finally flagging, I am more uncomfortable in this body and its odd “disability” at this moment than I have ever been in the last five years.  I started learning Arabic and then stopped, I am not sure whether this is going to be a permanent break or if I will be able to pick it up again next year.  I blogged and wrote much, but still couldn’t complete the edits to the novella, and now that I think about it, maybe I should rewrite the whole thing, keep the kernel and scrap the rest.  A bit disappointing either way.  On the other hand, I also wrote a whole bunch of flashes and short stories and poems, some of them felt real good too, I started a new blog where I am less poetry and more me, all me in fact.  A blogpost here won an award. But right now all that doesn’t feel as important, as monumental as the things that didn’t get done. 

When I had come to Bahrain more than eighteen years ago, that was a huge change, from a working woman to a trailing spouse, from a big city, dwarfed in an even vaster country, to an island nation where one fell off the farthest edge after an hour’s drive.    Claustrophobia would have been justified then, but I am feeling it now with a lag of eighteen years.  As it was, I had got on with the job at hand and settled down and made the most of, even revelled at the staying-at-home part then.  I learned to cook and bake, found flexi-time jobs, wrested new computer skills, started a family, learned knitting from scratch, read a lot, made up stories and poems for my infant son, and left myself no time for disgruntlement.   Moving back here from Cairo seems minor in comparison, I already know the territory, both physical and psychological. So it feels a bit weird now, to be hit with this irritable restlessness, this chafing at a way of life that has been long familiar, in fact enriching even, truth be told.  

It is patently obvious that the further I have journeyed from my place of birth, the more time and resources I have had to look at my paths mindfully and critically, to regulate the pace of the travel; to glean, at leisure and unstressed, whatever insights that might have been granted me. I have been lucky in more ways than one, so it feels petty and above all quite baffling to give way to an attack of negativity.  To lose my perspective and let it be coloured by the temporary heartaches of the last half of the year.  Maybe I should revisit all this later this month, leave this blog post unfinished as of now.  The year is not yet over.  I think that is just what I will do.

Forever Indian II

Banners in front of the Tata office, Mokattam, Cairo

What, Indianisation?  Again? Well, yes.  In a previous post, I have put forward a historical perspective on the multifarious ways the world has been Indianised, past and present.  I have dutifully looked at facts and blathered on about figures - populations and diaspora, trade and FDI.  I don’t say facts and numbers are not important, they are. Extremely important. But they are kind of dry.  Lack the thrill sometimes, that sense of amazement on unearthing some tiny miracle tucked into the mundane somewhere, wholly unexpected.  Nope, numbers can never tell the entire story.  For that one has to look beyond them.  

Forever Indian

India has captivated the imagination of the world since ancient times.  Her list of contributions to our collective knowledge base and cultural heritage is formidable.  From small things like buttons (Indus Valley Civilisation, 2800 BCE) to sophisticated concepts like the zero and ahimsa, Indian ideas and discoveries have diffused across the world for millennia and still impact lives today.  A paisley patterned scarf, a dish of kedgeree, a game of Ludo, a peaceful protest rally – these are all more Indian than you think! 

It wasn't just charity that began at home

Over at the other blog, the "flogged" blog, which incidentally has just celebrated its third anniversary, did you even think we'd survive this long? I know! I even surprise myself sometimes. Anyways, getting back to the point, over at that very respectably-aged blog we have been talking about identity, straddling cultures and alienation and frustration resulting from the diaspora experience. With a British-Nigerian poet who knows a thing or two about straddling.  And identity and alienation. And of course, poetry.

I found that post extremely interesting.  Partly because she happens to be a native of the country where I was a foreigner once, the bakuwa, often called bature, the skinless one, the distinctions between my lighter Asian skin merrily conflated with that of Europeans, to my discomfiture, resentment as well as astonishment.  But as I reflected on my diaspora experience, it kind of appeared that my entire trajectory has been a little different, drawn awry by its own momentum.  

The first cut is the deepest

But first, a couple of actual experiences where I felt unfairly treated because I was a minority, a foreigner/stranger or some way related to my identity.

Toppish and Tennish : A Choice of Short Fiction

Did you see that books-that-stayed-with-me challenge recently making the rounds everywhere?  A couple of friends tagged me, and then I tagged a couple, and before I knew it, my tbr list, which is always a mile or two longer than I like, was raging totally out of control.  

I had at least two books of short stories on my list.  So the other fall out was that I couldn't get rid of the idea of putting together a list of memorable short stories.  Here are some wonderfully rich tales, sad, happy, comic, horrifically thrilling, and deeply satisfying.  No particular order, and many more stashed away in the memory bank, restricting myself to the ones that were TOM when I sat down to write the post.  Except for a couple, most are available online so links included.  And no, none here from Chekhov, don't kill me!  I  do not really like his stories, the fault is entirely of my own taste and character, nothing to do with his brilliance.

The End of the Party  - Graham Greene



Silver Water -  Amy Bloom




The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - Ernest Hemingway




Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl




The Necklace - Guy de Maupassant




My Beloved Charioteer - Shashi Deshpande (No links that I could find, part of an anthology called The Inner Courtyard)




The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield




The Ant and the Grasshopper - W. Somerset Maugham




The Gift of the Magi - O' Henry



Sredni Vastar - Saki

I am actually rubbish at picking favourites.  The minute I put down Sredni Vastar say, I feel conflicted, what about the Reticence of Lady Anne?  And The Last Leaf is surely just as sentimental and satisfying as The Gift of the Magi, isn't it?  What about Alice Munro, she is a favourite contemporary short story writer, where do I fit her in?  Margaret Atwood?  Kazuo  Ishiguro?Salinger? Twain?

And how can I not even mention the richness of Bengali short fiction?  Samapti by Tagore still gives me goosebumps, Banaphool's works, Satyajit Ray's Fritz... And what about the novellas?  Mice and Men, and The Snow Goose and The Small Miracle.  The names come tumbling one after the other and there's no stopping. The nicest thing is of course that  in real life, there is no need to stop at ten or twelve, no need to pick favourites at all. 

Do you like reading short fiction? And if you do, which are the ones that you have liked?

Heraclitus, melancholia, and summing the summer

I certainly can't remember having heard of Heraclitus till a minute ago, can you?  He was an ancient Greek guy characterised as  a "weeping philosopher" because of his melancholia, which incidentally makes him my kind of guy straight off, because I am all for a good weepfest every now and then. He spoke, my intensive research informs me, obscure truths.  And one of his obscure truths, which is way more familiar to me than his name, was that no-one can step into the same river twice. What he is actually supposed to have said was "everything changes and nothing remains still...and...you cannot step twice into the same stream."  

It was all yonks ago, so who can tell what he theorised accurately?  His words were reported by other philosophers, who in turn were quoted by their pupils and so on.  Rather alarmingly like a game of Chinese whispers gone berserk, only neither in Mandarin nor in Cantonese and nor in whispers. However, be that as it may, the idea has always resonated totally with me, somewhat surprisingly, I have to admit, as I don't possess a single philosophical grey cell anywhere in my brain. But if that stream caper is true, then by that same logic, you can't step onto the same island twice either.  And I have been given the opportunity to verify his obscure truth for my own self as we returned to live in Bahrain for the second stint.  It is not the same island I left almost a decade ago, and neither am I the same woman.  We'll have to settle in afresh, no short cuts, no royal and easy roads to it.

Summing up

The beginning of summer, truth be told, feels such a long time ago now.  Late in April, that's when it's summer in my hometown, the husband received a phone call one Friday morning from the HQ and rushed off to the backyard as there never was a clear signal inside the house.  I thought nothing of it, phone calls from the HQ are not exactly a remarkable feature. He came back and duly dropped the bombshell, which turned out to be okay, I mean I wasn't shattered or anything, though I had imagined I would be.  We had been in Egypt for more than 6 years, I had begun to think of my child sitting his school certs there in another 3-4 years time.  We had settled down, found our grooves in that place and life felt good. Now if this isn't an opportunity to indulge in a couple of sniffles for someone who enjoys a weepfest, I don't know what is. But not a single sniffle.  I was surprised by my own steady reaction.  

Of course, one half of me was devastated at having to wrap my head around the idea of not getting my regular Cairo favourites and fixes.  But the other half? For the week we didn't know the posting, it spent its time happily researching the various possible locations, schools, housing, hospitals, how to connect with the rest of the expat community there, what local ruins and monuments were there to drool over. You know the drill.  But it so turned out that we weren't being sent off on a fresh adventure, but were to return to Bahrain, the place where we had started out in the ME almost 18 years ago. And once known, that too felt right and good.  Shortly after, in early May, we left for India to attend a family wedding. There was another one I was to attend in July as well, after the school holidays began.

In the few days I had before flying off, we established contact with schools in Bahrain (always the first priority) and I called a friend who lived there.  We spoke at length, one of those connections where one can pick up the threads without any effort, and she invited me to put up with her instead of a hotel on arrival.  I said I didn't know when that would be, but I'd let her know as soon as the dates were finalised.  Both of us were mighty glad that we would be seeing each other regularly again, but she quite frankly said that I would find Bahrain "a little boring" after the cultural and historical density of Cairo.  I knew it too, I would have to deal with it.

Two weddings

Three months passed by in a few fast flashes, we enjoyed both the weddings, ate, drank, danced and made merry.  For a time, it was uncertain whether I would have to pack up the house before we left in July, but that thankfully wasn't the way it worked out.  The son sat his admission tests in Cairo for the new schools, and also his regular exams, there was enough going on to keep things lively for all of June.  He and I left for Mumbai for the wedding as soon as the summer holidays started.  That same day his father left for Bahrain on a recce. 

The paperwork should have been through by the time we finished with our month-long holiday in India, and I had expected to come back and wind up and leave for Bahrain by August.  But that is not how it worked out either. We duly packed the house up as scheduled and moved to a hotel, but while the adult visas were through, the child's visa for some obscure reason wasn't forthcoming.  Our tickets were rescheduled and cancelled, once, twice, three times before the visa suddenly plopped out like a rabbit from a hat, and the tickets were yet again rescheduled and rerouted through Jeddah suddenly at a day's notice.  Transit at Jeddah, well, that was an interesting experience too, but that's for some other post.

The hotel had various problems with Net connections, so we would go back to the house, bare of all our stuff except the still working telephone and WiFi, and catch up for an hour or two.  On one of those trips, my trusty five-year-old laptop broke, one hinge of the screen cracked open, though it continued to function still, even if in drunken flickers, hanging on for dear life just by the wires.  

and a faraway funeral

On another, totally different trip, I started my broken machine and idly clicked Facebook open, with the idea of letting my friend know about our plans, or rather frustrating non-plans.  There was no immediate urgency except I didn't know when my laptop would finally break down.  Scrolling down casually I found an update from her daughter explaining the circumstances of her death in my newsfeed.  I know I sat there staring at the screen.  I know I left some sort of garbled messages of condolence.  Thoughts too deep for tears.  I don't know if I had anything that could be called thoughts, just my mind darting off along different tunnels of memory and darting back again like a scared and baffled animal. 

She was my first friend in Bahrain.  She had a smile that could light up a room.  We had swapped recipes and ripe jokes and book recos, we had shared a workplace and good times and some not so good too. She was only marginally older and she was gone, just days before I was supposed to land up.  It felt terribly unfair, she had a lot to live for, a lot more of her children's successes to celebrate, a lot more to give her community.  But then again, a sudden painless death is the best exit, though a terrible shock for family and friends. A rich and happy life and a painless, smiling death, that is a life to celebrate. But as I flew into Bahrain, I knew there was going to be no stepping onto the same island, in more ways than one.  

Uphill=Downhill

We have now been here for ten days.  Summer holidays get over soon.  Since the school and flat and the details of living and commuting and all that blah was taken care of earlier in July, we have moved directly into our home here from the airport itself.  A first in my experience of moving country.  Our stuff hasn't arrived yet, naturally, we'll have to wait some weeks for that, but otherwise it's all plug-and-play.  We have been driven around the island, the fridge has been stocked, new school things bought, the last of the paperwork finalised.  I have even managed a trip to a bookstore, which wasn't there when I lived here last.  The traffic is more no doubt, but the congestion that I had heard about has eased up with the addition of new flyovers. Humongous malls and fancy-shaped swank buildings with pointy tops and glass façades have come up.  Over our first weekend we walked the child back to where we lived before, and it is exactly as it was, though he of course has no recollection of it. 

I am enjoying the free availability of all things Indian, food and groceries, signboards written in familiar Indian scripts.  I hear Bengali and Hindi and Malayalam spoken on the roads and the supermarkets, and it is still a thrill to hear your languages so far away from home in a foreign land.  The Khaleeji accent, both of Arabic and English, feels reassuring, and charming.  It is not the same island, but it is familiar still.  A new computer has been magicked out of some new and huge gadget shop, and I am trying to wrap my head around advanced versions of its software. But I am blogging for comfort on my old one, which is manfully working still, much to my amazement. 

I am missing the wide open, expansive feel of the Cairo suburb on the fringes of the Sahara, the silhouette of the pyramids on the horizon - I never tired of them, the austere yet magnificent desert sunsets.  The river.  My god, there are no rivers here, not even a thread of a stream.  Today as I looked through some of my photographs of Tanoura performers to put up on my new desktop, the thought sprang into mind from nowhere that I didn't have enough close-ups, and hard on its heels, "I must click some close-ups next time," before I remembered there is no next time, vaguely panic stricken and disorientated.

Too much seems to have been crammed into one single season, too much dancing, too much revelry, too many goodbyes, too much emotion altogether. Joto hanshi, toto kanna.  That's a Bengali proverb, roughly translating as "there's exactly as much sorrow (to face) as there's laughter." That kind of sounds like another of Heraclitus' famous and obscure beliefs - the unity of opposites.  Another of his sayings goes something like "the road that goes uphill is the same as the one coming downhill." I am not sure how steep the slope is going to be, or whether I should try going up or down, but as long as there's a road, there can be nothing to complain about. I'll find out soon enough.  I just need to stop for a minute and get my breath back.

Declutter. Pack. Detach.

I am not exactly a Pollyanna, but the glad game is not to be scoffed at; the truth is that there’s some take-away in every situation. Incidentally, the packers turned up, the house has been now stripped of our worldly possessions and looks stranger and more sterile by the minute.  I realised afresh that a home is really made out of knick-knacks and photographs, teenager messes of cords and earphones, mismatched socks in laundry baskets, scrunched up throws on sofas.  Talking of laundry baskets, the presence or absence of one itself is crucial to the feel of home, the bathrooms look oddly unfamiliar, like hotel bathrooms without the bins, just the brushes by themselves on the lonely emptiness of the counters.    And definitely the sink looks massively weird without our early morning coffee mugs in it.

Though our stuff is out on the road, hopefully making its slow way to Alex and then onwards, the MIA is still MIA, and our travel plans have had to be postponed a little.  Two more days of living out of suitcases and eating off disposable plates, camping under a concrete roof.  Waiting for that one phone call, that one email to snap shut the bags and stride out of the door.  Never a dull moment!  And the fun continues apace once we reach our new destination too, as the stuff does not arrive for the next 4-6 weeks.  I just hope we manage the trip there before the boxes do!

I have now moved home 19 times, this one will be my 20th.  There are many apparent negatives to this complete uprooting and moving again and again, especially when there are children involved.  I am sure everyone can imagine the potential horror stories for themselves.  But one of the great things about it, when and only when the uprooting happens through active choice of course, is that the whole process is a kind of systematic and ruthless detox of the immediate micro-environment.  One picks and chooses, one prioritises, one can’t take it all, so what’s worth saving? and passing on?  and what shock horror is to be thrown away? Old clothes have been chucked; you know, those I hung onto in the hope I would be able to fit into them again after slimming down a bit.  Any day now.  Toys given away at school charity drives, food and booze passed on, papers sorted out and trashed.

A mini-lesson in detachment and disengaging, and it always surprises me.  How quickly the mind can bear to tear away from a beloved object, amble out of comfort zones, its eyes fixed on what’s coming rather than what’s gone already.  My books are no longer on the shelves here.  My cutlery not in the kitchen drawers, which open silently without a single metallic rattle.  I am now utterly decluttered.

Egypt is a place I’ve enjoyed deeply. I have gained insights into myself here, grown in completely gobsmacking ways travelling this country.  It’s been the setting of many milestones for me and my family.  I have loved living here to bits.  But it is no longer home.  How easy it is to write that down.  And my god, how difficult!

Fresh out of supplies

Serenity.  That's the first prerequisite.  For blogging  I mean.  For any kind of writing to happen really. A nagging restlessness might sound luscious and sophisticated, but it is not an aid to writing. Not for me.  Only when life is kind of boring and routine can imagination run riot, or put its thumb into some completely useless fact and pull out a blogpost from there. Too much uncertainty and it sits cowering at the corner nibbling at comfort food, its fingers greasy, its eyes zoned out.

My summers for the last so many years have been predictable.  School's out by end June, and kiddo and I are back on home leave till the holidays get over.  We move around, meet up with relatives, take trips out as a family sometimes, just the three of us, and in all that, I have found time to write and even blog, if I can coax a net connection out of somewhere.  Going on holiday hasn't affected my writing much.

This year is turning out to be different.  I am blogging less, writing less, I have achieved very little that I set out to do with the novella.  My usual practice to write a verse everyday  even if is only a couplet has been majorly interrupted. And all of it feels beyond my control.

Everything feels a little out of control, to be perfectly honest.  The tickets are booked, the packers come day after.  But the visas are still MI all this A.  At least, one of them is, and till all three are done it is as good as nothing being done. Rather, as bad.  I know things work out, they always do, it is a matter of time.  Time is the solution to every problem, I know this from heaps of personal experience, not from some ghastly pseudo-inspirational gobbledygook posted on social media.  But I am still panicking.  I can't settle to anything, leave alone writing or rhyming or posting.  "Write it as it comes" ha. Well, nothing coming, not a drop.  Panic does not make for writing.  Serenity is the key, but that suddenly seems in terribly short supply.

Top ten : Egypt

My absolute favourites in Egypt:


1.  The pyramids.  Of course.  Start with the biggies at Giza, and the sound and light show is a must see. Then go to the step pyramid of Sakkara, the first and still the best one to understand the minds that dreamed them up as tombs.  Don't miss the small but rather neat museum on-site.  If possible also take in Dahshour.  

Khafre's pyramid at Giza

Sakkara

2.  Take the night train to Luxor and spend a day or two at the Valleys of Kings and Queens.  Karnak Temple requires a couple visits, one by day to wrap your head around its humongousness and another at night for another riveting sound and light show.  

Sunrise through the window on train to Luxor

Luxor Temple

3.  Go into the White Desert and marvel at the limestone shapes sculpted by the winds and sands.  Camp for the night under the stars. Enjoy a vast and unimaginable peace.  Watch the sunrise wash over the desert.  Unforgettable!

Road to Bahariya

Sunset in the White Desert

Campsite at White Desert

4.  Enjoy the Nile's final resting place, go to Damietta where the eastern branch of the Nile meets the Med.  Tranquil and honest and untouristy. Watch the catch come in early morning. And take a felucca and sail the evening waters at Cairo, Luxor and/or Aswan.  Sit by the river and sip a coffee, or smoke shisha if that's your thing.  Enjoy the Nile. Period.

Felucca at Aswan

Fishing boat at Damietta

5.  Spend a day in Islamic Cairo - Sharia Khayameya, Sharia Muizz and the Khan el Khalili.  Several mosques and mausoleums to check out, old merchant residences - the best restored is Beit Suheimy.  Great shopping opportunities too, but be prepared to bargain hard.  Go on to Wikala al Ghuri on Saturdays and Wednesday evenings to watch the Tanoura being performed by whirling dervishes.  Programme starts at 8 pm, but seats fill up by 7-ish.  Mind altering, in the best way possible.

Feel the drums and cymbals 'talking" to each other in this jugalbandi

Colourful, mesmerising, devotional, rhythmic and riveting!

6.  Alexandria - a two thousand year old city with a completely different vibe, Egypt's ex-capital and now her second city and main port. Visit the Graeco-Roman monuments.  The real roots of the revolution have their home in Alex. Khaled Said's home city, also home to many independent bands and musicians and graffiti artists. Museum at Bibliotheca is certainly worth a visit, Fridays it shuts at 12 noon. Eastern harbour and the Corniche at Qaitbey's fort great for people watching.  Best seafood.

Boats in the Eastern Harbour Alex

Qaitbey's Fort stands at the site of the famous lighthouse, a boat in Egyptian colours is moored in the foreground

7.  The monasteries at Wadi Natrun, and Zafaraana.  St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, where Moses' legends abound.  Each monastery is a reminder of a time when Egypt was profoundly Christian.  Sinai itself is forbidding and utterly fascinating and endlessly wonderful. Sadly, not such a safe place for travel any more.

St Catherine, Sinai

The bell tower inside St Catherine's Monasery

8.  When monument fatigue strikes, Pharonic, Islamic or Coptic, seek relief at Fayoum oasis for a spot of peace and culture-free quiet; or get to the Red Sea resorts.  Sharm al Sheikh is the most famous, the others are quieter.  My personal favourite is Ras Sudr.

Water wheels at Fayoum oasis

Ras Sudr at sunset

9. The Med resorts are not exactly terrible either, El Alamein has the WWII memorials, if you're into that period of history.  Or you can give those a miss and stick to the beach. Mersa Matruh is difficult to get to in terms of the driving distance, but the rewards are truly great.  Beautiful beaches and crystal waters.  

Ageeba beach Mersa Matruh

Father and children at Blue beach Mersa Matruh

10.  Can't get away from Cairo? Not even an hour's drive to Fayoum or Ain Sokhna? Never mind, get to the Azhar Park on Salah Salem Street, an oasis of greenery and peace in the heart of Cairo.  Open air performances by local artists every Friday evening.  Minaret view sunsets come for the price of the admission ticket. 

Azhar Park sunset

Those are my top ten.  What are yours?  In or out of Egypt, wherever you've travelled, and/or lived?

Leave me out of it, Mister!

Credit Lennart Nilsson 

Lately I have come across a positive deluge of opinionated thinking on several issues related to family life.  An extrapolation of one person’s experiences, prejudices and shortcomings onto a blanket generalisation and thrown around the shoulders of the entire world.  Often this takes the guise of “golden words” or “30 things that you must do before you are 30” or some such. 

Someone writes casually that he hasn’t done this or that particular thing (for his child, for his parents, for his partner) and then goes onto an admonition – “do this now, or you’ll end up regretting it!” Another says women should delay higher education till after their childbearing is done. What? Yet another sermonises about how senior citizens should be cared for, or pontificates on how the family bed and co-sleeping has worked for their family and so should be adopted worldwide.  The carving of one person’s experience onto stone and then a moral drawn, and flogged as some sort of commandment for the world to live its life by.  It is the last bit that I have issues with.

Pick your regrets

I have lived my life as mindfully as I can under my particular circumstances, and I know what I want to do for all of my family members, thank you very much.  In fact, many of my choices have been specifically guided by “if I don’t do it this way, I’ll regret it later.”  Of course every choice comes with its set of residual regrets attached, it is just a matter of choosing which regrets I would rather, or rather not, have.  And we each choose the ones that we can live with individually. 

Ian McEwan, a writer whose books I admire, said some days ago that finding out an unborn baby’s sex is “moral kitsch” and predisposes the child to gender stereotyping, and that’s why his son and his son’s partner have chosen not to find out the sex of the baby they are expecting.  Fair enough, it’s a choice that many would-be-parents make, preferring to draw out the surprise till the last minute.  But to condemn all parents who might want to know the sex in advance seems quite simplistic and frankly, wrong.  There are issues of health and gender related diseases for one thing, and for another - if the parents are the sort of people who would gender stereotype a baby, then how will finding out the sex a few months later morph them into the opposite?

The 11th commandment

In my society, it is illegal for clinics to give out this information anyway, as we haven’t yet managed to overcome the preference for male children and the fact of female foeticide and infanticide and a host of other grave evils resulting from it.  It can be done privately and illegally of course. But for many would-be-parents who would simply like to follow the law of the land and also find out the sex of their unborn child without being into foeticide and all that, it is not an option even. 

I spent most of my pregnancies outside of India, and in the one that actually progressed as far as the 20-week scan, I answered “yes” to the doctor’s question without even having to think about it.  I found out the sex of my child, not because I wanted to gender select/stereotype, but simply because my own experiences made me unsure of how much time I had with this child, and because I wanted to be able to engage as personally, as intimately, as closely as possible with the “foetus”  for as long as possible. For all I knew, this would be the nearest I would get to motherhood, and I wanted to be completely aware who it was that I was carrying and mothering and to call them by name as soon as possible, long before I saw their face.  Or genitals.  Knowing that helped me to be mindful and grateful.  I kept my knowledge private at the time, in fact I have not spoken of it to anyone up until now, and only the father knew all along.  I cannot equate my motives with “moral kitsch” in any way. I don’t think I deserve blanket condemnation either, and neither do many others with different but equally justifiable motives.

There are many high and unrealistic expectations that society places on women, especially mothers; to add another straw to that particular camel’s back seems wholly unnecessary.  Judge not so one-dimensionally that ye be not judged the same.  If an additional commandment were really essential, if would be this, it would be this, it would be this.