Thursday, November 15, 2018

SCARED

Scared of

A short story

Oh I am so glad to learn that this story ranked Second place! in a Flash Fiction Contest

Here it is:







Scared of  


I knew something was strange but could never anticipate it this way because Zina is a brave girl.  She is four and a half and she is afraid of nothing.  Almost nothing. 

When Dracula laughed out showing its bloody teeth sitting at Didun’s porch kicking fallen leaves all the children freaked out.  Not Zina.  

“It’s just a fake one, a record inside is doing the trick” she commented. 

When the wind howled hoo-hoo, crisp autumn air swung the hanging ghosts on the clothesline, Zoe pointed that in the wee morning hours when it is still dark, real ghosts do come and visit.  She even showed their spits on the morning glory flower bed. 

Zina shook her pigtails. “ I’m not scared.  They are not ghost spits.  They are just bud spits.  Soon you’ll see white flowers coming out.  Daddy told me so.  Trust me, Zoe, there are no ghosts, Really.” 

When Didun brought cookies for the children and Robin shrieked out, 

“A spider!” Zina held her head up, brought a plastic cup and a junk-mail envelope, slid the spider into the cup, covered the top and took it outside. 

“ Spiders are good things, Robin, nothing to be scared of.” She assured like a big sister. 

When Aria pointed out that their neighbor Melissa who dresses up like a witch  for Halloween is a real witch, “ I am scared of her mole, her real mole…” Zina came and caressed her. 

“Aria, she can’t help her mole.  It happens to some people but she is the kindest person, Really.  Trust me.  She feeds the birds every morning, cures sick baby orchids, and helps me cross the road.  She is not a witch, just pretends to be one on Halloween nights.”

Didun exclaimed all of a sudden, “Oh Zina, I forgot, I have something for you”,  and gave her a big bag. 

Inside, there was a coat.  A silver grey coat with two iridescent blue buttons.

“That’s a beautiful color!”  Zoe clapped. Aria brushed her fingers on it,  “So soft!”  Robin smelled it, “Umm!”  But Zina kept quiet. 

Colors from her tomato-red cheeks drained. Twinkles from her dark eyes dimmed.  All the giggles from spunky Zina turned into a frown,  Zina started sobbing. 

“What happened, Zina?” Didun held her chin up. Tears rolled down. She hid her face on Didun’s bosom.  “I am scared.  I am scared of buttons.” 

“Scared of  buttons?”  Everyone laughed.  “Look Zina, they are pretty easy.” Zoe showed buttoning and unbuttoning the coat several times. 

“Zina, other people will see your buttons, not you. They are too close to your throat, See!” Aria tried to comfort.   Robin poked the two buttons 
“Like fox eyes, Zina?  that’s why?   But they are not real!” 

Zina cupped her ears. “ No, no, no. Stop.  I just don’t like buttons.  I won’t wear buttons.  I don’t want other people to see my buttons.  I am scared of buttons.” She jerked. 

Didun held her. “ That’s fine, Zina.  We are all scared of something.  I’ll fix your buttons.  You don’t have to wear them.”  She yanked them out and replaced with velcro circles.  It managed to keep the coat fastened. 

Zina wiped off her tears and sniffles. A rainbow smile beamed on her face.  Didun helped her with the arms and she skipped and danced and rushed outside to play 
  


   

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Rule out Writer's Block

  Rule out Writer's Block with this fun game. 

Yes, no excuse for writer's block anymore.  My granddaughter showed me a game recently and I thought this is just not for kids.  It can be easily be implemented for my writer's block situation.   

The game I played with my nine-year-old granddaughter is called 'Tell Tales' and available in Amazon.  I am not an affiliate and I may not rush to go buy it spending money unless I want to impress other nine-year-old kids. 



Materials: 

Several tiny objects were hidden in a not-see-through pouch or you can keep your eyes closed while covering the objects under a piece of cloth.

Method:

You have to take out 8 objects and tell a story.

Extensions:

You may get a piece of paper and write it with a timer or sand timer on. 

You both may write and read to each other at the end of the time.

You may choose to write three pages or two pages instead of setting a timer. 

You may use the enclosed stack of cards for the setting of your stories.

How I implemented it in adult writing:

I collected various different small things like a single earring, an orphan sock, a hair clip, an old theater ticket, a restaurant bill, bus ticket from a coat pocket that I had taken in one of my vacations etc. 

 I also have a stack of old pictures ( before the digital life that did not get the honor to be in cherished albums.) These are excellent for memoir entries. It is working. 

I am sure if you are a writer you must have tried various suggestions too. Please share some of YOUR ideas that worked. I love to see comments at the end of the day. 
   



Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Ultimate Goal as a Writer



What is your ultimate goal as a writer?

WHY write? 





This odd question poked me as I was having my wonderful morning walk in the park yesterday.  The air was cool, birds were chirping. The path was draped with comfortable shades given by the affectionate tall trees. Rolling green hills lifted my spirit.  I was in such a peaceful mode until this weird question just cropped up and hit me. 





What d’you mean ultimate goal as a writer? I just want to write..that’s all. - I felt annoyed to think any more.  My alter ego turned with a smirk- Just write?  Any rubbish? What is your real goal as a writer?

Of course, I want to write something that the readers would love to read and be glued to the pages and feel a kind of satisfaction mixed with a sadness when the last page is done. Something the connoisseurs would approve and agree that it was a good enough one. I would leave something for the future. Tall order but yes, that’s what I want,  these three main things.

You write to entertain, to educate and to inspire.  My alter ego nodded with a wise look. If you can do any one or two of them properly I say you are good. 

I remembered that Ayn Rand in her essay explained that ‘it is the projection of an ideal man’ that was what she strived to bring in her writing. 

Seth Goin says,“The goal of a writer is to make you think. Incite, disturb. Probe the reader.”   


 
In our California Writers Club, a fellow author brought up something that touched my heart.  A writer’s ultimate goal is to help:  help the reader, help fellow writers too who are striving in this journey.  With resources on the craft of writing, publishing and promoting a fellow writer is also an important goal for the writer. ' Probably that will be my ultimate goal'  he said with a slap on his thigh.  

 Writing is a solitary art.  It takes away a whole lot, without guaranteeing anything in return. Yet, writers strive.  Each year the number of books written are growing.    Writing is only half the story..the other part is completed by the reader. Without a reader,  writing a book would be just waste of time, energy, and papers.   

I think my ultimate goal as a writer would be to create the best art I can.  But that lofty goal needs many parts.  The parts of the puzzle -HOW, WHEN, WHAT are to be put together.  I have only dealt with the WHY part. 

Now it’s your turn:  What do you think?    What is your ultimate goal as a writer or what do you ask as a reader?  Looking forward to your comment. 








Tuesday, May 15, 2018

The Aspen Grove



The Aspen Grove in Wyoming


Silver silhouettes of aspens shimmy with moonbeams. Light flirts peek-a-boo through a cluster of leaves. Lacy, dainty leaves form patterns, like filigree windows in ancient palaces of Jaipur.


Wind hums. Whisper-soft susurrus lulls the lonesome cottage that stands alone in the wild wilderness.  




Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Hearing Ngugi wa Thiongo


An Afternoon with Ngugi wa Thiongo, an African author who wrote his book on toilet paper in the  prison.




I had a unique experience in the Book Festival in Berkeley last Saturday. 

 The hall was jam packed but I had no idea who he was when I entered the dark hall where an interview was going on with Ngugi Wa Thiongo. I had one hour to kill and the lady said that there might be one or two seats left. 

In the beginning, I was having trouble deciphering through his heavy accent in English, but in a short while I got hooked especially when the interviewer asked him -“ Tell us your experience about writing a whole book on toilet paper roll?” 

What! I sat straight.

I came to know that his play I Will Marry When I want 
( translated into English) cost him imprisonment in his own country. He wrote this in his mother tongue which was produced and performed by amateur common people in open air stage. He was impressed by Brecht’s style.  This play was against the local government system and the government stopped the play and locked him in the prison where no paper, pen, radio or books were allowed. Ngugi managed to get a pen convincing the jail keeper that he intended to write a confession. “ Then I started writing the story on toilet paper”, he chuckled. 


Born into a large peasant family on January 5, 1938, Ngugi had his education in English. Ngugi is pronounced as ‘googi', it means work.   

Joseph Conrad was his favorite author along with R.K.Narayan, Achebe, Brecht, Tolstoy and many others from the whole world.  And as he started writing his own in English, Weep Not, Child ( 1965), Devils on the Cross, and many other novels, essays, plays, and memoirs, he established himself as one of the most reputed and articulate authors of Africa. But then he decided to write in Gikuyu,  his own mother tongue, abandoning English.

Why?

This is where I got super excited as I found some answers to my quest as a bilingual writer.  

How much of my own native language should I bring to the main steam English?   Why and why not?  How is my own language missing something with my decision of writing in English or does it matter?

He said that the Colonials not only suppressed us,  they took all that was precious to us to their land enriching their own museums and estate mansions, the worst is -they took our language too.  They instilled the notion that you are not really educated unless you can write in English (or in the ruler’s language). 

Your name may change for the ease of their pronunciation,  for the convenience of the Western tongue. Your identity would change. Your mother tongue  would die, your native songs vanish.  And you succumb to that. Not only that, the Colonials also  managed to create a middle class that oppressed the ‘have not' class in the very same way. They crush your self-esteem until you can speak their language. 

I know exactly what he was talking about. 


 His answer: Yes, kind of, since I can speak and write in English. But the point is that is why we need to do our part. We need to write the stories of the oppressed,
talk about the injustice, etch their/ our pain and tears to make the world aware. 

Do you expect uprise? 

No. Art does not incite”.   He focused on the word imagination. Imagination will bring change. It has to be a collective effort. Imagination is nourished by art, songs, books.  It is our job to nurture that imagination.


“Look at the African Americans- I was impressed when I came to Harlem,  the first time I visited New York.  From all that oppression, all those tears grew a new linguistic system, out of which emerged spirituals, jazz and all that.”  He mentioned that in his talk in Berkeley.

So keep on writing my friends, he encouraged, write every day,  just write a paragraph, but do it. “ I do it until I die.” 

That energized me.  

    

    







Sunday, April 15, 2018

INDIA'S DAUGHTER

  India’s Daughter

Erase away all fatigue, 
Take away the filth
Let the New Year shine 
With glorious joyous blithe

People join the hymn,  sing the Tagore Song, they embrace each other with affectionate hugs and respectful bows.  Today is the first day of the Bengali New Year.  Our New Year -1424.  Temple bells chime, the fragrance of incense and flowers fill the air.  A young girl comes to me to offer the blessing elixir, an auspicious concoction of sweet yogurt and honey after the homage ritual. 

I startled, awaken from my imagination. I was meandering in another world.

*** 



Far away, in a remote village in Kashmir, India,  a little girl,  eight years old was hopping, skipping down the pebbled hilly path. Her fuchsia colored frock with golden flowers was worn on top of a long salwar, it had a matching oorni that she was supposed to wear like a headscarf, but it was a windy day, so she wrapped it around her waist. Her pigtails swung as she pranced. 

She was supposed to take care of the cattle and she’s usually good at them.  But the donkeys have their own silly ways and often went to the other side giving her trouble. 

Little Asifa, a typical eight-year-old girl was curious.  When she heard the bells tolling from the Pashupathi Nath temple her head got tilted, she found that they sound different from the ones her cattle made from turning their heads.     

One day she tagged along with her friend to that Hindu temple.  Shubha, her friend carried hibiscus and white gardenias in a brass plate with some yellow laddu sweets to offer to the God. 

“Umm,, smells good.” Asifa commented. “ Don’t you do that!” Shubha had  brushed her away, “It’s for the God.”  “But the God can’t smell. He is all stone, isn’t he?”  She wondered with her big dark eyes. Asifa remembered the look the priest gave her, the man in a saffron robe with a red streak on his forehead. 

Asifa’s mother shrieked when she told her that story.  “ What business do you have to go there?  It’s your fault.  Why did you follow Shubha to their Hindu temple?  Don’t you know that we are not Hindus like them, we are Muslims.”  That day Asifa had decided that she would not tell every little thing to ma anymore. 

The butterflies that are rust and ochre, and the ones that are teal and turquoise with indigo strikes did take her to incredible places to reveal a world of treasures inside the forest. And Asifa could not resist that. Even though these were daring adventures she could not turn her face from them. 

“ How come Asifa does not go to school?” Shubha’s mother asked Asifa’s mother one day.

“She’s a little different,  you know, different from my boys, a bit naive, immature…too young, you know…so my husband thinks… give her another year. Maybe next year..” she replied, adding, "besides, she is my youngest, my baby.  Her two brothers go to school, but she stays at home and helps me here.  She does a lot though. Milks the cows in the morning, tends the cattle..

She’s my doll…such a joy. When her anklets jingle I feel so happy..she is home.  A girl..” she waves her palm in the air, “is different..you know.”  Asifa’s mother confides to her neighbor. 

Shubha’s mother was the only neighbor who talked to her, accepted the food she’d offer. None of the two dozen other Hindu families that live in this tiny village did. Were they jealous of the fact that Asifa’s father owns all this land, bought it with his own money when they relocated from Kargil, and built this pucca brick house with his own two hands? 

The boys came back from school and Asifa’s mother was feeding them hot rotis fresh from the chulli though her mind was restless.  Like a buzzing fly, it was irritated, anxious, Why is Asifa not home yet?  

“ Did anybody see her? “ she asked every passerby, standing in front of the door. She sat out on a stool at the door finishing up the embroidery on Asifa’s kurta, the one she’d be wearing for her aunt’s wedding next month. How excited Asifa’d feel to see it all finished today she thought.  The girl had been asking that every day after her chores. Asifa’s mother tore the last bit of thread with her teeth and shoved the work away. She cupped her fingers on her forehead to see if she could see Asifa’s little body running down the hill. 

The day was foggy, this January afternoon.  The gray solemn sky was indifferent, the sun scurrying to dip and hide its face fast behind the snowcapped mountains of the Himalayas.The animals returned home chiming their bells. But where is my little Asifa?

The next few days were beyond description. 

Asifa’s body was found in the bushes, dead. Police dogs located the temple. Further probing the puzzle was solved regarding the people who had abducted her. She had been seduced with drugs for several days, gang-raped in that temple, and finally was killed with a stone. 

I say this all in one breath because I could not imagine that. It was all information that was bombarded to me from the media. As I write this my eyes blur with tears. 

My eyes blur with tears because the neighbors and the whole nation take it as a political issue and in the name of religion people are actually defending the culprits. 

Even the Hindu neighbors of her village didn’t let her family bury her body in that village, so her family had to take her eight kilometers away from her home.

*** 
My eyes blur, I choke with emotion as I cup my hand to receive the blessing elixir from another eight-year-old girl today.  The girl got a bit perplexed to find me in tears in such a joyous occasion.