My new blog people!! www.mtjb.wordpress.com

Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. This blog will always remain as my favorite spot in the virtual world where I’ve met many people, made plenty of friends and given vent to my frustrations and rants. And I will continue.

The new blog is for my next book which is 75% ready. I won’t be posting any long accounts over there. More like twitter type updates about what is happening with this book. By the way, MTJB stands for More than just Biriyani.

I don’t know what to call it…because it’s not just a cookbook or recipe book. It leans more towards a food memoir, but then again, it wouldn’t be completely accurate. Anyhow, I just hope that this book gets published more easily than Kite Strings!

There’s a formal book launch for Kite Strings on 5th November, 2009 at Landmark, Swagath Garuda, Jayanagar. We’d been trying to fix a date with Landmark for so long but apparently, they’re still busy with their annual sale which has been extended till the end of October.

So, nearly two months after Kite Strings has been out on the stands, its getting a formal launch into the world of books. Plenty of people I know have already bought it and read it and given me feedback regarding it. It’s been positive feedback so far, and it’s pleasing to hear that everyone who’s read it found it extremely readable and most of the young girls seem to identify with Mehnaz so well! I think teenage angst rises above community, religion and everything else that might make Mehnaz different from other girls.

Apart from likening me to Mehnaz, many other people want to know how long I took to write it. When I answer 2 years, they are very impressed. But I find it a little uncomfortable because there’s nothing to be impressed about it. I mean, I didn’t sit and take 2 years to write it because I was busy doing many different things. I would write maybe a chapter and then forget about the book for a couple of months, or I would write myself into a tight spot and then leave it for another few months wondering how to get out from it!

Anyway, I remember that feeling of exhilaration when I was close to finishing it. It was so exciting and so thrilling to come to the end of the book, because I was letting the story take me there, in stead of the other way round.

Well, back to the point. If you’re in Bangalore on 5th November, which happens to be a Thursday, and you don’t mind traveling to Jayanagar, please attend the book release at Landmark. Former students of JNC (and current students as well) will be happy to hear that Ms. Wendy Dickson is the chief guest. I admire her greatly as a teacher and person and I’m really happy she agreed to come. Thanks Ms. Wendy!

So, please do make it a point to attend, and you can bring anyone else who would be interested too. See you there!

Like Anamika recently mentioned in her latest post, I seem to have lost the drive to write here in my blog too. For some reason, I don’t feel like documenting my life here any more.

Also, what has recently been annoying me is that people read my blog and assume that they know all about me, sometimes they behave as they know more about me than I know about myself!

This is probably a phase, and I will get back to blogging soon hopefully. Lots of changes happening in my life and I’m totally busy running up and down, just like everyone else I suppose.

So, if I think of something interesting to write, I’ll probably come here. Until then, I’m going to go back and start writing all the stuff I haven’t been able to write all these days!

Doesn’t it happen to us often? We want to do something and on the way to that, we kind of forget or lose focus and end up doing something else completely?

I think that is what has happened with me. Although, thanks to Kite Strings getting published and everything, I have achieved my goals, but I realised of late, that I am not doing the kind of writing I want to do. It’s because I don’t have the time or the inclination to sit and write what I want, after I finish writing what everyone else wants.

I was just going through my email and came across something from Elance and almost shuddered. Elance is good. Believe me, it’s good. It’s great for people who want to work from home, who want to freelance and make extra money doing what they’re good at. I too joined in thinking the same thing.

But all too soon, you realise that once you devote your life to something like this, where you are using your god given talent, to do something else, to do something that someone else wants…it’s very suffocating. See, if I didn’t have the urge in me to write something from within me every time I open MS Word, I think I could have managed Elance perfectly well. But it soon turned into something like a monster, sitting at the back of my mind, telling me that I haven’t completed it yet. And once you start dreading what you loved doing, you know that there’s something wrong. To take a very cliched example, you’re an accomplished artist and you draw fantastic water colors or whatever. But to make quick money, you’ve decided to paint a few houses and you’re no longer happy with what you do. You get my point?

I am not condemning Elance. As I said before, it’s a fantastic platform for people to earn money and I have earned some myself, so I know that it’s not a sham. But, I realised today that Elance is not for me. If I get drawn into that vortex again, thinking about the easy money to be had for something like writing 400 word articles on some mundane topic, I won’t forgive myself.

I was just thinking, that if your talent has to flourish, then you must do something completely different as your day job to sustain you. If your day job is over stimulating(as mine is),then where will there be time to actually do what you want to do?

So, today, I finally opened up my folder, looked at the list of pending writing projects and picked the one that looked the easiest.

I’ve started working on More Than Just Biryani again, which is a cookbook and a little bit like a food memoir. I’m compiling the recipes that are well known across my family, well loved by friends and everyone else who has tasted them. And the idea is to show that Muslim food is more than just biryani.

And I have never felt so free and happy in my life!

Just imagine the kind of things you can find in the pockets of a little boy. Based on experiences with two boys, one not so little and the other quite literally little, here are some of the things I’ve found in their collective pockets:

1. Coins – lots of them..esp Azhaan
2. Pens – Azhaan again…loves hoarding pens esp those that belong to his Bhaiya. 3. Key chains
4. Keys
5. Crayons
6. Plastic watch
7. Chocolate wrappers
8. Unopened chocolates
9. Opened chocolates
10. Combs
11. Tissues
12. Handkerchief
13. Bits of fluff
14. Rubber ball
15. Bubblegum
16. Trading cards
17. Scrunched up chips packets
18. Polo
19. Tazos
And today I found a sachet of oregano in Azhaans pocket which made me laugh so much and write this post!

Ok, it might be a bit premature but I think Azhaan likes to read. He likes to sit down with books and wants me to read them out to him. He’s memorized the whole story of Pinocchio and he seems to enjoy looking at books. While this is not something so strange that I should feel so happy about it, those who’ve known me since Saboor was born know that I’ve been trying to make him read since he was one year old!

The house is filled with books that I bought for him when he was small and all of them are being used by Azhaan.

I suppose one should never force things upon children. But back then I was too young to realise that I suppose. With Azhaan I just left things as they are and he’s showing interest.

The good thing is that Saboor also reads the odd book now and then…. For which I should be really thankful and I am!

Early in the morning…eating cornflakes, watching bhaiya leave for school….

I’m sitting at a wedding right now and it seems strange because neither Ammi nor my mother in law are there with me. And usually we do tend to meet someone or the other whom we know, but that’s not the case here.hope checked my email a hundred times, checked my facebook page, and still nothing to do but wait! Until we’re called for lunch. And since that will inevitably be biryani, I guess it will be worth the wait!

Short of shouting it over the rooftop, I’ve announced this news to everyone that Kite Strings is being published. I didn’t write about it here for some reason, I really don’t know why. Today I was going through some of the posts I had written, lamenting about why my novel was not getting published and it made me realise that I was thankful for the existence of the blog. Without this, I would have forgotten all the struggles and rants I made.

Now, all that is in the past. In the near future, Kite Strings will be on the book shelves and I cannot wait till that day comes! Meanwhile, I’ve set up another blog space just for updates on Kite Strings. Please check it up often if you want to know what’s happening with the novel and how soon it will be published.

Thanks everyone for your support and belief in me. The day has finally come!

www.kitestrings1.wordpress.com

(kitestrings.wordpress.com was taken up already by someone else)

It’s been nearly two months since Saboor started school at Cathedral and just yesterday he got his complete uniform set. Every day he either wore a set of regular clothes or the full white uniform which he’s wearing in the picture above.

I remember when Saboor and I went to give his measurements in school, there was a very irate woman who ranted on and on about how Cathedral really delay giving out uniforms. I thought she was exaggerating a bit. But it’s true. First, in all the time I studied in Baldwins I never saw so many new students joining. And then I never saw any new student without a uniform for so long! I mean, new students would come wearing the uniform itself. We were always made to feel that tolerance level for those who came without uniforms for whatever reason was absolutely nil.

Anyway, I guess each school is different. So far I’m happy that I put Sab here because he seems to have made friends easily enough and there’s so much possibility for free play.

Also, one more point in favour of Cathedral is that all the teachers have treated me with utmost respect. Don’t get me wrong, but in St. Pauls too, all the teachers were extremely courteous towards me. Why I’m making such a big point of this is because there’s a certain manner in which burkha clad women were viewed in my school. I’d often see teachers being a little snappy towards my mother whenever she came to school and it would hurt me quite a bit.

I don’t know how things are in Baldwins now but it gladdens my heart to see that there are other good schools who are not bound by prejudice of any sort.

Anyway, enough of that discussion. Here’s Saboor wearing the school uniform for the first day.