The confusion in my mind

I hate to be a broken record but it’s the end of March and it’s still snowing and it’s still too bloody cold. I just need for it to be warm now. I need the jackets to go away and my feet to be warm and toasty without the benefit of thick socks and a heater.

Speaking of things that I can’t change, let me introduce to the confusion in my mind. It happens every year, almost at the same time. I finish a book and even before I get feedback from my editor/agent, I get sucked into the “what’s next” problem and feel completely lost.

I have two competing stories right now and everywhere I look, I see signs, directions to which one would be the best to write. I’m not a superstitious person, but I find that I start getting pretty weird during this time. I see everything as a sign for this and a sign for that.

One story is set in 300 BC in India and I haven’t even discussed it with my agent/editor and they might just think I’m totally cuckoo to want to change from contemporary mainstream to historical. The other one is about Pakistani immigrants in Denmark and honor killing in Denmark.

Today, a rare book about the lives of the people in 300 BC (a book I lost during all our innumerable moves) came in the mail as I bought it on Amazon.co.uk a few weeks ago. A few hours later, as I was flipping channels I stopped at some strange channel where people were speaking in Hindi/Urdu. It was an interview with a special attaché to the Pakistani embassy in Oslo and he was discussing the lives and future of Pakistanis in Scandinavia. He talked about how the Pakistani women had to become more integrated within the societies they lived and get out of the house more, as the woman in Pakistan do these days.

So when I got the book in the mail, I thought that was a sign. Then that damn interview changed the signs again. I am very confused. Every other day I write 10-15 pages of one book and then the other. Then every other day, I delete what I wrote and start over again. It’s a very frustrating process.

Every time I start thinking about a new book, I have to answer one question, “Who am I? Followed by, “What do I want to do by writing this story?” And then I always ask myself why I shouldn’t write a simple story, one that doesn’t need research and is still fun. Then I start working on the third idea, about a successful and married forty-year old Indian professor living in California, who has an extra-marital affair with a housepainter and how she and her not-so-successful daughter come closer because/despite that affair.

By the next morning I drop the idea again. I don’t want to write about extra-marital affairs, I want to write about honor killing, about strong Pakistani women establishing themselves despite cultural and traditional barriers in a foreign country. And then as the day gets old, I start thinking about 300 BC and how I know the courtesan, the eunuch and the spy the story is going to be about. And once again the vicious cycle continues…

No winners yet, but I’ll keep you posted!

Immigrant Life, Part IV

Sometimes I have to wonder about people. I don't if this is a race thing or just an ignorance thing, but sometimes you just want to shake people and say, wake up and smell the coffee. But read through and tell me what you think.

We went to a family party type of thing the other day and as things are here in Denmark, I was the only foreigner there and probably the only person who’s Danish is not up to snuff. So a woman comes up to me and starts talking to me. She introduces herself and when I introduce myself, she says she knows, she’s friends with the host and hostess. She tells me she works in a vocational school, teaching her students what it takes to be a sales person. And she adds that most of her students were refugees. I perk up because I just finished writing a book about an Afghan refugee in Denmark. She tells me she has Afghan refugees as students and she feels that they are driven. And she tells me that some of the Palestinian refugees who are also her students have a tough time because they have spent almost two generations in refugee camps.

I confessed to her that I know a lot about Afghan culture and I know Afghans but I don't know any Palestinians, am not friends with anyone or even have acquaintance with them. I’m not familiar with their cultural mindset. Then, to my surprise, this woman says, "Well, maybe you don't know about this, but it was called the Holocaust..." And then she proceeds to tell me about World War II and the birth if Israel, despite my trying to explain to her that history-wise I was okay with the facts, I was just not familiar with Palestinian people, the “real” people.

Now, I have a masters in journalism, I am 31 years old, I have lived in four countries and three continents, I have written five books, I am well read...how dumb do I look to this woman who feels she needs to tell me about the Holocaust? Half way through her monologue I felt like saying, "World War II? You mean the entire world was at war? Gee, really? Did a lot of people die?"

I am sure the woman meant well and wanted to educate the brown-skinned wife of a family friend's nephew, but what arrogance to think that I am so damned uneducated or illiterate that I would not know about the Holocaust. I could understand if she was talking about some obscure Danish historic fact that I might not be privy to, but the Holocaust? For God's sake even if I were living under a stone I'd know about that one. I mean, Hollywood would have rammed it down my throat even if I didn't want it to.

I am not really sure if this a race thing, but really, would she have tried to explain the Holocaust to a white person? I still don't know if I should be amused or insulted...I think I am a little of both.

Some good news, some not so good news

Good news!
I got an email from my editor today, saying that my first book, A Breath of Fresh Air just went into third print. This is my first book that came out in 2002, which is a while back, so I was not expecting it. So a big thanks to all readers who went and bought my first book recently. I appreciate your support.
Bad news!
In other news, I have finally become my mother...well not my mother because she never said stuff like this, but definitely my husband's mother who did. Tobias, my four and a half year old, screwed his nose at the beef stroganoff with rice tonight and said in a nasal tone, "I don't want anything with the rice. I just want white rice." We did what we do, ignore him and tell him that he needs to eat his dinner if he wants to watch Tom & Jerry (I know you shouldn’t bribe your kid, but…). Then after a while he says, "This is horrible food. I don't like it." And all of a sudden, there it was on the tip of my tongue, "Kids are starving in Africa and you don't want to eat your food?"

I look at my husband and say, "It is tragic isn't it that our mothers could say that kids are starving in Africa and so can we? We have grown up, had children and they're still starving out there."

My husband shakes his head and tells me about this UN report he read recently that said that in sheer number more Indians were starving than Africans. And then he added, his mother said that he should eat his food because children were starving in India and wasn't it sad that was still the case.

Living below the hunger line in India

The other day, on Danish radio, I heard a story about the 300 million forgotten Indians living below the hunger line. I read some Indian newspapers religiously but mostly all the stories focus on how fabulous India and how fabulous the IT boom has made India. The stories are about how intelligent Indians are (someone told me that Indians have a math gene, which makes us superior in math...I guess my math gene is suppressed) and how many Indians are on the wealthy people in the world list. No one talked about the 300 million starving Indians.

An Indian analyst was interviewed for the story on Danish radio and he said that the Indian media was simply not interested in talking about these Indians living below the hunger line because no one wants to hear about them. It is a tragedy that no one cares because we keep talking about starving people in Africa, but the situation is nearly as bad in India. The Indian media doesn't want to touch this story with a barge pole according to this analyst because the middle class, which reads the newspapers and watchs television is not interested in hearing about the poor and starving, they want to hear about the new Oracle complex being built and latest Honda that was released. The Indian middle class doesn't want to see or know about the starving lot because they crap on the picture of the booming Indian economy, the beautiful India that is doing so incredibly well.

The other day, my husband and I were watching a news story about Kenya on CNN and we talked about how something is wrong with the world. Farmers in EU are paid not to cultivate their farms to avoid oversupply in the Union and in Kenya people are dying of lack of food.

I feel the same about India. It is commendable that the middle class is expanding but it is tragic that the expanding middle class doesn't give a damn about those dying of starvation. But no one wants to talk about the 300 million weak citizens of India. If we don't admit there is a problem then we can pretend it doesn't exist--denial after all is just not a river in Africa.

What the hell happened to spring?

I think that whole talk about global warming is total crock because we’ve had the winter from Siberia (literally) this year and even in early March the temperature is sinking below zero and adding insult to injury is the snow that’s still falling.

Yesterday, I had the mother of all bad moods.

The weather is really bad and my life is in confusion. We moved to Copenhagen in October and rented a place for a year and a half, time during which we are supposed to figure out where we want to live and buy a place. (House prices are going to triple in a year’s time the rate at which things are going here!) And we were thinking of a place where there is a nice international school where they teach in English…but now we’re thinking of a place IN the city where there is also an international school.

I have never lived in the city. I think I am scared of living in the city. The apartments look nice but can we really live there? I don’t know. So we’re thinking about it and I am stressed. Almost six months have passed and we don’t even know where we want to live and what kind of house we want and…

Adding to the problem is that I am story-less. I finished Sound of Language and now I have nothing. I have an idea but for that to become a story I need to do a lot of research, talk to a lot of people, think about the people in the story without anyone saying they need to go to the bathroom five minutes ago or someone spilled all of something sticky on the floor and carpet…

The weather isn’t helping! If only the sun would come out and the birds would sing and the flowers would bloom…I could stop the chattering of my teeth and focus on my next book.