We hide behind our lives, our causes, our friends.  Hiding, it seems to be this natural thing for humans, anything to avoid facing who we really are and what we really want.  Even those who seem really confident and assertive and look like they’re getting what they want must have something that they suppress, some part of themselves that they are afraid to show.

I was having a conversation a couple of days ago with a friend about being a little invisible.  Not in a negative way though.  I like to stay in the background, to do the small things that put everything together, to be the scriptwriter rather than the actor.  But is it more to do with the fact that I like doing the small things or more to do with the fact that it means I can hide and not face some of the more scary things that I should face?

Writing has always been important to me but writing has so many fields that you can go into.  When I was writing at thirteen it was easy, nobody knew I wrote so nobody had any expectations, but now that people know I write I can’t hide behind a pen name because people expect to read what I write.  The vain person inside me likes it when others read what I write and tell me they like it or they thought it was ‘xyz’ but what if the comments are completely negative?  What if I’m told ‘you can’t actually write for shit!’ Could I handle that?  I don’t know and I guess that comes back to the issue of hiding.  All my life I’ve kept hidden behind this persona of the quiet girl to try and avoid things.  It hasn’t ever stopped me from doing what I want but I can’t help but wonder if maybe I had taken more risks I would be in a different place right now.  It feels a little wrong to be 22 and wondering ‘who am I?’  It feels like I should know by now who I am and what I want out of life.  But so much internal conflict plagues my mind, so many different expectations and commitments pull me in different directions, which ones do I live up to?  Which ones do I follow?

How do you decide if you should follow your head or your heart?  Sure all the cliché literature and movies tell you to follow your heart but life isn’t a movie.  We don’t always get a ‘happily ever after’ so really which way do you go?

In a perfect world I would be able to follow my heart and do what is right for me, but so many other factors come into it.  I would say the things I wanted to say without fear or consequences, I would do the things I wanted to do without fear of letting down other people.  But the world isn’t perfect and I’d rather work on making the world perfect for others than for myself.

After 2 and a half hours of standing in a huge queue I finally registered for my Masters degree.  All last night I felt a combination of feelings - scared, nervous, excited, worried, unsure, happy, the list goes on.  I parted with my first, of three, fee installment and questioned all the way through registration if it was a good or bad idea.  But that’s me, far too much focus on the ‘what if’ and not enough throwing caution to the wind.  I guess it’s time to do that.

I have, to some extent, been brought up with the attitude that if something happens it happens for a reason and even if you can’t think of a reason you can’t really do much to change the inevitable so why stress over it?  It is an attitude I have taken on board but I have tendencies to stray into the worry zone time after time after time.  Possibly it’s a link ot commitment issues, being unable to say ‘goodbye other opportunities, this is the one I want’.  But it’s time to do that.  It’s time to embrace the fact that this year will be about the masters and it will be a good year.

My dissertation is already partly planned.  I know what I want to do and I know how I want to do it.  I just need to make time to get out the camcorder and interview family members.   The writing process I will follow on this and I have had a few people ask if they can read the finished product so I will allow people to do that as well.

Growing up is scary.  Obvious statement, I know, but it doesn’t stop it being true.  Since graduating from my undergrad degree in 2007 I tried to be a ‘grown up’ and do something that would lead me to a career and into the big bad world.  The thing is, it just didn’t happen.  Teaching (high school) was not for me, at all, so I gave that up after a month.  I tried to find jobs within the media sector and managed to get an interview at a magazine but decided against it, mostly because it was a cheap rag and the company was so small that even a crappy job to begin with would not have led to anything good.  It’s just not worth it if you’re selling your soul to get to where you want.

I decided not to grow up for a while, to not enter the world of work and careers.  Tomorrow I register for my postrgraduate degree, a Masters in Literature, Culture and Place.  Granted it doesn’t sound like a degree that will give me a concrete end job, but I didn’t want a vocational degree, I wanted something I knew I’d enjoy.  At the end of the day that’s what’s important,  enjoying whatever it is you do regardless of what sort of money or status or fame it brings you.  If I wanted to be rich and famous I would have packed in everything here and moved to London, but I don’t.  I want to be successful in whatever I choose to do.  I want to be happy in not only my career but my life in general.  In this moment in time all I want is to find a place that I can call home, a place where I feel like I belong, a place that makes me happy.  Will another year of uni get me this? I honestly cannot give you the answer to that, but I can say that I’m going to make the most of this year, if for no other reason then the fact that I’m spending a small fortune to pay for the degree should spur me on!

Having read the book ‘Shame’ by Jasvinder Sanghera last year, when I saw this in the library I got a little excited.  While ‘Shame’ was brilliantly written and genuinely moving, I’m afraid the same cannot be said for ‘Disgraced’.  While both are true stories relating to the issue of arranged marriage they are definitely varied in quality and quantity.  The reason for my excitement was that this was the story of a Muslim British Asian, someone that I could possibly relate to, but I found myself questioning whether the author actually knew what they were writing about.

‘Disgraced’ begins in the first chapter with Saira telling the reader about the concepts of Halal and Haram, this automatically makes me assume that the story is more about religion than culture and that the concepts of Halal - what is allowed - and Haram - what is forbidden - will be a recurring theme throughout the book.  However, I find myself reading more about Haram than Halal and with no real justification for why the two concepts were introduced to begin with. My initial assumption had been that the author had to do something she considered Haram, which she did, but she would leave the reader with some sort of lesson due to her experiences. It felt completely lesson less, like you were reading it just for the sake of reading it and getting nothing real out of the book.

My main issue with this book is the authors confusion over what is religion and what is culture.  She talks about coming from a strict Muslim family.  Any truly strict Muslim family would not force their daughter into a marriage, in fact forced marriage is forbidden in Islam.  She also goes on to talk about how her brothers become involved in drugs, and in the words of Immortal Technique, ‘Heroin is not compatible with Islam’.  This issue of confusing culture and religion is common in many Muslim families of Pakistani or Indian origin.  Personally I find myself questioning some of the things that are said and trying to determine if they are actually religion based or culture that has been described as religion for so long that people mistake it for being religion.

The actual storytelling was very selective, in my opinion.  It wasn’t even a case of giving the reader just the important points, it was like the author expected you to have some prior knowledge of her life.  You hear a lot about one of her brothers but the other is almost forgotten, his name thrown in every now and then, leaving you with questions of why he hasn’t been mentioned.  While we’re clearly aware of the issues her parents have with her older brother, Ali, we don’t know the extent of the problems with the younger brother.  Surely giving more information about him would only have added to the strength of the story.

The final point I want to make is about the way the book ends.  The feeling of abruptness leaves you feeling like the author has let you put one foot into her door and then decided to throw you out and slam the door in your face.  It felt to me like a half finished book and certainly not one that I’ll be re-reading.  It’s a shame really because British Asian literature is so scarce that when you find something new you hope that it’ll be life changing.  It’s so much worse when it’s a let down because of this.

I don’t know about this, it’s the beginnings of something maybe?  It’s very rough, of course, but I promised a friend I would put up what I had and this is all that’s readable of it so far.  The rest is just a little…well I’m not happy with it.

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Glasgow. It was a city of possibility to him. His father had made some sort of living for himself, he was making enough money to send back home and have enough to feed and clothe himself. It was just natural to assume that he could do the same if not even better by moving to the west, it would have to benefit his children in some way. At the end of the day the reason any of them did anything was so that future generations would have the chances that they didn’t. He wasn’t educated, any ambitions he had had never surfaced far enough to actually evolve into reality, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take pride in the work he did.

Work kept him late; he missed the usual bus with the friendly driver who would call out to him when he got to his stop. This driver didn’t even look at him when he got on the bus let alone speak to him.

“Go…” He struggled to say the words but his broken English was the only form of communication he had ‘Woo-da-lands Road?”

A tap on a sign as his only response, no chance to explain that he couldn’t read whatever the driver was pointing to. He was ushered towards a seat by the sour faced man. Dread filled Karim, his tendency to day dream on bus journeys left him with little knowledge of his surroundings. How was he supposed to know where to get off? This wasn’t Pakistan where seeing a friend of a friend of a friend meant you’d be treated to dinner and a ride home. This was a new land, somewhere colder, where people were afraid of him more than anything. If only they knew that the riddles that he heard from them frightened him more than anything he could ever say to them.

Although I’m first generation British Asian, I’m the fourth generation of my family to live in the country. My great grandfather was one of the first five Pakistani’s to move to Glasgow. He made his living as a door to door salesman, but his is a story for another day.

The focus of this entry is my grandpa, my father’s father. My grandpa grew up on a farm in Pakistan. His mother died when he was very young and he doesn’t even have a vague memory of her, his father immigrated to Scotland in order to make a living and be able to send money back to the family. My grandfather married my grandmother before the creation of Pakistan as a country. My eldest uncle was born in India, not Pakistan. My grandfather made a life for himself in Pakistan but eventually he made the decision to do what his father had done and move to Britain to make a living. So he left behind his family and moved to Glasgow, an illiterate man from Pakistan doing what he could to help his family.

Just over a month ago I accompanied my grandmother to one of her hospital appointments. On our way back I was driving through the Cowcaddens area of Glasgow and while stopped at a red light my grandfather started to reminisce about the area. When he first arrived it was vastly different to the Cowcaddens we see today. It was more the recollection of a day when he got off the bus at Cowcaddens instead of his usual stop and found himself lost in the area that triggered something off in my head. I could imagine how I would feel if I got a little lost in a city that I didn’t know but if I didn’t have the ability to read or even speak the language of that country then I would be, well to put it simply, shit scared. It was this small recollection that made me realise that my grandparents and even my parents have been through so much hardship but at the same time this has given them all such interesting lives. My grandparents are still both illiterate yet both don’t forget a single birthday of all their grandchildren. They know which medication to take, at what time and in which quantity by just looking at the packaging, they have memories far superior to my (sometimes dying) memory.

The relevance of all this? It’s actually something that’s inspired me to write something. It’s just a small piece at the moment, which isn’t yet finished. I’ll post it tomorrow, but I felt that the back story itself should be explained a little and if I’d have included it with the finished story then it would have just been a little too overwhelming.  

The only place to begin is at the beginning, right?  I guess I should introduce myself then.

Who am I?

Some of you will already know who I am.  For those that don’t know me. all you really need to know is that I’m female, I’m 22, I’m Asian, I’m Scottish, I’m Muslim.  Most of my friends call me Rai, so that’s what I’ll go by on this.

The purpose of this blog?

Writing.

To explore the dual nature of the world I live in.  I’m sure many of you would have felt torn between a number of worlds/options/cultures/’insert your own issue here’.  I guess you could say that’s the story of my life.  The constant question of who I am, how do I define myself?  Do I need to define myself?  Can I be more than just Scottish  or Asian or Muslim? Can I be all three?  The name of this domain is coincidental, it was actually a domain name I’ve had for a couple of years now and decided to make use of by setting up this blog (after encouragement from a close friend).

What can you expect?

Honestly?  I can’t predict what I’m going to write about.  I can guarantee that much of my emphasis will be on writing.  On the process of writing a novel from inspiration to writers block.  Reviews of other books, movies.  Stories that I’ve written.  Stories that my grandparents and parents have told me.

Hopefully some of you will stick with me as I figure out what I’m going to do with this blog.  Comment are always welcome and if you have questions then just leave them in comments.  And with that I shall end the dreaded first post.