Happy Days are Here Again

Shandana,

You probably don`t remember me, but we were batchmates many moons ago at Grammar.
I was one of the nerdy ones, and you were always ultra cool, and gorgeous to boot. :-) You were also always very charming whenever we did have occassion to chat. So it was with great delight that I have read your wonderfully written articles in Friday Times and other publications of the past few years. You are a brilliant writer and i wish you all sorts of continued success. I can`t wait to buy your book, which i hope will be the first of many :-)

All my best,
Mustafa

With a Little Help From My Friends
By Shandana Minhas

This blasted web-site sprouts new “writers” faster than quotes in “Life on the Wall Street Floor” – an experience so head-swirling that it often makes me want to give my own special kind of advice to young ones in creative writing: put your writing ahead of all your activities, write a little every day, give yourself deadlines.

Then collect all those pieces and throw them into trash. It just saves time by getting the same end result more quickly.

I give practical advice. Advice that’s not so easy to ignore. I’ll tell you all I know, which isn’t much – but chances are it far exceeds what YOU know and – eat you heart out – I am going to leave out ALL the juicy details!

I prefer the wisdom once offered to another by his high-school coach: “You need more friends.” Problem is, I did not have a coach in high school – unless it was the one I rode in. Okay, so there was no coach – but one still gets the feel for friends – unless they are fiends.

Your friends can feel you too all right. They are full of love, too – especially when your wallet is full. But an even stronger motivator, I find, is jealousy. (Go read Dr. Sohail if you don’t buy this line.)

With so many fellow “sisters” and “brothers” around here, I have quickly learned that the successes of those you love are much greater downers than the failures of those you hate.

You see – they are all jealous of me!

But why?! For one thing, I think that I am the only person in the world who can refer to this profession as a word prostitute – and get away with it! You think that’s no big deal?! Have YOU ever tried using the “W” word (no, not as in the middle initial of you know who)! Go talk to someone who has!

Being a teacher, a lecher (I don’t soft-pedal!), an actress, a bimbo for a music video (okay, it was just once – and they all ran away), a playwright, a drama queen, a script writer/concept writer/creative director for television (you think I am making up all those, don’t you! Well, I did do all of that before I turned a certain age (no, I am not going to tell you what it was)) – doing all of that is just too tiring – it got me so tired that I finally resolved to give up the racket and settle down to a steady job so am currently trying motherhood, with some writing on the side.

Okay, I lied.

Motherhood is not just a job – it is actually four jobs combined into one – five, if you include the hubby.

And writing – that is only one step removed from cutting throats, I tell you – heck, it is the mother of all wars! If Saddam Hussein had stuck to writing, instead of starting to think that he could actually fight a real war – well, he would still be – still be – writing, of course!

I feel those pangs of cut throats deeply – every time I write “Djinn and Tonic”! My column used to be called “The Other Side,” but since I claim to no longer remember why, it won’t be called that any more.

Okay, here is the real reason why – I was underage then, that’s all!

At the time, I was also unaware of my tendency to edge past each of my fellow writers’ accomplishments. I was a competitor who didn’t like to think of herself as competitive. It seemed ugly – but I liked it because it was so funny!

Now fast-forward to June 2006. I had been working on a book for more years than I choose to admit, and while my work had been steady, I knew it could be done faster. The amount of time the project had taken had caused me to lose much of my drive – and so many of the “price less” pieces at chowk – overflowing with accounts of encounters with magnificent mullahs, horny hizras, devilish dhobies, and rubbing-it-in rickshaw-riff-raff! And my helping hubby and consequently mounting loads of household chores inexplicably did not help to get that steam back, either.

That’s why a nemesis seemed like a good idea. Someone to hate who deserved to be hated! Someone I wanted to beat up – like the dhobi beating up the donkey!

The problem was, as a writer and, hopefully, a decent person, I’d been trained to see the humanity in everyone – even chowk people. Having a nemesis required the ability to imagine that any potential award-winning author might actually deserve that acclaim – and to dismiss that thought right away! I looked around to find one but had a tough time. For example, my 5-year-old nephew was very busy running his own Superhero Office, which was saving the world from Gandhi, a villain who, as depicted by my nephew in crayon, consisted of some very large, creepy eyes and bristling hair. And then there were the many gas-filled uncles who were fascinated by naked brown skin – except with their own. My nephew’s campaign to defeat Gandhi was all-out and brutal, but I kept wondering what had happened to make Gandhi the way he was and whether I could redeem him once caught – perhaps by writing a book on him.

I kept thinking that maybe other people had the ability to publish books any time of the day – and I didn’t.

I was just too soft.

I needed enemies. I needed a Gandhi of my own. Or at least a Jawahara!

But years of hanging around this site had worn me down. By this point, my fellow chowkies thought that they had left me so far back that I had turned from jealous to complacent. They had all done different things and each had proceeded to write beautiful fiction – without realizing it as such, of course. Some kids much younger than I had written books simply so others could be able to quote from them. And here I was – publishing stories that weren’t sold in stores for money and entering year 5000 of writing my book. Okay, so the above does not sound too convincing – but bear with me, I can still make it work!

Choosing a nemesis from among my fellow chowkies would have been like choosing to compete against Tiger Woods – especially for someone who can not tell one end of the golf stick from the other – but it is still do-able – beating up on Woods, I mean – as long as somebody holds on tight to Tiger’s stick when he is swinging it.

And then – knock on wood, it happened.

SHE started to write a book. For the same publisher that I had staked out all along!

I had seen her stuff on the computer screen before. Her book – I had smiled. How cute, I had thought. And now she was finishing hers, and I hadn’t finished my own.

Suddenly I began to write as if my chair were on fire. I wrote a chapter a week. I wrote, I wrote, I wrote. For the first time in a long time, I cared about my book again – almost as much as about the hubby (I actually wanted to write the book just as much as I actually wanted to hit him with a stick). And eventually I began sitting down at my desk with pleasure, without needing the spur of jealousy to put me there – as soon as he learned to keep his thobra out of my way.

At a meeting last summer I heard the poet Edward Hirsch say (well, not in person) that hardly any writers reach the “roof of their potential” because they don’t work hard enough. One of the frustrations of being a creative writer is that you start to think of publication as your goal. It’s easy to forget your real goal: artistic integrity, great work, work that deserves to be read today and tomorrow. Your real goal is the “roof of your potential.”

He DID say it. It conclusively proves that – that “poets will be poets unless they are outright crazy!” (At least they are not lawyers, though!)

Sometimes I wish those meetings would skip all of the practical advice. I wish we would all sit in a circle and read from our favorite works – like we do here at chowk. It will have to be a long circle, though, with many empty chairs!

Then wouldn’t we all want to go home and write? Isn’t that what made us writers in the first place?

Most of my fellow writers are not creative writers -- they think they are literature scholars, historians, and sociologists, but surely they have their equivalent inspirations. Rather than warning against failure, our meetings could model success.

I don’t need any more practical advice – what I need is inspiration – and a LOT of money – perhaps someday those moneybags of chowk will actually start paying out. But I am not holding my breath.

During the years I was a student, every one I knew published a book. And they were fantastic. One of them used to write every morning at 4:30 a.m. – okay, I can not vouch for it but he probably did something at 4:30 a.m. – perhaps sleep – or perhaps he slept and wrote at the same time. But now that I am almost in the big league, I finally recognize how astonishing those accomplishments were. Those people, more than anyone or anything else, remain my models for what I can and should do – except for the dirt poor part!

It’s not that writing my book has gotten any easier, nor does it go significantly faster. But it’s fun and interesting – a challenge that I take on out of daily desire rather than daily obligations – a bit like beating hubby with a stick. But I should not be so hard on hubby who could barely dare to imagine that one day he might marry someone who would write for a living – instead of cooking for food.

When I finally get around to reading HER book, I may like it – or if I don’t, I will still say that I liked it. It probably deserves to be published. I may even become impressed. It was as if one of my own colleagues had published a novel. Well, in a manner of speaking, she is.

Just as long as I publish mine first – even if I have to hit her on head to ensure that. Yeah!

Okay, so I did not write this draft myself – at least the name on top should have not been mine. But that’s the way I SHOULD have written it!!!

Why didn’t I write it this way myself? Well, I actually prefer to walk around without a bull’s eye on my back.

But sometimes, others can still pin it when I am not watching. Any way, my book is coming. I feel like throwing a party.

Welcome to my party, you losers!

Now wait a minute, perhaps “losers” is too strong a word.

Perhaps all I need to say is something simple – perhaps the only sound I need to exclaim is an expression of utter humility! Therefore, here you go.

Na-na-na-na-naah-naah!

Ooops, ignore that remark, it just slipped out! Unless it was done in fun!

The funny part is I don’t do anything for fun. Not doing anything IS fun. Especially fun is not doing anything while gazing listlessly at trashy TV shows. But they beat most of the stuff on this site any day – except mine, of course!

Suffice it to say that a good time gets had by all, except the toddler (who insists on singing Jinnah Zindabad every time he goes to relieve himself in the loo). Like most columnists, I plan to spread my confusion all by myself – I don’t have any clue why certain characters insist on helping everyone! And then there are folks who are letting their imagination run wild with my last name – what the heck do I care if it is indeed of Sikh origin – am I supposed to wrap a turban and grow a beard? That will be the first for a woman – Sikh or otherwise! And then what do I do – wear a burqa?.

Burqa ke peechhe kya hai? Who knows – but hopefully it is more than a beard – and if not, I don’t want to know!

A couple of years spent tilting at every passing wind – the one from mother nature, I mean, not the one your dirty mind just conjured up – like a particularly problematic Don Quixote type fembot – whatever type of boat that is – has left me thoroughly disoriented and not quite sure about the difference between up and down – or a chowk or a town. Oh well, I don’t really need that kind of specialized knowledge since I plan to be horizontal a lot – which beats being vertical – especially the feet up there type of vertical. I can do it too, thanks to the fat royalty check I am anticipating and drooling all over.

Sometimes I get so excited about that ice cream!

(Note: adapted from “With a Little Help From My Enemies“ by By A. Papatya Bucak, an assistant professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. Those who try to compare it with the original version and shake their heads in disbelief at the extent of creative license taken, need to fully understand that sometimes creation can only occur on foundations of massive destruction. Besides, if you don’t already know it, mating a donkey with a horse is not as easy as you might think.)

Shandana,

Congratulations and good luck!
Do let us know when the book comes out.

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Congratulations Shandana,
I dont know if you remember but sometime last year I had emailed you regarding `Doctor`.. love your writing
Look forward to reading the book!
Batool

Nice reading, thanks

hey....its great that we will see u in print soon.....and yea.......sending us the link is a sure thing i guess......and maybe u shud write another article giving tips too blooming authors...

hey....its great that we will see u in print soon.....and yea.......sending us the link is a sure thing i guess......and maybe u shud write another article giving tips too blooming authors...

shandana,

congratulations, and quite frankly, you`re writings on chowk are like a long novel with distinct chapters from your mind and life, so i`d say this is your second published novel.

jawahara,

hats off to you too, make sure you guys provide us with a link where we can buy the first copies

Re: # 34
Interesting and Thanks for responding!

There is one Mr Minhas in Delhi. I think that he is the Head of Edcuation Board or something in Delhi, linked to GHPS school.

Most of the Minhas that I used to know were into academics or theology or they join Punjab Police.

Are you in Pakistan or USA? Anyways, good luck with the book and tell us where can we buy it once it is available.

DW

Meri taudi Punjabi is vaste mill di eh, ke mera asl des Jalaander nagri de kol si, te assi halli vi doabi bolde eh.

A

Hey Shandana. We should exchange notes about the publisher. Let me know if you have any contract questions or anything. Would be glad to help. This is so cool. Drop me a line if you want at jsaidullah@hotmail.com.

Well done Shandana! This is great stuff to hear. Awesome!

you are all very kind :) thank you!

the novel is supposed to be released in december. it is the same publisher that is releasing jawahara`s book (how exciting is that J?!?). it is ont about babies. in fact, now that i think about it, there is mention/trace/description of babies anywhere. hmm. might have missed something now that i think about it. it was called tunnel vision, but when i was in a bookshop in delhi i saw a novel called tunnel vision so shall have to think of a new title.

delhiwala, have been meaning to respond to you for a while. my father is a punjabi muslim from lahore but, one of my husbands cousins is married to a sikh minhas and according to pics i look just like his sister. who knows. might be interesting to do a tree one day, a family tree i mean...

to everyone else who is writing a book, good luck and hang in there!

if my novel is indeed published, the dedication will be simple. `for chowk.`

shandana,
taaliyaan and badhaaiyaan. it might seem unreal to you but i think i can safely say on behalf of every one of us on chowk who`ve been privileged to read your writing that it comes as no surprise. someday all those agents and publishing houses are going to eat crow. i`ll now spend the end of the year obsessively checking amazon and googling your name. :)