Chocolate: Nature’s way of making up for Mondays...

or just a really bad day.

I didn’t forget that yesterday was my blog day. I even wrote 400+ words of meaningless crap. But then I couldn’t find the time to edit and publish it and today, re-reading revealed a whole new degree of crappiness. So I decided to start over.

I’m not in a good mood. I’m sick and tired and if I could find the strength for it I would crawl to the Co-op across the street and buy two armloads of chocolate. Normally, the mere thought of it would give me a surge of energy just adequate to attempt the feat. The fact that it does not today is an indication of just how awful I feel.

Okay, just opened my desk drawer hoping to find some left-over dark chocolate from last week. Only bits of silver foil here of course, the words ‘chocolate’ and ‘left-over’ rarely feature in the same sentence for me.

London is in a bad mood too. Unfortunately, this can’t be fixed with a giant slab of chocolate.

I have been in a state of disbelief since yesterday morning. The riots started on Friday and I read the news online over the weekend (I don’t have a TV) but it wasn’t until yesterday morning that I watched the videos on the news websites and saw the fire, the stoning, and the looting. Streets of London – the civilized capital of a developed nation – the site of what looked like open warfare.

‘Lawless’ is a word I associate with the Wild West, and that era was a long time ago, to see the word tossed about in the news articles is frightening. This might make me sound naive, or ignorant, or like I’ve been living under a rock, but I honestly never imagined something like this could happen in this day and age.

Protests happen, so do riots, I’ve seen it on the news before. Buses set on fire, broken shop windows, and then the police descend with their protective gear and batons. Tear gas, some folks beaten up, a ton of arrests, and then it’s done. Violence is always meaningless, but usually, there is at least a reason for the madness.

There was a reason for this – an event that isn’t even clear yet to the average Londoner, an event whose details are still sketchy and varying depending on who reports them. That reason doesn’t matter anymore. Those looters on the streets with their hooded jackets? Seventy-five percent of them – probably more – don’t even know that ‘reason’ ever existed. They are simply opportunists taking full advantage of a ‘situation’ – making it worse, driving it out of control. Sad that that many disgusting opportunists exist in the city.

There is a video on the news websites: an injured boy sits on the side of the street. Another guy goes to help him up. And then a second guy goes from behind and opens the bleeding boy’s backpack. A few more join him, like vultures they pick through his stuff while he weakly tries to shrug them off. Grabbing something out of the backpack one guy walks off. The rest of them wander off too, the hurt boy is forgotten.

That incident pretty much sums up the situation. Pretend to care about a wronged man and his family, stir up trouble, and take full advantage of the ensuing chaos with no regard for the law and no thought to the innocent.

I have only lived in London for five months, but I’ve come to love the city. What’s not to love? Beautiful, vibrant, bursting with history. Loads and loads of libraries, the best shopping. Lovely people, funny people, crazy people. Right now, where I am, it is still all of those things. Hard to believe, just a little way off, a few tube stops over, where all the sirens are headed, is a London I hadn’t imagined would ever come to exist.

This post was meant to be about chocolate.  

‘B’ is for Bibliophiles and Blogs

(I’m finding this very awkward, and it’s only my second – technically third – post. I’m determined to keep it up though, for now.)

So I find there are a lot of people on this planet who like to read, and a ton of them have blogs.

Interesting...

As any self-respecting wannabe-writer, I too adore books. I love to read, I love to buy and collect books, I practically salivate in Waterstones, and a trip to the library in the highlight of my week – too bad about the 10-books-at-a-time limit they have going on though.

I once saw this mug in a gift-shop that said, ‘I’d rather be reading’ – and that sums up my state of mind, at all times. This can be a tad inconvenient when I forget all about my endless-novel, and the 1000 word deadline I set myself, and instead read all three books from a series by Nora Roberts in one weekend. By the time I finish, its 6.30 pm on Sunday and of course there’s no time to get any writing done that day so I might as well start (and possibly finish) the new Mills & Boon on my nightstand before bed.

And I can read anything. (Well, anything fiction – not that I am against non-fiction, but I tend not to pick one up at the library or a bookshop unless someone recommends it). I just finished a ridiculously brilliant short story collection by Margaret Atwood (Good Bones) and I am currently reading Anita Shreve’s Strange Fits of Passion. Next on my shelf is a lovely M & B by India Grey – one of my favourite M & B writers. 

I used to think my obsessive reading habits were abnormal, until I came to the UK.

I grew up in Tanzania. Until junior high I knew maybe five people who liked to read, in the whole school. In high school there were more, but not one of them read with any degree of obsession. In college, in India, there was one other guy that I knew of and could exchange books with. I developed this identity then, as ‘the girl who reads’. Friends teased me about it, they bought books as gifts for me for every occasion, and gently rebuked when I was lost in my novel and not paying attention to something more important.

So yes, I thought I was unusual.

In those years when I was growing up in Tanzania, books were something of a novelty. Our school library was severely limited and there was only one store in town that sold books – not a bookstore but a stationary shop that happened to stock a few novels. They had Archie comics, Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and the Sweet Valley Series – all of which were perfect for a while, but then I grew out of them and the options were limited to my dad’s little collection of ‘grown-up’ novels – mostly spy thrillers and Wilbur Smith.

Things looked up when some nice people in the States donated their old books to charity, which then arrived in Tanzania in ships and were sold on the pavements. Most of these were academic books – a lot of algebra and geography – but sometimes, if you scour very diligently, you could find a Sidney Sheldon or a Danielle Steele, or one seller with a dozen or so Mills & Boons. About three times in a year, my Dad drove my sister and me to that one street where they usually had the best of the fiction books. Of course there was no fixed price for them and my sister and I, being terrible at our poker faces, would get very excited when we found a certain amazing book and make its price shoot right up. Dad, conveniently, was a good haggler.

It got to a point when I was desperate for books. I used to look at all those lovely online book stores that were only available to ‘residents of the United States and Canada’, and dream of the day when I could have books delivered to my doorstep!

(All of this might sound quite medieval, but it was just about a decade ago!)

But here! In the UK!! Every other person on the tube has a book in their hand, so much so that I forget my own book whilst twisting my neck in strange ways to read their titles. And the book stores! They are everywhere! High street ones, independent ones, charity shops and the amazing Amazon!! (Forgive the multiple exclamation points – this subject tends to excite me.)

And bibliophiles are all on the World Wide Web, talking about their ailment, which is apparently quite widespread. I am a little sad about losing my exclusive claim on ‘the girl who reads’, but it is also flippin’-fantastic to read these blogs with books reviews and author interviews and all things books!

(Give me a minute while I count the number of times I used the word ‘book’ in this post.)

(Twenty-two.)

Anyway, speaking of blogs, this one has become something of a journal, hasn’t it? I suppose I have yet to find the style and rhythm for it as a blog. The 500-word thing is also shot, but that can only be a good thing. I think I will now make my minimum 750 words.

Oh, and ‘B’ is also for Bittersweet Chocochips. In case you’re wondering about the title of my blog, well, I really can’t explain it myself. Just put it down to my love for dark chocolate, baking and unsubtle metaphors. 

'A' is for All mirth and no matter

I know I said I would post one entry every week. And I know it’s been close to two since I made that not-so-ambitious pronouncement. Well, I have an excuse – a real live actual one, far removed from ones in the ‘my dog ate it’ category (although I have plenty of those too). Here it is: I was away in Swansea, graduating!

Yes World, I wore the gown and the funny cap and walked up on stage in my high-heels – I didn’t even fall over! – and became an official postgraduate degree holder (even though I received my certificate in the post about five months ago). It was all very grown up and dramatic in a solemn, hallowed sort of way. I expected to feel differently afterwards, grown-up and hallowed perhaps, but all I felt was excruciating pain in my feet (which went away soon after I changed into sneakers again). So no, the ceremony was interesting and all, but not all that. The best part of the trip, for me, was simply being back in Swansea.

I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I decided to go do an MA in Creative Writing in that very rainy part of Wales, but I know I wasn’t then intending to be a writer by profession. It wasn’t until my second semester in Swansea that I decided, or rather realized, that I wanted to write stories for a living. Day after day, I sat in a park bench with my notebook and pencil, so immersed in my stories that it felt almost physically wrenching to drag myself back to the real world. I've hated deadlines all my life, almost as much as I hate being told what to do, but being the compliant sort (except with my mom), I grit my teeth and I get on with it. At that time, however, it wasn’t at all a hardship to think of a deadline, because I knew I would get there in my own time, but still the time that had been determined for me. Because writing wasn’t hard for me. There was teeth-gritting happening then too, when the right words wouldn’t come, or at an interruption when exactly the right words were coming, but I loved that part of it too. Quite simply, I loved writing, and I was happiest when I was doing it. Being back in Swansea reminded me that.

There is this park, in the Uplands area of Swansea, known as Cwndonkin Park. If you enter by the main gate, you will see a garden – bright flowers meticulously grown and tended to make a pretty arrangement. Pretty, but artificial. Walk further down and small stream gurgles along on your right, the green more natural here, but human hands have curbed it just so you can see the charming little wooden bridge there, and the stone engraved with Dylan Thomas poetry. Not natural, but beautiful just the same. Ahead, if you turn left, there are tennis courts. But turn right... You might as well have entered a different realm altogether, because it is hard to believe that the deep dark woods is real, and that it actually exists less than thirty feet from the tennis courts. There are benches there too, and a tarred path running down, but they don’t detract from the wildness. For the sheer beauty of the untamed is overwhelming – tall trees with large leaves, moss-covered stone, and fairy-dust. You see, on those rare sunny days when the rays slant through the leaves, jostling for space amid the ever-present shadows, there is more than dust that shimmers there. If there is ever a place that you can stand in and believe that it is magic dancing up that shaft of sunlight, it is in that wild part of Cwndonkin.

How can one not write when in Cwndonkin?

That was, in part, my justification for not writing ever since I left Swansea. Where is the magic and atmosphere in bustling London, in the crowded tubes and neatly-trimmed parks? How can I be expected to write here?

Being back there, remembering why I love to write, why I decided to be a writer, I realized that if I choose excuses over what I thought I loved to do, then I am not meant to do that at all. It all comes down to this: Do I want to write? If the answer is yes, than I must just get on with it. It will be the one thing that I will be doing all for me, only for me. And so I must remember the pleasure it gives me. And do it for that reason alone. Later, much later, I will think about publishing, selling, making a living. Right now, simply writing is enough.

***

Okay, I didn’t mean to get so deep today. Truly. When I typed this post’s title, I was intending to write about something else entirely. I am now well over my 500-words-a-piece mark, but I have to justify my title, so here it is:

I used to think I liked Shakespeare. I have always considered myself a fan of his plays. It wasn’t until Tuesday last week that I realized I never really knew Shakespeare’s plays. A play is written with the intent of staging it before an audience – that is what makes it different to any other dialogue-ridden bit of prose – I had heard this a long time ago but I never really appreciated what it meant, because I had never before watched a Shakespearean play, or any play for that matter, performed live on stage before.

Much Ado About Nothing has been my favourite Shakespearean play since high school – it was one of the plays in my English Literature class curriculum. I adored it. I used to be able to rattle off the dialogue at will, I had a massive crush on Benedick ('I do love nothing in the world so well as you...' – how can you not fall for that?) and I always thought Claudio was a jerk. One rare memory from high-school that still makes me grin, as opposed to the ones that still make me cringe and/or blush, is being praised by my professor in front of the whole class for my essay on Don John’s villainy.

Anyway, I digressing (I do that a lot), the point I was trying to make here is that I went to watch Much Ado at The Globe last Tuesday, and that’s when I knew.

It was a revelation. Or maybe several revelations. I understood something fundamental about writing and the way that words are construed, and, in the case of a play, the way they are presented on stage. I understood exactly what acting is supposed to be about, and how a different actor can (and is supposed to if he’s any good) make you feel a completely different way about the same character (I also realized that stage actors are way cooler than film actors). Most importantly, I understood Much Ado in a whole other way. It was little things, nuances in an actor’s voice, inflections that made that small, significant difference between meaning one thing or the other. The stage completely bares a piece of writing, doesn’t it?


And while this momentous epiphany was occurring, I also had a fantabulous time because man, those guys were good! Did I say good? I meant BRILLIANT! Consider me a regular at The Globe!

***

Well, there you go. I am writing again! Just a stupid blog entry, yes, but at least it’s something. I am also going to revisit my endless-novel, give it a serious once-over. I imagine it needs a lot of work before I can concentrate on moving ahead. Maybe I’ll scrap it and start over, or dump the whole thing altogether and start another. There is certainly no shortage of stories in my head.

Bye now!

1st post!

Hello!

I'm Kavya, I’m 23 and I'm a writer. 

At least I pretend to be a writer. I definitely intend to be one. Just as soon as I finish the novel that has no end.

I have an MA in Creative Writing (Swansea University) that I finished in October last year, and handing in my dissertation ended the glorious days of hunching over the laptop, fingers flying over the keys, with no consciousness of day or night – living on Bramley apple pies and conducting conversations with the voices in my head. I moved to London, became annoyingly lucid, and got a job that has very little to do with writing. 

So I no longer have even a pseudo-excuse to call myself a writer.

This blog is supposed to help me with that. See, right after I submitted my dissertation, my muse decided to take some vacation-time and I, thinking the poor guy deserved a break, let him. (Yes, my muse is most definitely male – on good days he looks a bit like Gerard Butler actually) My magnanimity was grossly exploited and I haven't seen hide nor hair of Gerard since.

I need my muse back, and I have hatched a clever plan to lure him away from the temptation of piña coladas, beach volleyball and (I have a sneaking suspicion) another woman. Here are a few things I have learnt about my muse over the years:

1. He is essentially a lazy creature (where that six pack came from is beyond me);

2. One way to get him off his...uh... backside and get to work, is a deadline, but

3. The self-imposed kind doesn’t work.

This blog is my plan. One entry – minimum 500 words – per week. I don’t know if I will ever finish my endless novel, but a tiny blog entry every now and then will at least keep my creative juices flowing – possibly even entice Gerard back into my life – and I figure the idea of a potential readership will keep me from conveniently forgetting/ignoring my deadlines this time around.

And what am I going to be writing about? Well, everything! Anything! The challenge I have extended to myself is that the next entry’s title must begin with the letter ‘A’, the one after that ‘B’ and so on. So that’s twenty-six posts sorted – I’ll just have to wait and see if I last that long.

Wish me luck!