Tag: Pakistan

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Winter Break: A COVID Story

Winter break. A time when everyone and their neighbour feel it’s their duty to travel. At least they did, until the world was hit by the Coronavirus, and it became prudent to stay put wherever you are. Thankfully, I have never claimed to be very prudent. And so it was that we decided to go back home for a visit with the family, stopping over at Dubai on the way.

The first shock came when our online application of a UAE visa was denied. It had never happened before. We visit UAE at least once a year since moving from Dubai around 4 years ago. Over the last decade Dubai has been like home to us, so a rejected visa was unthinkable and unprecedented. Fortunately, we found out soon enough that some processes were changed during the last year because of the havoc caused by Covid’19.

Once it was all cleared and we managed to get the visa, our tickets became problematic. Now, these are all very minor problems from the point of view of someone who travels internationally at least 4 times a year. Or used to back in the good old days! This winter, we wanted to defy all odds and see our family after more than a year of missing them. So, we soldiered on, making plans for an epic winter break, to wash away all the woes that 2020 had brought with it.

We landed in Dubai, happy to be back home, excited to meet our family. Two days were spent in this happy haze, and then disaster struck. The new strain of the virus, discovered in the UK, became a cause of concern for other countries. As a result, Saudi Arabia closed its air space and cancelled all flights to and from the country. We could be stuck away from our home for months to come.

Amazingly enough, other people seemed more worried about us than we were ourselves. There were concerned messages and calls from people around the world, friends and family alike. I told them all one thing: Let me enjoy my break. There is nothing to be gained by worrying about something that I cannot change. I was there to have fun, not worry about what the future might hold for us.

After making the most of our week-long stay in Dubai, we made our way to Karachi. Whenever we go back home, we know that no matter how long we stay, it will always be too short. There is just too much to do, and too little time to do it. Our original plan was for 10 days, and honestly, we were hopeful that the airspace will open up by that time. No such luck.

As days passed, we started becoming a bit worried. The kids had to start school, albeit online, and the husband had his work. There are always connectivity issues in Karachi because too many people use one internet connection, and it seems wasteful to buy new connections when none of us stay there for too long. This time we had to make alternate arrangements.

Three days before our return, the airline informed us that our flight was cancelled. It was time to worry. Last year, we saw people stuck in other countries for months on end; families separated, learning to survive without each other. At least we were all together. Still, the stress levels were at an all-time high.

As luck would have it, Saudi Arabia decided to open up their airspace…on the day of our original flight! Unfortunately, that flight had already been cancelled, and we had to book a new flight back home. That proved to be another adventure since every passenger on the flights cancelled during the three weeks wanted to book the earliest flight home! Luck was with us and we managed to get a flight a week from our original date of departure. But the story doesn’t end here.

Somehow, my middle son’s booking got mixed up and he had to get a separate booking. It was all normal, until all our seats were confirmed except his. So, another round of uncertainty started where we weren’t sure if we would all stay back with him or if one of us should stay and the others leave.

This continued until two days before we were to leave. Wonder of wonders, the airline people finally realized that he is a minor and cannot travel without a guardian. But by then we were under a different threat! Karachi became the focal point of an ongoing protest. The roads were permanently blocked, and getting to the airport was downright impossible! The 20 minute journey from our place was taking 2-3 hours!

We planned and prepared for the worst, but 10 hours before we were due to fly, the protest abruptly ended. Our way was clear. It was a miracle how things were working out for us even in the most adverse circumstances. God is truly great, and works in mysterious ways. This winter became memorable for us like no other winter before.

There is a whole other story of the fainting woman in front of us, while we were boarding the final leg of our flight. And the delay in flight because someone decided to get off the flight and they had to perform a whole security check! *facepalm* But these stories will make this even longer.

I am forever grateful that we managed to spend amazing time with family after a long time. This winter break goes in the family history as one of the most happening and happy times of last year. All of us needed this end to the strangest year of our lives.

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Review: Salt And Saffron

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Salt And Saffron by Kamila Shamsie is a light-hearted book about family history, class divisions, prejudices and familial love. Shamsie has created a fictional aristocratic family, proud of its roots that go back many centuries. She has used this family as an example of the elitism and caste system deeply embedded in our culture in the guise of family values and pride.

The very name of the family, the Dard-e-Dils (the Heartaches), is so unreal that you know what will follow can only be satirical and tongue-in-cheek. This family, the Dard-e-Dils, is proud of its heritage and they love to tell stories, mainly about their ancestors. Most of these stories are about the “not-quite” twins. These “not-quite” twins have been born quite frequently through history, and have always brought about the downfall of this family.

Aliya is the main protagonist, going back from the US to her family in Karachi, by way of London. She last talked to her Dadi (paternal grandmother) 4 years ago when they had a massive falling out. After avoiding her for 4 years, Aliya thinks that it’s time to heal the breach. But first, she makes a stop in London to see her older cousin with whom she is very close. And it is there that her own story seems to take an unexpected turn. She not only finds herself attracted to a boy who might be unacceptable to her family, but also meets the Indian side of her family.

The Indian and Pakistani sides of the Dard-e-Dils refuse to acknowledge each other, and still carry old wounds from the time of the partition. Aliya learns something about herself during her meeting with her Indian relatives. This makes it even more imperative for her to go back home and figure out what she wants from life.

Essentially a love story, Salt And Saffron also takes a look at the deeper consequences of the Indo-Pak partition; the deeply ingrained prejudices that are passed down through generations in the form of class and caste. How family history is written through stories that become legends as time passes.

Kamila Shamsie is an excellent writer and it is hard to find fault in her writing. She takes very real elements from her surroundings and turns them into a riveting story. The only problem is that since this book is written from the perspective of a particular class, it might be difficult to relate to for people who do not belong to that class. However, this does not stop me from appreciating her craft and her command of words. She is definitely a master storyteller.

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Sunday Discussion: Are We Giving Up On Our Mother Tongue?

My mother tongue is Urdu. As an expat living in the Middle East for the last 10 years, one of the things that I am most ashamed of is that I have not been too diligent in teaching my children my mother tongue. Of course, they speak the language and understand it. Two of them can even read it, but it is like a foreign language to them; they will never use it if they can get away with using English.

When we first moved away from Pakistan, my children were 5.5 years, 2 years, and 10 months old. The eldest knew how to read and write Urdu. Today he is the only one who is most comfortable speaking it. The younger two have not known a single day of schooling in Pakistan. It was always up to me to teach them.

I remember I asked my aunt to send me some Urdu and Math workbooks when the younger ones became old enough to go to school. My aunt, being the teacher that she is, got a huge stack of workbooks, 3-4 different ones, each ranging from kindergarten to Grade 7. I would love to say that I was able to teach my kids something from them, but that isn’t true.

Over the next few years I would try and fail time and again to get them to learn the language. The eldest one, being the quick study that he is, and because he already had a rudimentary knowledge of the language, was the only one who seemed to get something out of these exercises. The middle one has only recently started taking Urdu classes along with the eldest, and is making better progress. It’s the youngest one who makes me despair. She is the weakest when it comes to Urdu. Yet she is the only one not taking a class to remedy this situation!

While this is a problem for me and my husband because we love our language, and want our kids to remain in touch with their motherland, it is not the same with all parents, even the ones living in Pakistan! Over the last 10 years, the thing that has pained me the most while visiting my country has been the fact that people have stopped using Urdu. Everywhere I go, I see parents talking to their small kids in English. It is like they are trying to prove something that doesn’t need to be proven.

I used to be happy going back because I felt that my kids would learn something while they were there. All 3 of them had strict instructions to talk in Urdu to everyone. Unfortunately, many adults still think that my kids provide the perfect opportunity for their kids to polish their English language skills! It might seem over the top, but I have had women ask me to tell my children to speak in English to their kids, as they don’t allow their children to talk in Urdu in their schools, and as a consequence, at home! (This was truly a facepalm moment for me, and the lowest when talking about my language, sadly.)

Language is a big part of national identity for any nation. It is one of the major factors that differentiates people from the rest of the world. When I see young people in my country saying that they took easy Urdu in school, and feeling proud of it, I feel a pang in my heart. All over the world people take pride in their mother tongue. They prefer to talk in their own language than in any other; why is it that we are so different? Why are our schools not promoting our own language? I have seen schools here in the Middle East insisting on teaching Arabic to all students, especially the locals, so that they don’t lose their language to modern schooling and English. Yet, here we are, churning out students who are proud of the fact that they are weak in their own language.

Urdu has been the chosen language of great poets and authors for centuries, yet these great writers find very little readership today. How many young people can boast about having read Manto or Naseem Hijazi or Intizar Husain? How many know about Quratulain Haider or Khadija Mastoor or Ismat Chughtai? Are there any twenty-somethings who can claim to know Mir or Ghalib or even Faiz or Faraz or Nasir Kazmi?

We, as a nation, and I’m not excluding myself, are doing a grave injustice to our beautiful language. It is good to move with the world and become a global citizen, yet it is also essential to keep your own individual identity, to be unique in your own right. In trying to keep up with the world, we seem to be losing out on keeping up with our true selves. We have to collectively try and undo the damage that we have done to our own language. We need work hard to teach our future generations, or we are the ones who will turn out to be the eventual losers.

I don’t mean to say that everyone should suddenly start reading huge tomes written in a language that you find incomprehensible. I just want us to start loving our mother tongue and trying our best to show that love. Once we start trying, our future generations might also follow suit and save Urdu from becoming a forgotten language.

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Review: The Runaways

Rating: 2.5 Stars

The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto has made me very conflicted. Even though this was the first book by her that I was reading, I have caught glimpses of her work over the years, and have always thought of her as very articulate and clear of thought. So, when I started reading this book, I was looking forward to reading an exciting and relevant story. Sadly, this was not the case.

The Runaways is the story of three people who have nothing in common, it seems. Anita Rose is the daughter of a masseuse, living in the slums of Karachi; Monty is the son of one of the most influential men in the same city; while Sunny lives in Portsmouth with his widowed father. The lives of these three characters are going to cross in the middle of the Iraqi desert, resulting in tragedy.

The premise and the pace of the story are full of potential. There is nothing wrong with Fatima Bhutto’s imagination and creativity. There is something to be said about having a strong female protagonist, who faces the world fearlessly and is convinced that she is destined for bigger things. The character of a mother who wants to give her kids everything without compromising her principles, is also applaudable. Which brings me to what went wrong, for me at least.

There is so much to unpack here that I don’t even know where to start. I’ll start with the most basic thing, the names and mannerisms of the characters. That was my first clue that this book has been written by someone on the outside looking in. It wouldn’t matter if there was a feeling of empathy, but Bhutto doesn’t seem to like or sympathise with her own characters.

In order to make Anita Rose strong and empowered, Bhutto has turned Sunny and Monty into caricatures. Sunny, the only character whose arc is believable, is an ass; while Monty’s going from being a spoilt rich kid to becoming a Jihadi is difficult to swallow. All stereotypes ever applied to young Pakistani men have been used here at least once. Same with all the females who are not Anita Rose. It is somewhat difficult to believe that in a story of this magnitude, there is not one female who is nice, and not promiscuous!

The character of Anita Rose, on the other hand, defies logic. The way a poor Christian girl lands up in Iraq and becomes influential in a militant group, seems so far-fetched. At least I have never heard of women influencing men among people famous for recruiting brides on the internet!

I have lost count of the books that have been written about Karachi and the people living there without delving deep into the essence of the city. Karachi is a living, breathing metropolis, like hundreds of other big cities, with a character that is uniquely its own. To start off a book by waxing lyrical about the city, and then losing the whole essence of the city during the course of the book is, for me, unfortunate and sad.

Of course there’s also the sleeping around, making out and getting intoxicated that goes on in the whole book. I know I have been vocal about how this seems to have become the central theme of all books revolving around Muslims in general, and Karachi in particular. I’m not oblivious to the fact that it is a reality that needs to be accepted; my beef is with the way that it is portrayed. Two of my most favourite books that are set in Karachi are not pretty books, but they resonate with me because the truth in their words can be felt.

In The Runaways, all I could take away at the end was that men are evil; people who follow Islam indulge in the craziest activities; the elite class is full of jerks; it is impossible to find good people in this world. I wish I had held off reading this book for a little longer!

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Sunday Pet Peeve: The Pakistani Stereotype

Last week I read a book by a well known Pakistani author. I was looking forward to reading it, the author being someone I really admire in real life. As I delved deeper into the book, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. On the surface, there wasn’t anything wrong with the story or the characters, yet something kept nagging at me. After a while I realized what it was that was bothering me so much. It is the same thing that I have encountered time and again in many books, some of which have been popular worldwide: Stereotype.

When you’re reading about a place close to your heart, or about people like you or like someone you know, you become sensitive to the smallest of details and nuances. You start seeing discrepancies and false facts, sometimes exaggerations and even blatant lies. Ideally it shouldn’t matter too much. Everyone has the right to put their original thoughts on paper, and the world can go hang! Sometimes, however, it is not so easy to overlook this perpetuation of stereotype.

My problem has never been with the stories or the actual things happening in these books. My beef is with authors who seem to be writing things that they have no idea about. It shows lack of proper research and lazy editing.

Many people accused me of being oblivious to the multitude of sins this city hides, when I criticized Karachi, You’re Killing Me. It makes Karachi seem like a city of drug filled parties and sex and booze. I have always considered Moth Smoke an amazing book, and that whole book is about drugs, parties and all such. While one paints the 20-somethings of the whole city with the same brush, the second one makes it clear that it is talking about one segment of the city. And this is where the difference lies.

When you read The Party Worker, you will see the political under belly of this very city. A city where drugs, alcohol, sex and murder are rampant and unapologetic. Yet you will never think that this is all that Karachi has to offer. It is not the story, the characters or their actions that are problematic, it is the way they are presented in the text. Any metropolitan city in the world has many shades, no one can claim to know all of them. The least a writer can do is realize that what they’re writing does not represent the city as a whole. It is but a subset that the writer has had experience with.

Then there is the Urdu in these books. With the example of so many Hollywood Movies and TV shows getting the language wrong, one would expect the local writers to put a little more effort in using proper Urdu words wherever necessary. There have been countless instances where the word used has been correct, but its tense or form is wrong. To a person who knows the language, this just seems like sloppy writing.

In my opinion, this has mainly to do with the fact that most of our English writers are not very proficient with their mother tongue. They come from a certain educational background which makes them unaware of what they are doing wrong. This is what editors are for. Unfortunately, foreign publishing houses and editors take it for granted that the writer would know their own language. They don’t realize that knowing how to speak a language doesn’t automatically make you an expert at it.

It is unfortunate that we as a nation don’t own our language, and that it is Urdu that is a foreign language for us. The disparity in our education system is such that it is difficult to find writers proficient in both languages. Educational institutions that give importance to one and ignore the other, leading to this unfortunate result.

Now I come to the problem with how Muslims are depicted in books. I am so tired of reading the same depictions of Muslim, either religious fanatics or complete liberals. It is time to move on from the Bollywood stereotype of topi-wearing, checkered handkerchief-carrying men, with eyes full of kajal, and mouths full of Astaghfirullahs! The world happens to be full of Muslims who are not at either extreme. It seems like most writers are trying to pander to a set narrative. They are writing that which appeals to the western audience. And when you write to please someone other than yourself, it shows in your writing.

I wanted to write about all the books that I find problematic in this sense. However, I’d rather talk about books like A Place For Us and The Family Tree. Books that show the face of millions of Muslims living all over the world not up in arms or drowned in alcohol. Again, I’m not denying the existence of militants or people who have turned away from religion. But in all fairness, it is absurd to stereotype all Muslims and make it seem that these are the only ones left on this earth.

While I can rant and rave about the injustice of misrepresentation for hours, I think I should stop here. This blog is just a way for me to let out some steam. It is in no way meant to offend or please anyone. I write my thoughts without censoring them (much!) So, that’s all for today. Until next time.

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Review: Remnants of a Separation

Rating: 5 Stars

I got Aanchal Malhotra‘s Remnants Of A Separation from Karachi, back in July 2018. Since then, it had been sitting around on my shelf with all the other numerous books that I never read. One fine day, sick from my overdose of thrillers, I just picked it up to see what it was about.

Objects have a way of inspiring the mind to remember things it might have forgotten.

Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants Of A separation

To say that reading this book was difficult, is an understatement. Every story, every page reminded me of my grandparents. These stories are their stories; of hardship and resilience at the time of the partition of India. The horrors that both the sides witnessed, the loss, the displacement, the helplessness, it all becomes real as you read the accounts of some very real people. This is not fiction, yet sometimes that is all you want it to be.

Not everything is about darkness and despair though. While the actual time of the partition was traumatic, most of the narrators reminisce about their youth in a way that is endearing. It makes you want to return to your own childhood. Even with this lightness, the fact remains that circumstances forced most of these people to let go of their dreams. They had to grow up overnight.

Almost all these stories have one thing similar in them; the suppression of conscious memory of those dark times. They might never have talked about the past to their own families, but when they finally talk about it, all of them become fascinating story tellers, each with their own unique story. Yet all these stories are essentially the same.

Displacement, often sudden and mostly in the dark of the night, is a frightening concept. The thought of leaving all your worldly goods behind and starting anew in a place where you have no roots and nothing to fall back on, is a scary one. Add to that, the breakdown of common human decency and a return to barbarianism, and it’s no wonder everyone wants to suppress their memories of such times.

Reading Remnants Of A Separation gave birth to a lot of regrets too. I wish I had thought of documenting the lives of my grandparents while they were alive. The stories that I heard growing up became blurred and clouded by the passage of time. Maybe because while they were being told, no one was really interested in listening. My son did a unit on displacement last year, and I will be eternally grateful to his school because when he interviewed my paternal uncle for the unit, I learned the harrowing story of a 6-year-old boy who came to Pakistan without his parents. I never knew the details, and never bothered to ask either.

Aanchal Malhotra has done something that I wish I had been able to do. I wanted to keep reading and never stop. Remnants Of A Separation is the type of book that we should make our children read. Textbooks teach us only one side of history, often biased and mostly opinionated. We need to know our past and learn from it, not glorify and worship it.

As a Pakistani, I can only be thankful that Pakistan came into being that August in 1947, but the way it was done, and the politics of division that made men into animals, is something that no one, Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi, can ever condone. Anger, intolerance, greed, these words can never define the destruction that was caused by human hands. It was, and will always be, a dark blot on humanity. All of us need to revisit that time again and again so that we never forget the lessons that the Partition taught us.

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Review: Hijabistan

Rating: 4 Stars

Hijabistan by Sabyn Javeri is a collection of short stories about women, with a common thread of hijab running through all the stories. As a rule, I’m not one for short stories. They always leave me feeling like I missed the point. These short stories just sucked me in and left their mark. It is entirely possible that I might be biased towards this collection.

These stories speak to me personally because I have been through the struggle myself. This push and pull of wearing the hijab or taking it off has been a part of my life for most of last 15 years. Of course, it has never been as hard as it is for most of the protagonists in these stories, but I feel an affinity with most of them. There is no judgement about the garment itself here, just the people who use it as a weapon and those who let their views be coloured by it.

I liked almost all the stories in this collection, even those that might seem far-fetched to people who have no clue about how close to the truth they are. I will not talk about all the stories here, just my most favourite ones.

The Full Stop is about a young girl who gets her first period. It reads like a true story because it is the truth of millions of girls who are taught that menstruation is something to hide, something evil and disgusting. Girls are told that it is something to be ashamed of when they should be told that it is natural and something ordained by nature.

Only in London shows us a girl stuck between two cultures, not knowing which one to call hers. It is the dilemma faced by all immigrants, no matter where they come from. It is not easy to give up your old values and suddenly pick up new ones. When a person migrates to a new place, they inevitably become a mixture of the two, their country of origin, and their country of migration.

The Good Wife has to be my favourite story out of all. It is also the saddest. It tells us of a woman who covers herself because she wants to, who is not afraid of what others think of her, whose faith in her Creator is strong even if her husband’s is not. At the same time this woman loves her husband with everything in her and is not afraid to show her love as well. I was crying for that woman by the end of the story, and trying to make sense of our senseless world at the same time.

The last story, Coach Annie, is the sweetest and most upbeat story of the collection. I loved reading about Annie who has to wear the hijab at a tender age, yet she makes it her own, even when she is surrounded by men double her size. Annie makes me believe that women can do anything they put their minds to, regardless of how they choose to dress.

A great book about women and hijab that needs to be read with an open mind and a big heart.

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Review: A Firefly In The Dark

Rating: 3 Stars

I’m suitably spooked. The book cover tricrked me into thinking this was a children’s book, if not funny, then surely a bit sad and melancholy. The name of the writer tricked me into thinking that this would be a lighthearted affair, suitable for reading before going to bed. I was so off the mark that I’m convinced I need to read more reviews before I buy a book!

A Firefly in The Dark by Shazaf Fatima Haider is a book that brings to life all the horror stories that we ever listened to, be it the ones told by our grandmothers or the ones by older siblings/ cousins who wanted to watch us squirm, or by that crazy school friend who was not quite right in the head! This is not the horror of Hollywood movies or other English books that you have read. This is the horror of your childhood, when you were afraid to go out of the house in the afternoon because you might meet the woman with turned feet, or you hid in your blanket at night because there was something that was always scratching on your window. So, yeah, after reading this, there go my dreams of giving it to my daughter to read. She will probably make my life miserable by refusing to sleep alone.

Sharmeen is an almost-thirteen year old, who comes to live with her maternal grandmother after her life is turned upside down by a sad accident. She is unhappy with this new life where she feels like an outsider both at home and in school. The one spot of light in her bleak existence is the unbelievable stories that her grandmother tells her. These dark and twisted tales are the bone of contention between Sharmeen’s mother and grandmother, making the house a battleground.

As Sharmeen begins to realize that these stories are not really stories but have a basis in truth, tragedy strikes again and she has to come face to face with these forces of evil. However, she is not alone, as she meets her own personal jinn, Jugnu, so named because of his first appearance as a firefly. It’s a race against time as Jugnu and Sharmeen struggle to fight and destroy this evil before it destroys her whole family.

It was seriously good writing with a bit of humor and lots of darkness, but sadly, it also clashed with my faith and beliefs. It was hard to overcome my prejudices because all the stories and characters were so close to home. When you read mythological stories from other regions and countries, it’s easier to dismiss them as fiction and move on, but when faced with stories from your childhood that might have some basis in truth, the mind refuses to accept things that challenge personal belief.

So, yes, it has been quite an experience reading this book. I can’t wait for other books by this author because she is definitely one of the few local authors who I think are genuinely gifted writers.

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Review: The Party Worker

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Omar Shahid Hamid is a Pakistani author who I rate very highly. If you want to read about the real Karachi, then his books are the ones you should pick up. Of course, his books show the underbelly of this multi-layered, multi-cultural city, and are only reflective of the shady side of things, but no one is more qualified than Hamid to give a realistic view of this side of the city. He is a real police officer who has seen all this and more, up close and personal.

The Party Worker is a work of fiction, like all Hamid’s other books, but those who have seen the Karachi of the 1990’s and 2000’s will know that this fiction is actually a very thinly veiled dig at some very real players in the political scene of that era. There is more than a grain of truth in almost all the incidents mentioned here. Most of these will chill you to the bone.

Despite my high rating and praise for this book, it’s not for the faint of heart, for it shows the brutality and lawlessness prevalent at that time, making some things very hard to digest. It might be upsetting for the reader, but while many incidents really are a work of fiction, the most cruel and senseless ones are not. A certain football match in Lyari comes to mind.

As a die-hard Karachiite, it is not easy to recommend a book that shows my city in a less than favorable light, but it shows the real face of politics, of what power and money can do to people, of how people are willing to go to any lengths to gain that power and money.

It also shows how Karachi is a melting pot of ethnicities, all vying for their share of the pie. Karachi is a real character in this book, a thriving metropolis that makes everyone want to rule it, because whoever rules this city, controls the largest chunk of the country’s economy. It is like a siren’s call, with people willing to kill and die just to own a part of this sprawling city.

It was a struggle to write all this without actually giving away the plot of the book, but it all starts in New York, and culminates in this city of dreams and lights, that is the economic hub of Pakistan. A must read for fans of political intrigue and secret plans, who are not squeamish about a little (read: a lot of!) blood and gore. Oh, and that ending is not really that unbelievable, if you really think about it!

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Sunday Issues: Of Reading Slumps And Manic Reading

2018 has been a year full of ups and downs for me personally. In some of the darkest times of my life, it was reading that brought me peace and sanity. At the same time, there were occasions when reading became the most difficult thing for me to do for days and weeks. My erratic reading habits over this year highlight the tumultuous year this has been.

The year started off in the worst way possible, but I was determined to read myself into oblivion; to forget everything and get lost in my books. It was such a good time for my reading that I settled on a GoodReads target of a 100 books in 2018! During the first few months, I was well on my way to achieving this target with an average of 9 books read per month! This went on for a while, me losing myself in fiction, buying new books every week, thinking about books, talking about books, and avoiding real life as much as possible.

As a result of this non-stop activity, I became exhausted. My mind refused to comprehend the words that were once so dear to me. I read, but I couldn’t understand. I kept having to go back and forth in the most simplest of books just to understand what was happening, and that made me lose patience, with myself as well as with my beloved books. I put the books aside and started indulging in mindless reading. I was still a reader, but now I could only read online articles about things that wouldn’t make me think too hard. Things like celebrity gossip, home design, makeup trends, and anything else that I could read and forget the next instant.

In the beginning, I thought, this is how my brain is having a detox. I thought to indulge myself for a few days, and then go back to my books, books that were still piling up while I was not reading them. You see, I was still buying books – online, at bookstores, asking family to get them for me, and any other way that I could get my hands on them. The fact that I wasn’t actually reading them didn’t really stop me from buying more and more books. It was a compulsion, and I just couldn’t stop!

This is not a story about how I overcame my reading slump. I still haven’t. I have devoured books one after another in a week, and have been unable to touch a book for other weeks. This is an ongoing struggle for me. It frustrates me, and makes me irritable. I want to be able to read whenever I want to. Books have been a compulsory part of my life ever since I learnt to read, and not being able to comprehend words is something I cannot come to terms with. I still have days when I love a book, want to keep on reading, but it’s too much work for me.

I know some would say there are definite psychological issues hidden in all this, and I agree, but I’m not willing to give up so easily. Words have been my friends since I was 4 years old, and I’m not willing to abandon them without a good fight. So, take that, Reading Slump! And on that note, I will go and finish the book that I’m currently reading and enjoying so much!

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