All My Bags Are Packed...

I'm off to Thailand tomorrow. Am so very excited! A whole week of island-hopping, soaking up the sun, making new friends, gorging myself on green curry and catching up on all my reading. Heaven! Will have many pictures to share when I'm back.

You have yourselves a good weekend!

One Of My Own?

I've been given one month to create a lifestyle magazine for the uppercrust breed of entrepreneurs and professionals. Come the last week of December, I will be pitching my baby against three other babies. Then I will know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether my keeping one foot in the maagzine world for the past five years has paid off. Spent the past few days interrogating editors, daydreaming and ploughing through stacks of various magazines trying to glean inspiration that could polish my raw ideas. That inspiration finally came today.

I feel the excitement mounting as I gaze at my editorial line-up. My very own line-up. I've dreamed of this but never imagined it could actually happen. I've longed to return to the magazine world but never expected it to take this route.

Of course, this isn't even the beginning. That would be if and when the potential investors flash the green light into my anxious eyes. Then my life will turn topsy-turvy with the endless writing, shooting, assigning, styling. And I will be in heaven.

TIME's 100 Best Books

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder
Call It Sleep - Henry Roth
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
The Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
A Death in the Family - James Agee
The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance - James Dickey
Dog Soldiers - Robert Stone
Falconer - John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
Herzog - Saul Bellow
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Light in August - William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Loving - Henry Green
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Money - Martin Amis
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
Native Son - Richard Wright
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 - George Orwell
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Possession - A.S. Byatt
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Rabbit, Run - John Updike
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise - Don DeLillo
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

TIME Magazine recently compiled a list of the 100 Best Books that were published between 1923-2005. The project began in January, with two critics each drawing up a list of nominees. According to one of them, the project involved not only reading but also re-reading.

“It meant revisiting a lot of novels both of us had not looked into for some time. A few titles that seemed indispensable some years ago turned out on a second tasting to be, well, dispensable.”

When they compared notes, they discovered that more than 80 of their choices matched. The remaining slots were divided between them, so that books that the other would not have chosen would make it to the list.

This list had two purposes - to instruct and to enrage. But I think there’s a third unintended one – to induce guilt in people like me! I’ve only read a miserable six of the hundred!

How many have you read and what would you have liked to see on the list?

The Chronicles of C.S. Lewis

I discovered C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia two months ago, while scouring MPH for substantially sized book to read during a bus ride back from Singapore. MPH was offering the first three volumes for a pretty penny so my decision was instantaneous. I opened the book at Woodlands and turned the final page with a heavy sigh as the bus pulled into Puduraya. With an imagination like that I figured C.S. Lewis must have led an enchanted life. Far removed from mundane worries. Soaking in childlike joy throughout his life because he still believed in magic. What a wonderful world to live in! Or so I thought.

Yesterday I read an article on him in The New Yorker and was rudely reminded of the consequences of judging a book by its cover.

Apparently, old Lewis was quite a controversy. Ridiculed by the British and adulated by the Americans. A fantasist as well as staunch Christian. He relished feasting on generous servings of Beatrix Potter and Longfellow, as well as an intoxicating cocktail of poems, myths and fantasies. But what satiated his soul also planted in it a seed of guilt, as it reduced his magically-devoid religion to dry sermons and dull rituals. In fact, Lewis wore a myriad of masks throughout his living years. A chronicle of his life would look something like this:

Bright sensitive English boy - victim of public-school sadism - confused sexual pervert surviving on inner joy - traumatised soldier - tough but inspiring English teacher - orthodox Christian convert - iconic writer.

A few years before penning what would be hailed as one of the world's greatest classics, Lewis' good friend JRR Tolkein convinced him that 'one had to become religious to save the magic, not to be saved from it'. Lewis bought it. For the first time in his life, both sides of his mind collaborated to produce some of his best works. However, he decided to build his Northern myths around his Christian beliefs. Tolkein hated that and violently opposed the Narnia books, which contained this subtle Christian allegory. But Lewis's soul was at peace. By combining religion and fantasy, he had been able to create something more powerful than just a story. He was able to create a world where both atheist and believer could stand side-by-side.

I wondered if I would have readily picked up the book, had I know about Lewis' motives beforehand. Nothing to do with religion, everything to do with hidden agenda. Having said that, don't all stories contain a clandestine message? Doesn't every story contain part of a writer's beliefs and opinions? And doesn't every writer, whether consciously or not, try to impart a certain message to the reader? Some of the messages are blatant, others are subtle. But they're all there. The tricky bit is deciding which comes first. For instance, does Tuesdays With Morrie belong under the fiction or motivational section? Same goes for Paolo Coelho's books. I appreciate both authors' honesty in revealing the books' real agenda. Because if they had tried to pass them off as pure fiction, they would have fallen flat on their faces and in the eyes of their readers. Narnia was able to stand as a piece of fiction because Lewis was skilled enough to make his Christian references the grease on the baking tin rather than the cake mixture itself.

So, my image of a dreamer-like Lewis has been shattered. But know what? I like him more now simply because he's living proof that a less-than perfect life can still produce perfect writing if the words are spoken in the voice of the heart.

In a couple of weeks Aslan, Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy and gang will be hitting the big screen and my palms are already sore with all the gleeful rubbing.

The Cruelest Cut of All

An estimated 135 million women and children have undergone female genital mutilation or FGM, and approximately 6,000 girls go under a penknife, broken glass, tin lid, razor or scissors A DAY.

Did you know that? I didn't. Not very many people do and that is why Alice Walker wrote Possessing The Secret of Joy.

The story revolves around an African girl named Tashi who decides to go ahead with the female initiation ceremony to keep her culture alive. It's a controversial story, yes but perhaps one that will open the rest of the world's eyes to this practice and why its practitioners are fiercely fanning its flames.

FGM is inhumane. That is irrefutable. But FGM is also performed as a cultural or religious ritual or to gain acceptance within society. All those reasons make it almost impossible to completely and permanently eradicate. How do you pit medical facts against ancient customs? How do you challenge matters of the heart with musings of the mind? How do you convince people who have never even taken cough syrup that their ancestors' beliefs are evil bullshit because some other people living somewhere they can't even pronounce have conducted something called medical research that says so? It's tough.

On one hand, I'm hesitant about beginning Possessing The Secret of Joy simply because of the images that will no doubt creep into my dreams at night. On the other, I can't wait to start because I'm dying to find out why an African woman who is about to leave for America would willingly subject herself to this gruesome process beforehand, despite watching her sister die from its consequences.

We have heard the voice of crusaders against FGM, the voice of supporters and the voice of the victims. Perhaps it's time we hear the voice of a volunteer. Perhaps it's the most important voice we'll hear.

Note:
Here are some other reasons behind FGM:
- if the clitoris touches the penis, the man will die. if a baby's head touches the clitoris, the baby will die or the breast milk will be poisoned.
- removing the clitoris will eliminate bad genital odours
- an unmodified clitoris can lead to masturbation or lesbianism
- prevents nervousness from developing in women and girls
- prevents the face from turning yellow
- so older men will be able to match their younger wives' sex drive

Telling The Truth In Writing

In a Newsweek interview, Frank McCourt confessed that he fumbled in the dark for about 15 years before finally finding his footing and voice as a teacher in New York City classrooms. His third memoir Teacher Man is an insight into his less famous but possibly more powerful vocation. According to the journalist, 'Now he's told the tale of that experience so well that when you've finished it, you don't envy him. You envy his students.' What's interesting though is the correlation he makes between teaching and writing.

"Teaching is like writing," he says. "You have to find your tone. And you have to tell the truth. If you put on a mask, they'll find you out every time."

An interview in TIME, meanwhile, revealed that Nicole Ritchie also believes in writing based on truth and experiences. Her new novel (TIME's words, not mine!) The Truth About Diamonds chronicles the journey of a rock princess coming of age. When asked what she could possibly have to say at the age of 24, she quipped:

I was approached to write a self-help book and I didn't feel like taking on that responsibility. I'm still growing myself. But writing a story is something every girl does, even when she's little. I spoke to my Dad [singer Lionel Richie] and asked him how he writes his songs and he said he just grabs his experiences from his life and turns them into songs so I took that approach.

For The Love of The National Language

A few days ago, I was privy to a conversation that raised my hackles. Two people in a business meeting I was in struck up a conversation on the benefits of speaking Mandarin in the 21st century. I wholeheartedly agreed. Then one of them commented what a bloody waste of time and brainpower it is to be speak Bahasa Malaysia. I vehemently disagreed. Actually no, I lie. I was pissed.

I love this country. Yes, I do despite its stinky drains, queue-cutters, corruption, horrendous traffic, tail-gaters and whatever else you've got on your What-Pisses-Me-Off-About-Malaysia' list. I have no intention of charming a foreigner with my exotic Asian looks and skipping off merrily with him into a California/Malibu/Paris/Whathaveyou sunset. I may not know the names of our national football players or who owns which mall in KL but I'm as Malaysian as you get and I'm proud of it. Just as I am proud to speak the national language.

As a student, I was adamant not to spend my precious evenings in a BM tuition class so I turned to my Malay friends for help. Armed with books and cassettes of their favourite authors and singers, I began to teach myself the language. That's when I discovered how beautiful it is. I delved further and happily soaked myself in the delicate prose. By the time the SPM rolled around, I had fallen deeply in love with the language.

Since leaving school, I haven't been speaking BM as much as I used to and when I do, the words stumble rather than glide off my tongue. But each time I hear a famliar Malay song from the 90s, I get that funny feeling in my tummy. I still love the language and contrary to my acquaintances' opinion, it has served me very well. It has...

1. ...enabled me to befriend some very interesting characters who don't speak English.
2. ...bridged the divide between me and the folk in rural areas where I sometimes pass through on my travels.
3. ...helped me plead my way out of a traffic offence without involving money exchanging hands.
4. ...helped my travel buddy and I discuss bargaining strategies, escape routes or observations of a hot guy in a foreign country, as well as score major Brownie points and huge discounts in Indonesia.
6. ...made me feel special to be able to speak a language that isn't shared by the rest of the world.

On Monday, I'm heading to Bookstreet to borrow a couple of Malay novels!

Casting Away The Shadow of Darkness

'Come to the edge,' he said.
They said, 'We are afraid.'
'Come to the edge,' he said.
They came.
He pushed them...
And they flew.
- Peter McWilliams

The people of Jordan must have been afraid when their king led their country into the fight against terrorism. They knew it was the right thing to do, but they also knew they might one day pay the price for their integrity. That day came on Wednesday.

Three hotels, 56 dead, 93 wounded and millions of others plunged into black pits of grief. But fury soon replaced agony and the people of Jordan wiped away their tears to stand up to the evil that had almost broken their spirits. "We sacrifice our lives for you Amman," they chanted, marching bravely onto the streets. Their hearts may have been cold with fear, but their eyes were hot with anger and a fierce determination to stand up to their enemies. My heart was wrenched by the descriptions of the carnage, but even more so by the courage of ordinary people, who had formed an impenetrable shield simply by standing inside themselves. The people of Jordan were pushed...and they are now flying.

I closed the morning papers with tears in my eyes. How unfair it seems that those who hold firm to their principles and who try to do what's right, are often those who suffer the most. But strength comes from suffering not joy, so perhaps the scales are balanced after all.

I have given up trying to comprehend why some people use the blood of others to paint hideous pictures in the name of God. These days I just pray for those who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I know I will never get used to these horrific headlines, but that's what our world has become today. Perhaps our small contribution to this greater cause could be to practice kindness, tolerance and compassion in our daily lives. Perhaps one day that will be enough.

I Wanna Know, Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

I love a good thunderstorm and today’s was quite a beauty.

The warning rumbles had been echoing across the sky all day without any sign of their aftermath, so my running buddy and I decided to call the storm’s bluff and head for the park anyway. According to Enid Blyton, it won’t rain if there’s enough blue sky to make a sailor’s trousers, and there was still a sliver of blue up above. Of course, my sailor would have to be smaller than a hobbit but that’s beside the point.

We had just worked up a nice sweat when the sound of a grand piano crashing down a staircase boomed in the heavens. A gentle wind blew. A flock of birds took off in a hurry. Panting joggers and cuddling couples peered up nervously. The sight took my breath away.

Clouds, grey as an elephant’s hide, were rolling in from the direction of the Twin Towers. Thick, massive and pregnant. Everyone made a run for it.

The rain came lashing down as soon as I was safely in my apartment’s covered car park. Raindrops the size of petai came hammering on the plastic roof, the racket more deafening than music in a Telawi Street bar. Thunder growled louder, lightning flashed and bits of paper pirouetted crazily across the floor.

By the time I reached my apartment, the orchestra that heralds a storm’s arrival had begun. First up was the slamming of doors. Then the crashing of flimsy clothes hangers made its debut, followed by the rattling of glass doors. Next was the distant wail of a siren, built into a crescendo with the cacophony of car alarms.

I stood at my balcony door, watching skinny trees being gleefully whipped in all directions by a merciless wind. Watching adults sprinting through puddles and children strolling through them. Watching flowerbeds turn into miniature ponds. Watching familiar landmarks in front of my apartment slowly disappear behind a shimmering white curtain of rain.

I took a deep breath. The air smelt fresh, clean and sharp. A shot of pure air in my lungs. Instinctively, I sat on the floor pulling my legs into the lotus position. It was the perfect time to indulge in breathing and meditation. Two minutes later, a purple bolt sliced into the greyness and sent me scuttling to the other end of the room.

I popped on some lounge music and watched the rest of the storm. It raged for another half-hour, then gradually weakened and eventually died down. The air hung like as light as a piece of chiffon. The street lights came on and the swing, slide, monkey bars, cars and leaves glistened like the y had been sprinkled with tiny diamonds. Everything was shiny again.

I love a good thunderstorm. Not only because of its beauty but also because it’s the one thing that gets us to slow down and relax. Nothing else does. Not a migraine, not the flu, not an unhappy partner or child, not even a punctured tyre. But rain? That immediately stops people in their tracks. Forces them to stay put. Persuades them to put their frenetic schedules on hold with a coffee and a magazine, by calling an old friend, by doing a spot of spontaneous shopping, by getting a massage…I could go on longer than a Duracell battery.

Today’s storm was beautiful. Not only for what it did for the world but also what it did for me.

It will Come When It's Ready

We were practising the crow pose in class and the normally tranquil studio was filled with thumps and thuds of falling bodies. One girl in particular sat up after her third fall, pushed her hair out of her eyes in frustration and said, "I can't do this!"

My teacher looked at her and smiled. "Your body is still trying to understand what you want it to do. The important thing is to keep practising. It will come when it's ready."

That night I settled at my laptop, ready to continue my novel. Five minutes passed. Then ten. I had written, rewritten and deleted the same paragraph and my frustration was mounting. Why couldn't I get it right? Then I heard my yoga teacher's voice again.

The important thing is to keep writing, I told myself. Taking a deep breath, I launched into the same paragraph for the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time my mind screamed, it's all wrong! I've never been one of those who can write without simultaneously editing my work. A sentence must be absolutely perfect before I can move on to the next, so this fast writing was very very difficult.

It took another half-an-hour before things finally began to take shape. From there on, the story moved as smoothly as a knife sinking into a cheesecake.

Perhaps this is something to remember whilst tackling the NaNoWriMo madness. Don't force, push or prod your mind. Your story will come when it is ready. Until then, just keep writing!

Family of Friends

I learnt two things yesterday - your feet can hurt after eight hours of walking even if you're wearing flats, and age is irrelevant in the presence of a passionate shopper.

Yesterday I went shopping with my mother for the first time. At the end of the eight hours, I was down on one knee with my imaginary hat over my heart and my head lowered in reverance of her superhuman endurance. Even my younger sister was forced to admit defeat after six hours, collapsing on a massive IKEA sofa in exhaustion.

But I wouldn't have passed up on the excursion for anything in the world. Even if it meant not being able to sleep past 9am on a public holiday! It was yet another chance to strengthen my bond with these two people. Two people who, not too long ago, were like strangers to me. We resided under the same roof loving each other in a obligatory way but not understanding each other in the simplest of ways. Perhaps we were destined to be that way, I thought. Perhaps not all families were mirror images of Enid Blyton's creations.

But time and age have an intolerance for sameness and predictability. They also have a fondness for orchestrating upheavals in one's life at the least expected moment. Four years ago, I ended a four-year relationship, moved out of his house, rekindled an old friendship, made a lifelong friend, learnt to drive and most of all, learnt to live. All in a span of one month.

Unknown to me at that point, the third chapter of my life had just begun and this time the characters included my family. So we all tentatively reached out to one another, each in nervous anricipation of what we might discover. But we must have liked what we saw for the bond that sprung up then has lasted until today and shows no signs of abating.

It's a special feeling to be friends with your family. Because although being family isn't a choice, being friends is and when something is made based on choice it can last a lifetime.

Discovering Alice Walker

This evening, I closed Alice Walker’s By The Light of My Father’s Smile with a feeling of deep satisfaction and regret. It’s been a long time since I had read writing that glowed on the pages. Walker’s book did more than that. It positively sparkled!

By The Light of My Father’s Smile is about a father who watches his two daughters blossom and discover their true selves through their sexuality. If you’re a prude, be forewarned that a good number of pages are filled with detailed descriptions of lovemaking. And if you skip them, you will miss out on being fully embraced by this story. But don't fret, Walker’s bedroom scenes are more like rhapsodies than romps. Her descriptions are bold and blush-provoking, but never trashy or revolting.

The story begins with an atheist couple, who are actually anthropologists, who have conned a church into funding their studies of the Mundo tribe living in the remote sierras of Mexico. The father masquerades as a minister, preaching about a God he doesn’t believe in, the mother plays along and their two daughters are brought up on a medley of ancient and modern beliefs. One daughter’s life is destined to forever be entwined with the Mundo tribe and since I find folklore and pagan beliefs incredibly romantic, this was another part of the book’s appeal.

Storyline aside, the writing was pure and unpretentious, and the words carefully chosen to perfectly harmonise with each other. Walker springs surprises at the most unexpected moments, eliciting the occasional ‘Oh!’ from you. Then there are the bits that make you lower the book and stare into space, absorbing them. I suppose the only drawback (if you can even call it that) is that each chapter begins from a different person’s point of view and it’s up to you to figure out whose eyes you’re looking through. But once you get past chapter five, you kinda’ get the hang of it. She also does away with punctuation rules during dialogues, which make the writing sound and look freer.

Here are some of the gems that shone the brightest for me:

Sighing, Irene said, Why is it that we can love so much that which only makes us cry?
Susannah thought only for a moment, and then, with certainty, she said: Because it is that which calls us home to the heart.

(The preceding paragraph was about two lovers who had found each other again and rekindled their love)
As we were leaving the restaurant, Manuelito, singing drunkenly, and turning towards me and then swinging his arms up as though to embrace the rising bright moon, was hit by a bus. The bus dragged him for half a block. By the time I got to him, he was gone.

After being made love to by Pauline, you didn’t say as the hot Christian ladies do, Amen; no, you said what the wild Indians say after a powerful prayer: Ho!

When you see that people are so poor it’s hard to believe they know what they’re doing.

Mrs. Robinson, said my youthful doctor, the important thing is that you must lose weight.
But my memories are so heavy, doctor, I said.

The only way to solace anyone who loved you in life is to be a good memory. (On the people you leave behind in death)