Oh what a day!

So … left the house just before 7am allowing plenty of time to get to Earl’s Court. Ready for Day 1 of the LBF 2009.

5 hrs later, still in car … Got there just after midday (A4 had issues as did a road near Earl’s Court which seemed to bring that part of London to a complete standstill … bah humbug)

5 hrs and 15 mins later arrived at the now polished and utterly fabulous looking interiors of Earl’s Court. Stands painted, carpeting laid out, everything looking like a book world mini-city! 

Approached stand Y285, greenbirds, to find that 8 copies of Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet) had been stolen.

Was advised by a colleague to not display them on Sunday as we were setting up stand.

‘Oh no .. come on! No-one will help themselves, people have too much respect here,’ I remember saying.

I don’t know who it was, members of the public or contractors (although from the transformation of the interiors, to be honest, I doubt that the contractors had time and probably worked through the night to get the place looking the way it is looking right now), but I must say am extremely disappointed…

If that wasn’t bad enough, cannot remember if entered Congestion Charging Zone but have paid the £8.00 charge ‘just in case’, during that period that was driving around whilst trying to find alternative routes due to Talgarth Road being closed I may have entered the CC zone. Bah humbug again.

Mayor Johnson, Sir, Boris .. oh the lengths you go to to gently ease me into using public transport …

British Asian Women: Same Difference.

When I wrote Catch a Fish from the Sea Using the Internet, my true-life story about seeking that elusive guy, I naively thought that the issues I speak about in the book touched only me. I am a British Pakistani female, Muslim and raised in the West. My book is an account of my experiences following my search for a partner using the medium of the internet.

The book starts off with a brief background of what it was like having to deal with the thought of balancing tradition and desire to choose my own partner. I recount the horrific encounter of an introduction via parents and that even more horrifying idea of the ‘tea-ceremony’.

Having gathered the courage to break free from this tradition, I realised that the internet was my only hope. At first it was difficult because the idea of finding your own partner was unthinkable amongst the Pakistani circles, so I approached the internet with caution and shame of what people would think or say if they ever found out that I had to turn to it to find someone with whom to spend my life.

As I explored the matrimonial route via cyberspace, I discovered that I was not alone.
Thousands and thousands of British Pakistani Muslim women were in my position. Phew! What a relief! And then I saw that thousands and thousands of British Bengali Muslim females were too . . . as were thousands and thousands of British Indian Hindu females and thousands and thousands of British Indian Sikh females.

This surprised and intrigued me at the same time. I thought that the mass exodus to the internet was restricted to just us British Pakistani females as a rebellion almost to our long practised cultural ways- of- the-world to which our parents, the first generation were accustomed. Little did I know that it would be many years before I would begin to piece this puzzle in my mind and that it would happen as a result of being somewhere at the right time and the right place.

A few years ago now (geez has it been that long?!?!), I was waiting for a show to start at Watermans’ Arts Centre in Brentford. I had a little spare time and a flyer for an exhibition called ‘Enter07’ at their New Media Gallery caught my eye. This exhibition was a display of young British Asian graduates from the creative industries. There was one that particularly caught my eye. It was right in the corner tucked away. There was a screen projection showing a family tree with videos of interviews being shown. It was by a very talented young lady, Manisha Lad, documentary maker and this work was called ‘Modern Asian/Modern British Indian woman’. I was drawn to the part about love and marriage. I stood there fascinated by what was transpiring in front of me. The documentary charts the viewpoints of Manisha’s grandparents and then follows down the generation with her parents until finally the youngest generation of the family discusses their views.

I was startled at the parallels that can be drawn between my own book and Manisha’s work (which is also ingeniously presented as a book next to her exhibition) and for a moment I forgot that I was of Pakistani origin and she, of Indian. We were from different faiths and different backgrounds yet somehow we shared a commonality. We were both British Asian women, both touched by the very same issues and both trying to balance a sense of heritage and tradition with our own approach to life having been exposed to the West.

Everyday I get emails from women all over the world, telling me how they love the book and how they can relate to the pain and the laughter in it. In fact, just recently, a British English female contacted and said that she felt I was narrating her life in my book!

Underneath our layers of ethnicity, we are all the same aren’t we really and when we cut (which you can bet love will at some point), we bleed the same colour despite our differences. ■

A New Concept of the Self-Publishing Author

My name is Nasreen Akhtar and I am a writer. I have always wanted to say that and now it is possible. My first book, (the foreword to which has been written by distinguished columnist for The Independent and Evening Standard, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown), is published by greenbirds, a small independent publishing house. greenbirds is owned by me so in a way I am self-publishing this book. I am a self-publishing author but not. Please allow me to explain.

I was never really into books; didn’t even like reading. I am not one of these authors who will tell you that ‘I loved to write as a child,’ or that ‘I have been writing for as long as I can remember.’ If I said all this, then I would be lying and I don’t like to do that. The truth is that as a child, I always loved language. Language and Languages; this was my passion. But in my culture anything that deviated from the prestigious fields of medicine, engineering, law and accountancy, was never taken seriously. So I casually went through my years trying to find a me that people would accept. Time got in the way and I never really found that me until fate subjected me to a life experience that brought me to a crossroads and then everything began to change.

I had to redefine, reinvent and re-establish myself. I had a background in the retail industry, and research but I wanted more. I wanted something else. I ended up with a well known writer’s association and I began to realize that books were something marvelous actually. Seeing foreign names on the spines of the books as they sat there on the shelves interested me. I often found myself flicking through these books even though I was not obligated to do so. I never really read for pleasure but now I wanted to. Memories of university life would come flooding back as I recalled trawling through the foreign language bookshops in Central London, trying to get all the hundreds of books on the reading lists and never actually managing to get through them. In those days, if I didn’t need to read something for an essay or presentation, I wasn’t really bothered about reading. Yes, I adored Spanish literature and was even tempted to read for pleasure (that is when I understood it!) but I had to be real and practical and I couldn’t ignore the comments around me, even from my peers who couldn’t understand why an Asian girl was doing French and Spanish. Somehow for them, being British Pakistani didn’t fit in with the field of Modern Languages.

So there I was, years later, with a sudden interest in books, I began to look into a career publishing not writing, because I never saw myself as a writer. I researched this field and was alarmed to find that this was an industry relatively closed to ethnic minorities, to people like me. The consolation was that initiatives had been started to break these barriers but it was alarming nonetheless. One small independent publisher had just come onto the market and they were looking for interns. Wow! Fabulous stuff! A perfect opportunity for me to go for this and ascertain if the publishing world was somewhere I could build my new home.

Having sent off my CV and spoken with them over the telephone, I was most encouraged as they were interested in my application and signed me up for an internship for the months that followed. Now all I needed was to turn up to meet the team. When I went to meet the team, sadly there was a rather different vibe. It seemed that my appearance was not the sort of thing they were expecting. The publisher flicked through the diary to see if they could accommodate me even though they had already penciled me in, and I could see it on the page in front of me. By now it was obvious especially when she said that they would let me know. So I thanked them and came home. They never did let me know but they went onto climb the ladder of success and the company is now a significant growing name in the industry. And I wish them continued success.

But this is the reality. Having to survive in a society where your name sounds a little different, perhaps even weird to some is something I have grown up with all my life; it’s nothing new to me. Then the situation was such that I was visibly Muslim, and in being so increasingly, I was made to feel that I had to apologise and make excuses for who I am and what I believe; I encountered this everywhere I went. So I set out to change this and make a space for me in this world and especially that of the publishing one.

The publishing imprint greenbirds subsequently was born as I knew that my only chance would come from giving myself a chance. greenbirds’ first title is my own book, Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet), a memoir about searching for man-of-dreams in cyberspace. My future titles are works in progress.

The beauty about greenbirds is that I don’t have to fulfill anyone’s criteria to be accepted; to be me in enough. ■

Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet) is published by greenbirds, (February 2008)

ISBN-13: 9780955521416

Are female Asian writers angry women??

This was a question posed to me on a radio interview as I was invited to talk about my book, which incidentally is the Book to Talk About 2009 finalist, ‘Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet)’.

An interesting question this I think. Is that the impression that society has of us??!! I can only speak for myself and not on behalf of all female Asian writers out there, so I can only tell you what I told the very distinguished DJ who asked this:

As a modern female who is proud of her British identity as well as her Asian-Muslim roots, no I am not an angry woman and nor do I see myself as a woman wronged by society. I am grateful for all my experiences and rejoice in the little things, both good and bad that life throws my way.

I consider myself most fortunate to be living in a country where I am able to say what I say for had I been raised in the country of my origin, never would I have the right to be me, to be a woman, to be a human being.

The only qualm I have is that .. why is it that everytime I am stuck on the motorway, and I diligently move over to the lane next to me that seems to be moving and as soon I have done that, the one I moved from starts to move. That is such a pain in neck (and other body parts too).

.. no really, it is. ■