Greatest Fears

BRITEAST MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 – OCTOBER 2009

Greatest Fears: Things that make or break us

Fear. All of creation has it whether inbuilt or picked up along the way. No-one is ever immune to fear: some fear growing old (be it for aesthetic reasons or for those of dependency); some fear loneliness; some, love itself; some, the exams and their future; some fear the supernatural and many fear spiders & other creepy crawlies. The poor may fear poverty; the rich may fear losing their wealth or indeed that they will never have enough and the lover may fear a broken heart… The list is endless because human beings are fascinating creatures.

Of course fear does not discriminate and confine itself to just the human race. The antelope fears the lion as the fly does the spider’s web as the plant does cabbage does the snail as the snail does the salt (… as the salt does the water?).

Fear can be a great thing for it can be the catalyst to achieving much success – talk to the financially stable and they will tell you how in business you have to take risks – or if you let it, it can come to destroy and paralyze you – after all who ever achieved anything if they were too afraid to try?

Perhaps mankind is guilty of not fearing enough though. P.B.Shelley’s most famous short poem Oxymandias, comes to mind.
‘I am Ozymandias, king of kings,
Look on my works ye Mighty and despair!’ says the once powerful Ozymandias to the Creator; the true King of Kings. (Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt.) Where once a vast empire thrived, lie the ruins as described by the traveler telling the tale of the inevitable decline of all men however indestructible they may have been in their time.

But mankind, despite the signs, refuses to heed and chooses to ignore. Do we fear that this earth, this life, time, our wealth, our children, everything we have is but a mere loan to us? Do we fear enough to give our time to the homeless on the street, or smile at a stranger, or utter a kind word, or help someone who is not going to give anything back to us in return?

My greatest fear? That when I stand in front of the One who created me, on that Mighty Day, when I am held accountable for my life, that amidst the shame of my mountainous sins, that I will forget to say ‘thank you’. Thank you for the honour of being created. ■

The beauty of Henna (mehndi)

Many of us are celebrating Eid over the coming days. As is cultural tradition, the women love to decorate their hands with henna patterns. For the first time in a very long time, I am also one of these women. I have never had the urge to have mehndi done on my hands before, but this year, this Eid, I wanted to. I wanted to know what it would feel like to have mehndi on my hands. Maybe I will never get to put mehndi on my hands as a bride, but as a woman celebrating Eid, it is the least I can do. Perhaps in some strange way, it will compensate for it..

I sit here looking at the beauty that is mehndi. It makes me think that life’s events (be they good or bad) adorn us, like henna. When the henna has dried, it will peel away, leaving behind rich colour. When something great happens to us, whilst we rejoice in it’s euphoria, like the henna it looks beautiful. When it passes, it leaves behind it’s mark, but gradually, the memory will fade, as does the henna after however many days before the colour wears off completely. So too with the not-so-great things: once again, whilst we go through it, we don’t realise, appreciate or understand the beauty of the trial that has befallen us, for it is nothing more than something positive packaged in a different way, and when it too passes (for everything must run it’s course), it leaves behind it’s mark like the colour of the henna which then goes on to fade away with time.

The beauty of henna cannot be praised enough. A beautiful Creator’s beautiful creation. Alhumdulillahi Rabbil Alamin.

Date With Destiny

BRITEAST MAGAZINE ISSUE 2 – SEPTEMBER 2009

Date With Destiny: The Soulmate Seeker’s Endless Longing

Blessings are around us all. They are everywhere. Sometimes we acknowledge them; other times we remain ignorant or just too lazy to give thanks. Nonetheless, they are there.

Some of us have a specific day set aside for Thanksgiving; some give thanks before a meal; some, after the meal and then there are those, like me, who have the opportunity of a whole month dedicated to reflection, restraint and the rejoicing of blessings.

Last week, as I headed to Regent’s Park, running a little late, I was stopped by a young man carrying a large bag full of dates.
‘Sister, have you opened your fast?’ he asked.

I nodded that I had yet he carried on opening his bag. How could I deny this young man of reaping the rewards during this Blessed Month? And so, I held out my hands, cupped together ready to receive my due from the bag. He shook it vigorously and even though the bag was full, out fell just the two dates, straight into my eagerly awaiting hands.

I received them with gratitude, firstly to the Divine for providing for me so that I could supplement the few drops of water with which I had opened my fast, and secondly to the kindness of this stranger bound to me via the beauty of faith.

‘May He give you up to whatever is in your heart. Ameen,’ I replied and off I went for my meeting with my Creator.

As I went along my way, devouring the sweetness of these special dates, I reflected on the reminder that had just been sent to me: ‘We have created everything in pairs…’

This life, albeit transient, is beautiful at the same time and contains a plethora of riches. One of them is a partner; a mate who will accompany you on this journey. I know too well the anguish of seeking a hand to hold (after all, I wrote a whole book about it!) and for all singletons out there, my messsage to you is this: when your date with destiny arrives, the bag of fate will open itself to you and tip into your hands your dues.  Just remember to give thanks for it, for it is one of the greatest blessings with which you can be honoured. Ever. ■

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 …

The first steps are always the hardest

 

As I mentioned in another post today, went to set up the greenbirds’ stand for London Book Fair 2009.

greenbirds is a first time exhibitor at the annual and prestigious industry event that is the London Book Fair. Been a day of mixed emotion; there was a part of me that didn’t want to go ahead with the exhibition. And nearly stayed in bed when it came to trekking over to Earl’s Court for stand build-up.

Walked in and everything was bare. The greenbirds’ stand (Y285) is opposite the Cook Book stand and the contractors were still installing the equipment when we arrived at 8am. I looked over to our stand … what were we going to do. How were we going to prepare it??!  No-one was there, the carpet had not been laid out, everyone was running late, how would they get it finished for tomorrow morning when the visitors start pouring in through the doors???

PANIC MODE !!! Arggggggggggggggggh!!!

But … there was no other solution but to deal with it, and so reluctantly .. found myself trying to figure it out.  When I left the stand earlier today, it looked like in the picture above and I walked away proud ..  ♥

I am glad I did not give in to my fear. You don’t know what something will be like until you face it. And that is always the scariest part, but then again:

When just starting out on a new journey it’s only natural to feel vulnerable. After all, it may seem that you have much to lose. But may I remind you that never again, at any other point in the same journey, will you have so much to gain.”

Mike Dooley

 

( … That reminds me: Mayor Boris Johnson is at the opening of the LBF tomorrow …  hmm … will be a good chance to confront him about that parking ticket that was enforced upon me recently – hmpff! )

Love – “the most abused and misused word on the planet”

“… love is probably the most abused and misused word on the planet”

pg. 102, Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet) by Nasreen Akhtar

It is you know… Sometimes I wonder, if as humans, we ever truly understand the meaning of this word or even it’s value.

Being a linguist, and an integrational one at that, I know that words do not have fixed meanings, for we as their users assign our own meanings to these words, but do we respect the word ‘love’? or do we use the word so loosely as if it is not sacred, not a blessing, not a gift?

I wonder what it feels like to hear someone tell you that they love you? And then I wonder how it feels to hear someone tell you that they love you and for them to mean it. I would love to hear both.

British Muslim and … love?

Dean Collins (aka Jummy Corkhill from British soap of long ago, ‘Brookside’) asked me recently, when I was on his radio show (he is now a DJ for City Talk 105.9fm) that people may find it strange to come across my story: a British Muslim who sets on a journey to find love.  Yes folks, it’s true, Muslims also love and they seek love too (we just go about it perhaps in different ways).

If you don’t believe me, here is the Author Personal Note from Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet):

Life is an amazing thing: a blessing, test, gift, teacher, mentor, friend, enemy, emperor, gladiator, passing phase… a mirage. Most of us seek the meaning of life during our short existence.This search will encompass a myriad of delights.One of these delights is finding someone who will journey with you through the splendour of this amazing thing we call life.

This book is about one woman’s search.A search of hope that one day a heart, by Divine Will, would come to honour her with love and mercy contained therein. It is a true story.It is my story.

This book has been the result of much heartache and pain, laughter and tears, disappointment and fears, dark days, darker nights, spells of sunshine, roller coasters, and a whole host of other emotions that I cannot even begin to describe; some I dare not imagine.

This book is for all those who have ever experienced that endless maze of trying to find a hand to hold and, despite their despondency,still carry in their hearts that stubborn hope that someday, someway, they will find that one person …

 

So here’s to dreams; those realised, those yet to conquer, and those that will never come to be.

 

Legal notice 

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. ■

My baby is 1 years old today!

If someone had said to me years ago that not only would  I write a book but I would design and illustrate the cover too;  that with help from the Prince’s Trust I would set up the publishing company that would publish that book;  that the broadcaster and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown would write a glowing foreword to that book; that it would go on to be nominated for The Book to Talk About 2009;    that the media would dub me the ‘real life Asian Bridget Jones’;   and that my autograph would appear on the other side of the page to Sir Paul McCartney

 ... then never would I have believed them.

 (It is amazing how far a little drive and an ounce of determination can get you isn’t it?)

 

 Life is strange.  You just don’t know what is in store for you. One thing is for certain though: you must always keep reaching out for your dreams.

 

 On February 23rd 2008 my baby, my book ‘Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet)’ was born. A year later, today on this day, I look back and I am quite tearful that what was once a dream is now a reality.

 

 Getting to where I am now has been an amalgamation of much emotion. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes something in between. But throughout I am so glad that I listened to that voice inside, telling me that I had to carry on, no matter what happened.

 My article entitled ‘Living the Dream’ for Open magazine can be found here

So for now, my darling, take my wishes and may life be kind to you. I pray that you are safe, safe from harm and hatred and that you bring joy to all those who are touched by you, because without doubt, you are one of the best things that could ever have happened to me. I love you, thank you for loving me too.

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