Life: as I see it - my Space (Revised) edition

Dear Reader,

Confession: I've been feeling rather nostalgic lately, for obvious reasons, and so you'll just have to bare with me for this post. So, since it has now been a year (+2 weeks) since I posted Life: as I see it - my Space edition (one of my most popular posts) I thought it was time I showed you, my dear reader, how my bookshelves have changed and how they haven't.

I can't wait to add Maggie Steifvater's Forever to this, which is now finally out. It is something that can't be help it, I'm a compulsive completionist.    

Other favourite writers on this shelf are Na'ima B. Robert and Jamilah Kolocotronis.     

This shelf is directly underneath the one above. You'll  find here Kristin Cashore as well as Kate Mosse, with some Robin McKinley being cut off at the bottom of the picture. 

This use to be my "Classics" shelf, but is now mainly Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, followed by the DVD of my Favourite BBC adaptations of Classics, including: North & South, Cranford, Middlemarch and Little Dorrit.      

This is my, much more serious, non-fiction shelf of mostly medical books, with the exception of Green Deen and  How I Killed Pluto, and Why it Had it Coming.

Aaahhh, Poetry... These huge collections are three of my favourites (minus LAT - see the comment on the link): Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth and John Keats.  

And peeping in from the top are some of Rudyard Kipling's best works. 

The One and Only, Original bookshelf. Once upon a time, when I was a very little girl, this was the only bookshelf in my bedroom. Hence it still contains the likes of the Chronicles of Narnia and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I have to admit, I haven't much grown out of these books in all these years.  

I'd also like to mention Philip Pulman's Sally Lockhart books, the under-appreciated Garth Nix, and Frank Beddor for obvious reasons. 

Here we have a small neat section reserved for historical fiction and my favourite autobiographies. I think the titles/authors in this picture are clear enough to read, except the orange Dairy of a Young Girl. Anne Frank, may you rest in peace. 

This is where the rest of the Classics from the "ex-Classics shelf" have ended up, including Charles Dickens (in green), Victor Hugo (in the stripped blue)  and my copy of the Selected  Poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson. 

This is the spot where my beloved Inkworld Trilogy use to reside, but it was burrowed by an old friend and never returned. :'(

So to fill that gap in my heart...I mean shelf, I have filled this spot with the not as much beloved Books of Pallinor. Sorry Alison Croggon, that is just the honest truth.      

   

The Twilight Saga has been transferred, to the top of my big wardrobe to have a teeth and claw battle with...

... Christopher Paolini's dragons. Who will win this epic dual of fantasy vs. horror in the Young Adult Fiction genre? 

Let me know what you think in the Comments section below. 

Aside: Vampires come into the 'horror' category, don't they? Or am I thoroughly deceived? 

To lend his support to the Fantasy genre, is my collection of Tolkein's work, 

(also found at the top of another wardrobe).    

And finally the most important shelf in my bedroom, which resides in the top right-hand corner of my desk, hold my religious books. Most things Islamic, can be found in this shelf with The Noble Qur'an at the heart of it all. If you have been following my blog for long enough, you'll remember that much-used little blue book at the top is my pocket-size version of The Sealed Nectar, a biography of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH).   

By the way, if you look to the far left, you'll see two unnamed books. They're mine. The grey one is choked-full of my poetry and the floral-pattern-one being my first note book entirely concerned with my novel-in-the-making Life in Conversations.    

I hope, dear Reader, that you have been awed and inspired by my vast array of books. I was going to continue on to a little piece about the gardening I've been doing recently with my mum, and the efforts we have put into salvaging and saving the lives of about 16 small and starved geranium plants we found on sale at B&Q. But I've realised that this post is already far too long and that tales of my epic weeding might bore you, dear Reader, to death. And that is something I don't want on my concious. 

Anyway, making this post longer is now no-longer an option as I must go and make some greek-style pasta for my ravenous brothers. 

Nida

a Goal celebration!

Dear Reader,

The day before yesterday was my graduation/convocation ceremony. It was overwhelming and inspiring.  

The day began quite early, 6am in fact, since we had to get to the Hall by 8:30am and it was about an hours drive from my house. But being Pakistani, we had to be late, and so we got there at just after 9am. As soon as I arrived however, I had no chance to say hello to my friends but was hurried off to the robing room to don my (incredibly expensive) academic dress. Part of me felt like a puffed up black pillow, while the other half felt like a Hogwarts-runway. Well, that was until I put on my mortarboard cap and looked in the mirror. It was then that it truly hit me that my undergraduate degree was actually over. I turned to my mother and saw that she had tears in her eyes. She was crying, silent tears of joy and pride. I just want to take this moment to say: I love you Mum.  

The Ceremony itself was quite interesting. Our principal spoke for about 15 mins, covering a range of topics from the increased tuition fees and the current state of the NHS, to the St. George's pride and wishing the graduates/alumni best of luck in the future. One of the things he said really stuck with me. He told us to remember the 4P's in the rest of our lives: to be Professional and Patient, to act without Prejudice, and always remember to Persevere. 

Then the awards and degrees presentation began. Me and my university friends clapped and whooped extra loud whenever one of us went up on stage. I think the loudest whoop was for the very sociable and lovable Arab friend of mine, whom I shall not name here. I'm told that there was a lot of whooping and clapping for me too but all I remember is that after hearing my name being called, I stepped on the stage in utter silence, my entire concentration focused on walking straight ahead without tripping up. Sound only returned to me when I was off the stage and heading back to me seat, but by then the clapping was for the next person in line. Having never been in this sort of a situation before, I suppose that was what stage-fright felt.  

The three hours after the ceremony ended, were spent in a hectic struggle to find my friends and take a million photographs with them. There are pictures of us in the hall, in the waiting area, with our families, with each other's families, in the queues, and of us friends flinging our hats, even one of my friend's mother looking quite lost. Thanks to Allah's mercy, the weather was bright and sunny and absolutely wonderful, to fit our moods. And so there are a myriad of pictures of us in the sun, on the stairs, by the ponds, in the ponds ... you get the picture.  

And in the end, as I walked through the car park doors, with my aching high-heeled-feet, it was not a sense of loss or ending that filled me, nor was it excitement, anticipation or anxiety. It was contentment and satisfaction at a job well done. You see, for so long my life had been geared towards this one goal: graduation. Since about half-way through secondary school everything I did, academically and extracurricularly, were for the purpose of getting into a good university, which Alhumdulillah I did. Once at university, everything was done into order to get great grades. These past years have been an emotional roller-coaster, requiring a 110% effort to just keep on top of things. And Alhumdulillah, thank God, I had a brilliant network of friends and family for support, who picked me up whenever I fell down, who kept on reminding me to not give up hope, that I could do it, that my goal was achievable. 

And now I have the grades, Alhumdulillah. For me, this ceremony was a celebration of achieving the goal that my life had been centred on for too many years to count. And not just my goal, but the goals of all the BSc, MBBS, MSc and PhD students at my university. It was a celebration of our efforts, hard work and perseverance, of everything we learnt (academically and personally) and of the life-long friendships we formed.         

I've heard some say that they felt a certain anguish, or a sense of confusion or doubt as to where they should head to next. But luckily that has not been the case with me. Being the obsessively organised person that I am, I always have a plan in place, several plans in fact, in case one should fail. I know that life has it's unexpected turns and twists, but I've found a way to adapt and mould my plans to whatever Allah (swt) wishes to throw in my path. And now I wait to begin to walk on my next plan, with my next goal ahead and insight. 

Wishing you, dear Reader, all the best with your own goals, 

Nida

P.S. - Sorry if the title of this post misled you as it has nothing to do with football :-P  

true Conception - the Making of an Idea

Dear Reader,

I recently watched this brilliant movie called Inception. If you haven't already then I definitely recommend that you watch it; and at least twice because it can be confusing at times. But it is amazing, truly inspired and keeps you locked to the edge of your seat. To cut a very long and complicated story short, this film, on the most basic level, is about how most of our ideas come to us in our dreams.  And a few nights ago, I had one of those dreams.   

I don't remember most of the dream, but I remember this one part. There was enormousness body of water. Water stretching as far as the eye could see. And as bright as the brightest sky blue that I've ever laid eyes on. Rising out of water every now and again, were thin columns of rock. I was floating on the water, whether on a rowing boat or a giant leaf, I can't remember which, but it's not really that important. 

In my hand I was holding a rich leather-bound diary and I knew, just knew - somewhere at the back of my mind - that this diary belonged to a bitter-old-foul-mouthed crone. But I also knew that this diary contained the story of how, once upon a time, that bitter old woman was young, smart, shy, innocent and was excited to be sailing to British Occupied India, to a new country, a new culture. It told of a journey of struggle, hardship and heartbreak, that led this beautiful young woman to become an embittered and lonely Lady.     

Image from eu.fotolia.com

In the middle of the diary, was a scene of the young women with a Mughal Prince. They were desperately in love. There was something he said to her, but it was in English and I was trying my best to translate it into Urdu/Hindi because it was originally said in that language. I was having a great amount of trouble because what he had said was quite sensual. And this struggle to translate that sentence became the focus of my dream. It was what I was struggling with as I wrestled myself into conciousness, and woke up thinking about it. 

But after waking, I realised that in my dream, I hadn't been reading someone else's diary but actually writing it myself from a character's point of view. That's why the translation was so important. And so my mind began to automatically fill in the gaps of the story: constructing the character of this woman, her name, where and why she was in India, the details of that time period, how the Prince had fallen in love with her, the circumstances of why he couldn't marry her and how exactly he broke her heart, her marriage to a white-fortune-hunter just to spite the Prince, how her husband beat her and tortured her, how her husband eventually died in the 1857 Rebellion. 

I could not stop my mind from thinking about it. As I went through the daily routine of life, subconsciously my mind was fleshing out the plot and making links and stuff of that sort. I was haunted by this story and I knew I had to write it down some where. But there just wasn't enough of a plot to make it into a novel of it's own. And then click, just like that, I knew exactly what I had to do. 

You see, there is another story that I have planned which is also set in that same time period, the mid-to-late 1800's. This is basically a compilation of letters between two sisters, each telling the other her story. One is Catherine (a.k.a Kitty) who spends the majority of her life in London doing charitable acts and getting involved with the suffrage movement. While the significantly older sister, Camilla,  goes to live in Hindustan with her husband Major James Russell. 

Image courtesy of www.eyefetch.com  

Up until a few days ago, I had Kitty's side of the story thoroughly planned and plotted (hence the working title of the novel was "The Letters of Kitty"). I knew that Camilla's story ran in parallel to Kitty's: where Kitty fought for the rights of women to vote, Camilla would fight against the oppression of the Indian people. Yet, in honest truth, the details, actions and events of Camilla story (as opposed to Kitty's) were still rather ambiguous and fuzzy in my mind. And now here is where the idea from my dream comes in. 

Suddenly, Alhumdulillah, I just knew that Major James Russell had a wealthy but miserable old Aunt who lived in India and James was her only heir (and favourite nephew). So naturally James and Camilla would live with her in her mansion. But the Aunt is mean and bitter and takes an instant dislike to Camilla, making her life miserable too. And after a few years living with her, it is Camilla who find's the Aunt's diary and reads it in secret. She learns all that had happened to the Aunt and why she is the way she is, and relates all that she learns in her letters to her sister, Kitty. Camilla begins to sympathise and understand James' Aunt but just then ... Well, I won't tell you what happens next, for that will be giving away the rest of the story. 

But dear Reader, I did not tell you all this to boast about the stories that I am writing. I tell because I want to give you an example of were ideas come from, how they develop and take on life. Some ideas are brilliant with radiant futures ahead of them. Some are not, forgotten and neglected as soon as they form. Some ideas become best-seller novels, while others become atomic bombs. We cannot pick which idea comes to us. And when it does come, we know not where it might lead. All we can do is choose whether to follow it through. The rest is by the will Allah.

Nida