"If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."

I've had this quote up on my wall for a while now because it's cheeky and applies to other people. Only the other day, at my last Bollywood Cardio class of the year, someone said, 2011 has been an amazing year for me, and I realized I couldn't quite say the same. I did have... not plans so much as notions. And I don't know who's in charge of it all, but they're sure getting a laugh out of me.

My plan was simple: it fit neatly in the little space below my name on this very blog: quit job, write book, the end. At first, things seemed to be on track. Exactly a year ago, on my last working day before Christmas holidays, I "finished" the "final" draft of my novel, saved in a folder called September 2010, and jetted off to the Cayman Islands to hang out with family. I reeled off my plans to all who asked: January I would research, February through May would be editing and by August, I'd be ready for the Squaw Valley Writing Conference where I would wow agents and editors with my complete novel, then sit  back while they clawed each other's eyes and hair out to get their hands on exclusive rights.

A month of researching Pakistan from a coffee shop in Mountain View and I was the one tearing my hair out. Seeing Wikipedia would only take me so far, I decided to go to Karachi myself, not as the foreign return I'd been the first time around (which had led to much of the inspiration for this novel) but as a writer. I spent three weeks eating, shopping, laughing, oh and researching. The only night I didn't have my notepad in my back pocket was at a wedding I crashed because my cousin begged me to leave it behind (and because there were no pockets in my sari). Upon returning to California, I knew my novel had to change based on what I'd experienced in Karachi. So I tweaked and rewrote, starting a folder called April 2011.

Suddenly it was August. I had no novel; what I had was eight chapters of mediocre lukewarm porridge. But it was time for Squaw Valley Writing Conference. As preparation, I wrote an elevator pitch, boiling my novel down to 60 seconds of succinct intrigue that would induce the clawing of eyes, etc. I harangued countless friends, wrote 29 drafts of this thing and spent the four hour drive up to Lake Tahoe reciting my pitch in an engaging, natural fashion (side bar: also not part of the plan was the $360 speeding ticket I earned but that's another story). The first agent I approached listened to the first line before walking away to talk to someone higher on the food chain. The next two people to hear it -the last two- were other wannabe writers. And then I came home.

I couldn't get over it, the dashed hopes, all the hair and eyes that remained in tact, not a claw drawn the whole week I'd been gone, and on my desk, the folder stuffed with the 29 drafts of my pitch, mocking me and my well-laid plans. Plus,  I was now on my second year of unemployment and funds were dwindling.

So I did the one thing I know how to do, the very thing that had got me into this mess in the first place: I read. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It healed me. It rubbed  balm on my tattered ego, reminded me why I was doing this exercise in sadomasochism in the first place and gently propped me up at my laptop once more.

September 2011 is the folder I'm on now. Chapter Nine was printed this morning and added to the shoebox I began a few months ago. Yes, I'm single-handedly killing several forests, but printing out complete chapters and putting them in my orange shoebox is all I have in the world so I do it (on 99 % recycled paper, I promise).

It's been a year and a half, it's been four drafts and counting, and I have no idea what the plan is anymore. I do know the honeymoon is over; I am no longer the happy sparkly kid I was last year, Ms. Look at Me On My Writing Adventure. I know I am an unemployed vagrant who skulks around coffee shops no longer sure of what the hell she's doing while all around her people work, pop out babies, cook dinner every night and get regular haircuts.

One of the irritating side effects of being a writer is this hyper-self-awareness, so I also recognize I'm in the thick of it right now. I'm in this deep, dark mineshaft and I'm too far in not to keep going till I hit gold. Or till my hands fall off from frostbite, my blue fingers still clamped around the shovel.

I have no idea what 2012 will bring. This is not said to fish for compliments but as a fact. I could be picked up by a small independent press and earn $ 500 for my efforts. I could be drowning my sorrows in cheap whiskey while warming my hands at a bonfire made out of a heap of rejection letters.

None of that matters. From where I am, inside this tunnel, I can't see above or below. And that's probably for the best.

I no longer have a plan, I just have a goal.

Foray into the Normal

The morning of my 30th birthday, I arose and announced that I was buying myself a guitar. That afternoon, after five rounds of "Time of Your Life", which my sister had taught me a few months before, I decided to teach myself a new song. I settled on "American Pie". Of the ten or so chords it involved, I was familiar with three. I did not balk at this calculation. Not normal. But really, it was a simple matter of check chord chart, arrange fingers, strum and sing, check chord chart, arrange fingers, strum and sing and bada-bing-bada-boom, twenty minutes later, I had sung my way through the first verse. I felt like a rock star. A folk rock star. A geriatric folk rock star, but a rock star nonetheless. But see, then I put the guitar away and went back to my day job.

Not so with another whim I once had, one that has turned my life upside down, inside out, and half-way right side up again.

One day, while looking for a painting class in the Adult Ed catalog I came upon Intro to Fiction. I need to take a moment to ponder what would have happened if the catalog hadn't been arranged alphabetically. Meh. So, three weeks into the class, we did a timed writing exercise: ten minutes on X subject, go. A scene came to me that I couldn't stop thinking about, or writing about. Nine months later, I had a novel. Three years later, I quit my job to write the novel full time. Not normal.

The problem is, that's all I have. This one novel.

Recently, I've been freaking out because other writers seem to have short stories, poems, essays to their names. The other problem, the real one, is I don't care. I really really wanted to learn "American Pie", and I did. I can now play verse one in twelve minutes, eight if I forsake exact chords for a good foot-stomping beat. And I really want to write this novel.

My new plan for it, one that I think may help me reach the end (not The End- that's been reached several times with varying degrees of Bollywood Kitsch/Melodrama/Passable but not Perfect- but completion). It's what Anne Lamott says in her book, Bird by Bird: when you're feeling overwhelmed, look through a one inch frame. Write what you see there. It's been working like a dream. Well, a nightmarish dream, since it means working brilliantly but sloooowly, section by painstaking section, completion pushed somewhere beyond 2020. Still don't care.

In a further attempt at normalcy, I've decided to apply this plan to this blog. Because like everything else in my life, I was complicating it. Yes, Phiroozeh Romer can complicate blogging, which by definition is quick and easy, a mind spill, really. So no more two hour entries, no more faux poetic blurbs, from now on, I'm going to be normal. I'm going to write, in a few lines, something about my writing. Like my (newly published) friend, Annam Manthiram.

Here's to being normal like everyone else.

Brazen Self Promotion (Part 3 of So What Do You Do?)

Chaat guy.

It's not like I've never embarrassed myself before. I have no problems blaring Bollywood in un-Indian neighbourhoods while my passengers slouch low in their seats, and you all ready the entry about me standing in the crowded Karachi bazaar till I got the perfect picture of the chaat guy. It's that sometimes (most times), I don't particularly care if I do embarrassing things. Besides, lately, I've begun to explain much of my behaviour under the general umbrella of "I am an Artiste". Like promoting my blog, for example. When I began it, things were easy enough. I just posted it on Facebook, invaded people's email boxes with updates under the pretense of "oh, in case you don't check FB, here's a reminder", you know, basic stuff. But then things went steadily downhill.

The first noticeably obnoxious self-promoting I ever did was on one of my favorite grocery clerks at the local Trader Joe's. Fans know that contrary to advertising, TJs is in fact the happiest place on earth. Everyone there is just happy and chatty, negating the tedium of doing groceries. So this poor guy, being a good employee, asked if I'd enjoyed St. Patty's day and I said I had been working and had only watched from the coffee shop window as people headed to the pub next door. What work do you do, he asked. I explained. I read a  lot, he said. Oh, then you should check out my blog. And I stood there as he was forced to rip off a piece of receipt paper and accept my scrawled blog address with a scared sort of smile.

Was that a cheap move? Had I exploited the poor TJ's cashier and the entire company's friendly staff model to serve my own purposes? Had I breached some sort of cashier-customer code of conduct, like a shrink asking her patient out? A resounding yes to all of the above, yet once the floodgates had opened, there was no stopping me.

A couple of weeks ago, I accompanied a friend as she gave a ride to a few people. The thirteen year old girl we were driving mentioned she liked writing too. Yes, folks, indeed I did. I found a paper CD protector and plastered my blog address on it, passing it to her in the back seat as she thanked me with the same stunned-scared expression the TJ cashier had worn.

Did I do it so she could draw inspiration from my artistic journey? Or was it simply so she would one day buy my book? Again, yes.

As I said, this was a downhill journey and we now arrive to the bottom of the chasm. The most shameless (shameful?) self-advertising happened last weekend. It was my sister's wedding and as I welcomed my new brother-in-law into the family, I said, "[Husband's name here], we may not have much in common in terms of hobbies or eating habits, but we both share a love of my blog". At this point, I put one hand to the side of my mouth and fake-whispered the blog address to the whole gathering.

Over the top? Way over. Exploitative? Criminally so.

So the question is, is all this self-promotion going to get me anywhere? Shouldn't I just shut up and finish the book already, let my art speak for itself? Or is the world of creative arts so cut-throat, so difficult to break into let alone survive in that a starving artist must do what she has to to get her name out there? In fact, now that I think about it, is this a good place to sneak in a plea to all of you to help me promote the bejeezus out of my blog, scrawl phiroozeh.blogspot.com on receipts, napkins, the backs of people's arms, bathroom stalls?

Yes. Definitely, yes.

Just a Bit of Bollywood-Part 2: A Sneak Peek

 I spent the weekend in Vancouver, as part of round one of my sister's wedding celebrations. Several friends told me they've been reading the blog, which was so nice to hear. Some complained they're too long, which is too bad for you because I've decided to embrace my verbosity. If you did read the entirety of last week's Bollywood blog, here's your reward. As promised, an excerpt from the novel.

                                             **************************************

After the news, the uncles went to the backyard with their drinks and the aunts sat on the sofas planning Cyrus’s sixth birthday party. Laila and Rashna, I noticed, kept glancing at Grandmother, whose eyes had begun to droop. As soon as her head fell to one side, Laila was at the TV, changing channels and lowering the volume while the boys slithered out of the parlor to go play chor-police in the large foyer, whose marbled floors were perfect for sliding around catching bad guys on. As the angst ridden faces of American teens fill the screen, the girls smiled contentedly. Every emotion of the characters played out on Laila’s face and even Rashna sat up straight, leaning slightly forward. Back home this show had been our guilty pleasure; Roop, Sara and I watched it every Wednesday night. Tonight, though, watching my cousins watch the show, I was suddenly hyper aware of little nuances; the clothes the characters wore, the things they said and did. It was all exaggerated, I knew that. But did these girls? I grimaced, recognizing this episode. The father was having an affair, the mother was hitting the bottle, and one of the emaciated teens was going to OD on prescription drugs by the end of the episode. A teenaged couple stared at the bed they were being forced to share for the night.

Laila glanced at me and looked quickly away. Oh God, were they thinking this was what my life was like? I laughed under my breath at the irony. Mum had made it plenty clear that dating wasn’t an option. Once, Dad stopped at a traffic light right beside a teenaged couple making out at a bus stop.

“Chee,” Mum had said, “No sharam these ghoras have. That girl will be pregnant by dinnertime.” She turned to me. “Katayoon, remember, you must marry a Nice Parsi Boy.”

I shuddered at the sound of my full name. “Those two are dating, not getting married.”

            “We don’t date. We marry. And when you marry, it’ll be to a Nice Parsi Boy.”

            “If I marry, it’ll be to someone I love. We’re not some backward villagers, Mum. This isn’t the sixteenth century that you can barter me off to whoever offers you the most goats.”

            “Goats? Who’s talking about goats? See, Freddy, didn’t I tell you? Bring them here and they lose all respect for our ways.”

The show cut to commercial and Laila whipped around. “Do you have a boyfriend, Katya?”

My cheeks burned as I thought of Phil – could I even call him my ex after only three months? “No.”

Dilshad Aunty’s ears had perked up. “Chalo chalo, Katya, time to get serious soon, haan? What are you, 22, 23?”

“25 in a few months.”

She bit her tongue between her front teeth, a worried look on her face.

“Knowing her mother, Dilshad, I’m sure she’s had an eye out for years.” We hadn’t realized Grandmother had awoken and Laila glanced nervously at the TV. “That woman knows how to marry well.”

“Oh, this is a great movie,” Coomie Aunty said loudly, preventing Grandmother from dropping the next bombshell. She had already changed the channel, and Laila breathed a sigh of relief.

Toned, tanned bodies filled the screen, wearing even less clothing than the American teens we’d just seen traipsing around Southern California. As a child, I had watched Hindi movies most afternoons, my head in my favorite ayah's lap. But those had looked nothing like this. Two guys broke into a song, the actress between them pretending at first to be irritated but soon breaking into a perfectly synchronized dance with them.

“Wait, what’s going on?” I whispered to Laila. Instead of the two men hitting on the girl, they seemed to be dancing with each other.

“These two are pretending to be,” she paused, leaned on my leg and whispered, “Gays.” Giggling she continued, “They have to pretend so that that girl that they both like would stay with them in their apartment.”

 “Why is she wearing a bikini top under her sari?” I asked.

Laila laughed, “It’s the style, silly. Isn’t she gorgeous. I wish I had her body.”

Rashna said, “Well, you have to work at it, you know.”

Laila’s face fell. Her yellow t-shirt was snug across her waist, and her hair was in a side ponytail, a look she couldn’t pull off with her short hair. Her mouth tugged downwards, and I couldn’t stand it.

 Putting an arm around her shoulder, I asked, “Tell me, why are there so many white people behind her?”

“They’re in Miami.”

“Why? I thought this was an Indian movie.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Bollywood has gone Hollywood. They film in UK, US, Australia. Don’t you remember Salaam Namaste from a few years ago? It was shot completely in Australia. Kal Ho Na Ho was set in New York. DDLJ was shot partly in UK and Switzerland. K3G was shot partly in UK.” She counted the titles on her fingers, oblivious to my oblivion of all the acronyms she stated. She trailed off and was soon glued back to the movie, her arm remaining on my leg.

“Coomie, Dilshad, this is really inappropriate for the children,” Grandmother said as the two guys sandwiched the bikini-sari girl and air-humped her.

Her daughters didn’t hear her. “God, Dil, isn’t John Abraham yummy?” Coomie Aunty was saying.

“Nayee, yaar, Coomie, I like Abhishek. Tall like his father he is.”

Grandmother grunted. “His father had class, this boy is soiling the Bachchan family name with this behavior. What…what is he doing with his hips? How vulgar.”

“It’s called gyrating,” Laila said.

“Filthy,” the OC said. “I did not approve it on that Elvis Presley and I do not approve it on our men.”

No one heard her; they all stared at the TV. The uncles came in from the balcony as the song ended and Rohinton Uncle bounced his shoulders and swiveled his hips. Even Grandmother cracked the tiniest of smiles.

Just a Bit of Bollywood-Part 1

No matter how hard I try, Bollywood seeps into my novel. Sure I read a lot. When I was seven, I used to hide my favorite Read-It-Yourself book on the top shelf at the Gymkhana library (yes, I could reach it at seven) so it would always be available for me when I visited. Yes, the greatest day of my life was when we first moved to Canada and  I found out we could check out not three books like in Karachi, but TWENTY-FIVE. And fine, I've been known to cancel plans if a book is too good to put down. But Hindi movies flow in my veins.

Remember these?

I grew up watching them in the air-conditioned comfort of Nani and Nana's sitting room on those hot Karachi summer nights. The flash of the Hindi Film Board certificate, the title in Hindi, Urdu, English, and we were off.
Nani dozed off at exactly 11 and Nana, the best husband ever, turned it off soon after so she wouldn't miss the ending that we had all predicted at the start.My grandparents' neighbour, in fact, rented out these movies, and Cuz One was in charge of crossing the hall and getting a beautiful black VHS every night; I, being female, was forbidden to do so. I used to stand in the doorway and hiss at him not to get one with too much maar-faar, no blood and guts, please. He, of course, smiled mischeiviously back at me, knowing the power of his gender even then.

I grew up with the classics, Dil, Kyamat Se Kyamat Tak, and of course, my all time favourite, Mr. India, which, after my 18th rental, the movie man refused to lend to us anymore, insisting others must have a go. My mother used to have a heart attack whenever she came into the air-conditioned den and saw her little girl glued to the screen where one blood-drenched good guy took on ten gun and/or dagger-wielding bad guys who appeared on cue out of the shadows, all of whom cursed each other's mothers and sisters while throwing punches with exaggerated dishoom-dishoom sounds.

                I especially recommend minute 1:41, the epitomizing moment


In Canada, it all ended abruptly, mainly because I didn't know where to get the goods. It wasn't until I went to Korea and met Monica, a Korean teacher at my ESL school, that it all came back. Monica had majored in Hindi, spoke it fluently, and loved the films. She befriended me because my middle name was Shahrukh like Shah Rukh Khan, and it was through her that I discovered the underground world of Desis in Korea. My first Divali happened in the outskirts of Seoul and spared no details: we began with with a pooja, followed by a recital of Om Jai Jagdish- which of course I knew, not because I was Hindu but because of the fil-lums I'd seen- and continued into the wee hours with a rousing game of Antakshari. When I got pneumonia and spent weeks in the hospital, Monica brought me the soundtrack to Mujse Dosti Karoge (Will You Be My Friend), along with a touching letter about why our friendship meant so much to her.

After she left, I loaded my Walkman and immediately, a high-pitched female voice filled my ears, its familiarity sending goosebumps down my spine. But it was the last song that did me in. A medley of old classics and recent hits, it sent me on a roller-coaster of memories, and I cried and cried and cried. Mind you, at that point, I'd been hospitalized for well over a week, but that wasn't what made me cry. It was that reminder of the air-conditioned room, the brown sofas, Nani Nana by my side, that made me cry so much for so long that the Korean woman taking care of her ailing mother in the next bed over left her mum to come stroke my shoulder and hand me her extra large Kleenex box.

                                                                
  Minute 10:07 was what got me (ignore the subtitles, learn Hindi instead)

And that's how this Desi Girl came back with a vengeance. I made CD mixes, took dance classes all over town, had Hindi movie dates with whoever wished to come, or with myself, it didn't matter. Living in London, I tried every Indian dance company in central London, feasted regularly at hole-in-the-wall curry joints, and bought pirated DVDs, four movies in one, on the pavements of South Hall and East Ham. For my birthday, I dragged all the friends I'd made to Bollywood Night. They say you know who your true friends are when you drag them to a Bollywood Night and they feign enthusiasm for shoulder shaking and  light bulb screwing and that night was definitely one for the record books.

Now I live in the Bay Area, the India of the West. With my ICC membership, plethora of Indian restaurants and fast food joints to keep me full all weekend, and Bollywood movies in regular cinemas, I'm  home.

You can see, then, why Bollywood has seeped into my novel in various forms and proportions over the many drafts. Most of it had to be deleted, though not without saving a draft for a future Hindi movie somewhere down the line. But the manuscript is not void of Bollywood. In fact, I think I've struck a good (healthy) balance.

And if you are still reading this, next blog entry, you will be rewarded with a sneak peek at the novel itself.
                                                 

I Get High ( Part 2 of So What Do You Do?)

I get high all the time with this new job. The feeling, for those of you who haven't experienced it, makes you hyper, energized,  like you could run a marathon even though you usually can't make it to the end of your block without your calf cramping up. It can be embarrassing when it happens in public, because when I'm high, you can totally tell; my hands shake, I sweat, and I can't get the goofy smile off my face. And today, I want to tell you about my source- well, sources, because I'm hard core.


It's happened more than once that someone will say something in passing that is one of the underlying themes in my novel. This gets me so high because I strive to be real, relatable, and here is the universe telling me I am because it happened to this person. Now this is a tricky area, because sometimes, it's something unpleasant or even traumatizing that happened to this person. Yet there I am mentally going, YES, I KNEW it, I knew that was how that scenario would have gone down. Then I feel bad because this is a friend's pain we're talking about. 
But recently, I met a new friend, also Parsi, who said something about his relationship with a particular aspect of our culture which is a theme my novel dabbles with. I leaned forward and asked why he felt that way. And the answer he gave matched the exact scene in my novel almost verbatim. I literally jumped up and down in my chair with joy (not easy or dignified to do while wearing a sari). I was high all night.

Legion of Honor

Last week, I got to the end of my to-do list and the thing I'd been putting off stared me in the face: find a curator to interview (my main character wants to be a curator but who the heck knows what a curator does off the top of their heads?). Why the procrastination? Because I've called more than one person who has told me with exasperation to go look at their website instead of bothering them. Well, sometimes the universe is on your side, sometimes it rewards you for previous hardships by arranging it so that the first museum you call has a friendly receptionist who puts you in touch with a friendly curator who invites you to the museum the very next week. What a high.
Over coffee (which was so strong and gave me a whole different kind of high), the curator answered all my questions, each response getting me higher and higher because it was so relevant to the core of my story. And also because in procrastinating, I'd made up a lot of stuff. And here the curator was confirming that what I'd invented was not far from the truth, was actually quite spot on. The high I experienced (at lethal levels combined with that coffee) made it hard to connect my fingers to the keyboard as I tried to make notes, and I'm pretty sure my wild hand gestures as I related my own stories to her had the sedate museum going crowd clutching their purses a little tighter. But I was under the influence, what could I do?

Who doesn't have a crush on Al Young?

I may not have a writer's fame and fortune yet, but one thing that's already well established is the writer's ego. Having it stroked is the ultimate high. Being complimented by really legit people (no offense Mum) is just out of this world. At last year's writing workshop,when my group was nit-picking trivialities in my piece, the facilitator, Al Young, novelist, poet, professor, and one mean jazz musician, turned to me and said in his voice that is like warm caramel sauce, "I want to keep reading". This poet/musician, succinct by trade, gave me a five-word gift that sent me flying that morning and still keeps me going in my darkest hours.

Over the last few months, I tweaked my novel, attacking persisting problems and finally ridding myself of them. The bigger the problem, the more intense the resulting high. I felt like I was playing Tetris, you know that video game where different shaped pieces fall from the sky and you have to arrange them into lines before they pile on top of each other and you're out? That was my novel, with bits and pieces that had fallen out of my mind over the years, laying in a wasteland of Word docs, refusing to fit together in a way I was happy with. But over the past few months, I've been making them fit and like in the game, each problem I solved was like a row of puzzle pieces that went poof, and I went to the next level. On those days, I was as high as a kite.

Finally, my greatest and most consistent high comes from checking my blog to see how many hits I've had in the past few days (or past few hours if I'm having a particularly distracted writing day). And I need my fix, man, so read, read now.

So What Do You Do? Part One

My "Office"

It's been nine months since I quit my job, converted my dining table into a writing desk, the wall in front of it a personal floor to ceiling white board, and began writing my novel. Continued writing, I should say, since I began writing it five years ago. But I began writing "full time" last July. Since then, my second least favorite question in the world has been "So, what do you do?", which ranks smack in the middle of "So when are you having kids?" (number three) and "So what's the book about?" (number one).

Question three is none of anyone's business (though if my parents or grandparents ask, it's right after this book) and question one just gets me tongue tied (I still haven't mastered the 30 second elevator pitch that should make a potential agent/publisher swoon and beg me for exclusive publishing rights). Question two is most manageable, in a least-of-the-evils kind of way. Interestingly, I've gone, in the last nine months, from saying "I'm uh...writing a book?" to "I'm a writer" with a bit more confidence- though I still brace myself for the inevitable follow up question (you know what it is) and babble a convoluted answer that makes the asker back away slowly.

When I first said I was quitting my job to write, many people heard "I'm married now so I don't have to work for a living". They imagined me sipping poolside margaritas, wearing a wide brimmed hat and ogling my pool boy's six pack from behind my Jackie O sunglasses (our complex does have a pool but the old man who cleans it keeps his shirt on). I was asked slyly if this writing thing was an excuse to stay in bed till noon. I smiled and let them think what they wanted.

This sign  hangs front and center in my "office". It has become my mantra and the key to being self-employed.

Granted my workday, which began at 9 back in July now starts closer to ten, depending on who posted what on Facebook, but begin it does. I've only taken two days "off", one for a cold and one because of a Gray's Anatomy marathon, which my boss forced me to conduct so I could get them out of the way and get back to work. My boss is a slave driver, but I trust her (also, she's a bit scary).

Now that I'm an expert on being a self-employed writer (self-employed, unemployed, whatever), let me share my wisdom with all of you.

1. Find the Perfect Work Space

The dining table-cum-office didn't last long, and after months of careful experimentation with coffee shops up and down the Bay, I have settled on the Red Rock Cafe in downtown Mountain View. This magical haven allows you to stay all day, for as much or as little as a half-caf extra-hot non-fat latte, and it's a Godsend.
On the second floor, the literal heart of Silicon Valley resides, and in the eye of the storm, surrounded by flip-flop-clad men and women discussing their start ups and smartly suited business people tapping their iPads for their clients, I waltz in  promptly between nine and ten, with my clunky HP laptop (it is the only one without the little glowy apple, gasp), adorned in a t-shirt from Target or a kurti from Karachi, depending on my mood, and take my place at the second to last table, facing the wall, close to an outlet, with plenty of natural light.

In the cradle of time between the end of my play list  (the group, Ba Cissoko, sing in an African language I don't understand, providing perfect drown-out music) and my finger hitting the replay button-I have yet to figure out how to set my iPod to repeat- I overhear techy-type conversations that I don't understand, though they are conducted in English. I'm often struck with the realization that I'm a complete outsider on the second floor in terms of what I'm doing there. But writing this, I also see that in another way, I fit right in with this crowd. I, too have a dream, a start up of sorts, and I too am here to develop it.

That got long. Now you know the answer to Irritating Question Number Four: Why don't you write short stories, Phi?

My Oasis: The Red Rock Cafe (that's my spot: second floor, second window!)