Gripevine

What does it mean to be a woman in Malaysia today? On the surface it all seems rosy doesn't it? We can earn degrees in whichever field we choose to, we can get good jobs, buy our own property, drive cool cars, wear nice clothes, dye our hair, hang out with friends at cool and funky restaurants and clubs, smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish and the list goes on. So does that make us a liberated lot? Do you think we are oh so lucky as compared to our sisters in other parts of the world? Luckier than the little girls in some African countries who have their breasts ironed when young so as not to appear an alluring target for would be rapist. So rife is rape in such societies, that desperate mothers resort to mutilating their daughters in such a manner as a means of protection. Luckier are we than the victims of female infanticide in rural India? Luckier than the women in Basra, Iraq, who get shot on the streets for not being 'appropriately clad'? I think not. On the su...

Writers in my opinion are one of the most misunderstood people around. I have come to this conclusion after spending a fair amount of time in this line of work. Eight years to be exact. After much exasperation and frustration thanks to my dealings with non-writers whom I had the misfortune of interacting with in the course of my work, I felt compelled to sit and write this post. My primary objective is to air my grief! The secondary objective being to put into perspective the general traits and characteristics shared by those that possess the soul and temperament of a writer. LANGUAGE To be a writer, one must have a deep and consuming love affair with the language one writes in. Language is the vehicle and the weapon of the writer. Not the quill, the pen, the typewriter or the computer keyboard. A good writer expertly uses language to engage and captivate an audience the same way lawyers use the law to convince the court of the merit of their case. Although a mastery of language...

"Better to Write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." So said Cyril Connolly. That phrase aptly describes the irony of my whole writing career up to the present. I spent the first six years of my career as a newspaper journalist writing or more accurately reporting on anything and everything that hardly reflected my 'self' I was merely a hack that communicated what the government/judiciary/or so-called 'important people' (Those privileged enough to be given a say in the media) wished to say to the public. It was they who had the voice, not me. I merely made their fluff look intelligent, newsworthy, and easy to comprehend for the benefit of the masses. The writer in me lay dormant and silent. The hack/reporter had taken over. I spent a huge part of my thinking time compressing facts into neat paragraphs. Not more than four lines long. The challenge was to tell the whole story in ten paragraphs or more. The moment I ar...