starting off with writer's block

i knew this would happen - i knew that as soon as i started this project, i would get an intense case of writer's block. but i will persevere and muddle through this crampiness.

funny thing - for all those critics who believe sex doesn't sell, please note that the only comments i've gotten on this blog so far are on the blog that talks incessantly about sex ;) and the comments were awesome, thank you guys.

as andrew so wonderfully put it, navel-staring does not fly.
here we approach problem number two - i have no plot. i have millions of stories that i'm trying to tell. my family's more insane than most (more on that later), there's that feeling of being a constant silver-tongued chameleon, stuck in the middle of some great cultural debates, the experience of being in europe when it's at times the most unrealistic thing for someone from my background to have done. the eyes-wide-open expansion of the brain.

here's my first attempt at the split identity story:

prologue:

the road was long and broad, yellow lines down the middle, stretching all the way out into the horizon - sanitary and modern and utterly without character.

the road was dusty and unmade, like a bed that’s been left mid-thought. brown and dry, sides littered with cracks in the mud, trees that seem to be hanging on for dear life, and people who seem to be doing the same. the cars bump along and the trees (miraculously) are green.

maybe it was one road, maybe two separate ones. maybe the roads converge and diverge at will, running into each other like the colors of an impressionist painting. because basically, that’s what her life is like - that’s the way it always has been. two cultures, running into each other, clashing and rejoicing, rising up in joyous crescendo before crashing down in waves. maybe they hit a third road, one paved with nullness and voidity, neutral, an empty canvas. but we’ll save that for later....

chapter one:

both lives began (as lives do) with breath rushing into the lungs, perched upon a scream. once air hits, the squalling begins. but to parents, it sounds like the sweetest scream on earth: the breath of their first-born child.

both lives begin on the same patch of earth. karachi, pakistan, 1982. the berlin wall still exists, the cold war is silently waning, planets and super powers aligning, and the baby girl’s mother has no idea (no inkling, no shadow of knowing) that she will only be in this city long enough for her baby’s first steps.