Debbienho !

School. It doesn’t get any easier, does it? But you don’t care. So I won’t talk about school. I put another book up on Okadabooks! Yaaay! It’s called “First Sons” and it wants you to read it! I should give some background on this story, I believe. It was for class, my Creative Writing IA, really. We had about one month and a half to produce a novel in exchange for what, forty marks? And, being as dutiful and responsible as I was, I waited till about twelve days to the deadline, and remembered I had to start. I know. No student more serious than me. I’m putting it out now because some of those who read Scaredy Cat! wanted something longer. Plus, better out here than only hidden on my laptop where only I can read it. Genre? Oh, it’s a lot of genres. It’s Christian, but I don’t profess to be a fount of all knowledge, and I don’t say this is a replacement for the Bible. God helped me write it a lot—no other conclusion would make sense to justify m...

(When you have the time, check out Try . She’s an amazing writer with unbelievable talent. I’m secretly jealous of her but I can’t say it because I’m supposed to be nice. The hardship of living among humans.) I put something up, by the way. (I know, big news.) On Okadabooks. Whaaat? You don’t know what Okadabooks is? Alright. I’ll be nice (again, the hardship of living among humans) and explain it to you. Okadabooks is a…place where writers can post their writing and readers can…read the writing that writers post. Yeah. And it’s really simple to use. You could go to their page, www.Okadabooks.com , or download the Okada books app from your mobile app store. You create an account, and you’re good to go. Oh, and it’s all free.  Yeah. Yeah, what I posted. It’s a short story. I wrote it forever ago for a contest, then couldn’t enter it, so…it sat on a certain hard drive for a long time. And I found it again some days back. So I pimped it some, added a minimalist co...

So Usain Bolt has really never stood on a lower podium in all the Olympics he’s attended. Always on the highest one, in the middle. Ei. Ghana. When? Wheeen ? Côte d’Ivoire has won some oh (I was so happy I almost cried). You too win some! (This is the second part of an earlier post. You can read that one  here .) 5. Can anybodyyyy find meee somebody tooo love? *Rachel Potter voice* Yeah I think I need one of those. I think. I imagine people in relationships stay up late having winding conversations that end something like ‘You hang up’/ ‘No, you hang up’ / ‘No, you hang up’ and MTN is having a field day. You know what I stayed up thinking about in the past three weeks? (Who am I kidding? This stretches beyond those three weeks.) The thrill of watching Elaine Thompson finish ahead of Dafni Schippers. Is Shaunae Miller’s fall across the finish line something athletes will be replicating in coming days? Why did Jebet slow down before she finished…if she’d kept up the pace...

Some of us became temporarily nocturnal this month. We wanted to see if Usain Bolt will do his treble treble. That guy is too much fun. I enjoyed his brief bromance with Andre de Grasse. How will the Olympic world recover from Bolt’s exit? Anyway, I learned a few things. A few. 10. I’m not that much into sports. So it’s been said, that I like sports, and I do well because I follow it. Well, it took seventeen days of competition to prove all of that wrong. Apparently there are tons of sporting events that I never knew of. The Olympics happen once in four years, but in those intervals there are mini-Olympics, you know, indoor championships, the Diamond League, the IAAF championships. Handball leagues. BMX. Volleyball tourneys! Listening to those commentators harp on and on about this competitor’s season’s best and personal best and who won what earlier this year made me feel so dumb. All I follow is the NBA, barely, and the WNBA is dead to me, and my football knowledge is ...

P.S. I discovered this amazing blog, www.delatheinker.wordpress.com , and I think you should see it. Especially if I’ve annoyed you before. And even if I haven’t, I assure you I will soon, so go and see it. Now to what the crazy fairy left in my room again. * Dear Indian Television Series, Namaste! I see you a lot nowadays. Sometimes because I want to, because in my rankings—and every one knows that counts for something—British humour comes first, then Indian, then…the rest. Sometimes against my will, because…I’m passing by the television set and you’re just…there! A lot. On so many channels. You’re almost…inevitable now. But that’s not the problem. Although it could count as one, because I consider how ubiquitous you are on local TV and I wonder if any of our series are on your TV channels in India. Do Ravi and Seeta cut conversations short and run home because they don’t want to miss a second of Bongo Bar? But who cares? I do. Whatever it be, ...

The English Premier League last season, a.k.a., How Leicester went from Ugly Duckling to Pretty Swan, turned out to be, as predicted, utterly unpredictable. For one, the defending champions, Chelsea, who’d maintained the lead in the previous season pretty much the entire season, struggled to find form in the 2015/2016 season under their manager and much-loved Mourinho, who may possibly have his third seasons jinxed. They disappointed and clutched at straws and breathed sighs of relief and sighs of despair and lost when you expected them to win and drew when you expected them to lose and became a delightful joke (of course, that you’ll find humour at Chelsea’s expense depends on which side of the divide you are) in the Premiership. Remi Garde. Steve McClaren. Roberto Martinez. What these three have in common—coaches all shown the door. Last season’s EPL was a rather fun coach exodus. Aston Villa, Everton, Swansea, Watford, among others, pulled a Pharaoh and let their coaches go...

Sigh freed.  Thank God. 

I drew an Indian woman. Oh. I rephrase: I attempted drawing an Indian woman. (For my self-esteem’s sake, her name is [conspicuously] withheld.) I was excited, brimming with vim right down to the tips of my toes. I had a new sketchbook, and most of my pencils were obedient. I was mastering shading and blending, lightening and darkening, making wisps and block lines. There was nothing I could not do. I could conquer the world! The annoying ‘Small girls are young’ had never been this true . Halfway through the right eye, I wanted to give up. How I did not, is a complete miracle. It may be a while before I draw again. 

I’ve fallen out of love with telenovelas. I’m not sure why. Maybe I grew up, and decided they weren’t very realistic. Or I grew old, and knew I would not be bothered with emotional roller-coasters I had no control over. It could be that I grew tired, of names like Dalmonella and Escondida de la Contravez, which conveniently missed my birth certificate. Whichever it is, I’m not part of the gang of giggly girls who revel in post-show analysis, and I don’t miss the days I moped in a corner because ECG had visited at the time Rosalinda was due to air.  This…hypothesis, does not, at all, stop me from enjoying telenovela music. Word! Some songs from these three-hundred-and-ninety-two-episode-long television shows (not counting the moments of absentmindedness which cause the television channel to repeat some episodes, and the breaks to show football matches, which make telenovelas four-hundred-and-seventy-two-episode-long shows) seem to hit me hard on some soft spot, and ambush me ...

Greetings, my loves, from nigh and yonder, ’Tis I, Dame Thistle, Fairy Godmother, Here resting after thousand journeys, From creating slippers, winging tourneys. I’ve come to see with no small misery, It’s much desired by all and sundry At some point of their animation   To feel and love without condition. But how, they fear—and here I frown, Can they, when they’ve none to call their own? Taking respite after many wonderings, The answer nipped me after many ponderings. Propped up behind my desk I touch A quill to paper—or parchment, or such To give, at last, the besought secret Of love, yes love, you best believe it! For although you may want me there, I, my dears, can’t be everywhere! And so here goes the detailed list, Of rules to make love’s precious mist! First get some dew, some fresh good dew, Best what you find at dawn—say, two. ‘Not water?’ you ask? Oh goodness, no! Then how’ll the potion surreally glow? Instructions chil...

‘What do you want to be in future?’ I blinked. Eight simple words on the board. English class. Two miserable periods of lousy lighting, stuffy ventilation, and Miss Q’s eyes burning into us. Eighty minutes till the bell boy graced our senses with the distant sound of tolling bell. ‘Start work,’ went the Q woman’s voice, an incredible mix of deep and hoarse for a woman as ant-sized as her. I sighed. It felt like I was acting Exam, cross out favourable conditions. I stared at the board, leaned a cheek against my left fist, my pen drumming an incoherent rhythm on the table. What did I want to be in future? The answer must’ve been stuck somewhere in another life, so I busied myself with looking around. My gaze flicked over classmates seriously scratching the surface of their sheets with the tips of their pens, and I could not help wishing I had half that much drive right now. My eyes fell on Peter Mitsubishi. He was probably writing that he wanted to work at NASA, or own M...