EWS = Essay 4 = A son....

There is a small story attached with this essay. Our teacher took the essays and blacked out all our names from it. She chose people randomly to read aloud whatever essay she gave and the rest of the class that listened to it had to guess the writer. It was a lot of fun! My essay was given to a guy, M. Now he has a mellow way of talking  and it was a coincidence that our teacher gave my essay to a boy. When he spoke the first line,"Aliya and I have been married for more than fifty years" we all burst out laughing. He blushed! After that he tried again but we all couldn't stop laughing and he gave the essay back and even the teacher thought it best that a boy not read it. To get us serious again, we guessed all the essays until this essay was the only one left, so it was obvious that the last essay was my essay. So a girl read it, and once she did start reading, there was silence.   

“A son is a son before he gets a wife. A daughter is a daughter all her life.”

Aliya and I have been married for more than fifty years. That’s quite a record, considering the divorce rate these days. I had seen her for the first time at a funeral. Yes, finding love at a funeral seems like a bad omen, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her the moment I laid my eyes on her. I had nudged my sister, to show her my future wife. I did not even know whether she was already spoken for and I didn’t care. My elbow felt nothing where my sister should have been sitting. I averted my face from Aliya and looked for my sister and then it hit me like a ton a bricks. I was at my sister’s funeral.

My poor brother, I felt such sorrow when he had looked away from Aliya and realized that I wasn’t there. His face had crumbled for a split second and then he had gone back to an unreadable expression. He was devastated that I was dead. He couldn’t believe that his twin sister is not glued to his side, playing video games or getting hit by a football over and over again, just for fun. He bowed his head slightly and didn’t dare look at Aliya for the rest of the day. I know what it’s like to feel that way, falling in love. I was also falling in love when I died. It came too late. Love came when I was in the hospital, getting treated for leukemia. Hussain was so nice to me; we talked and tried to laugh while needle after needle was pricked through my skin. He finally blurted out that he loved me just before the good news that my turn for a bone marrow transplant was possible as the doctors had found a match. And then I just died. Poor Hussain. I could see him sitting with his father, one of my many uncles at the other side of the room.

However, it was not because of Hussain that I stayed around for a while. I stayed to make sure my family moved on. That they continued on from this horrible stage in their lives. I was dead now. They couldn’t do anything about it. My parents seemed to be drowning in their tears. What is wrong with them? They shouldn’t be like this. How do I convey to them that their daughter is fine? It is a tricky thing, this dead business, once you’re dead, you can never ever go back. So I made myself comfortable, hoping that my family let go of their grief over me, so that I could move on as well.

A few weeks passed, the number of guests diminished gradually until the days came when my family had no reason not to continue their normal routine in their lives. This was difficult in itself. My parents relied on my brother’s strength to live as normally as possible and I could see the superhuman strength my brother exerted not to cry. He was eighteen going on thirty. My mother took the longest to get over my absence and heavily relied on my brother. He woke Mum up before going to school, he would come back and sit with her for an hour or so every day, just talking about me or updating her on the outside world. He would get her small gifts now and then, and made sure she had her antidepressants. My brother’s support helped Mum immensely and she got better as time passed.

A few years passed and my family was almost back to normal. They smiled and laughed a lot more, especially when my brother broached the subject of marriage. He actually blushed! My father patted him on the shoulder and asked that if he had any girl in his mind. My brother immediately told them about Aliya. I clapped with glee. My parents made arrangements for a formal meeting with Aliya’s parents, even though they were related, but it was tradition to make an official request for matrimonial purposes. I waited a bit longer; I wanted to know just a bit more. As I had already known, because my brother would be the greatest life partner, Aliya agreed. Mum’s tears did not stop that day; they were of joy, for my brother.

I fast forwarded to the life after my brother’s marriage. I swore to myself that I will leave after a glimpse of their happiness. I naturally assumed that there was nothing to worry about. I guess I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I saw my brother deliriously happy with his new bride. My mother though was breaking down to weep more often than before. She wouldn’t show it in front of others, but her depression got worse and worse. What I couldn’t understand was that why was she still so upset. She had a very sweet daughter-in-law, now she wouldn’t feel my absence. Something was amiss.

I fast forwarded again to events that would tell me what was still causing Mum so much pain and then I saw it. She was in the tiny store room, which was squeezed between the kitchen and my brother’s room. She sat squished up in a corner of the room, and looked through a box called “Baby”. She took out what seemed like certificates. I scrutinized the certificates and realized that they were the ones I had collected since childhood. From spelling bee contests to swimming meets. Then she took out these beautiful pieces of clothes, laces and embroideries. The colors were so vibrant and uniquely combined that one could not help but notice the care and effort gone into choosing each piece. A lump formed in my throat and my stomach sank. These pieces were meant to be my wedding clothes. I was shaking when Mum took out the graduation gown and remembered how proud my parents had been of me for finishing high school.

I couldn’t bear this pain Mum was inflicting on herself. I rushed to Aliya and tried to communicate that she should go out to the store room. Aliya sensed that something was not right and went out to investigate. She saw my mother and gently put all the things back into the box and took Mum to her room and brought in a cup of tea and biscuits later.

Aliya was such a nice and attentive daughter-in-law, but I finally realized what was wrong. She was not me; she was not Mum’s daughter for whom she had dreamt dreams since she had conceived. I felt like my heart would break. In this dilemma, I remembered a principle told time and again by an eccentric aunt. A son is a son before he gets a wife; a daughter is a daughter all her life. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. My guardian angel had finally come to take me to the beyond. I pleaded to let me stay there forever, but he just shook his head, it doesn’t work that way. So after one last look at my family, I left. 

EWS = Essay 3 = When I saw that fork in the road just ahead in my life...

This essay is a foresight and an hindsight essay combined. A foresight essay is when one writes a story about a choice being being made in the future and what could be the consequence of making that choice. A hindsight essay is when one writes about a choice being made and  going through the consequences of making that choice. 

This essay is special to me because it is non fiction and fiction. It is a peak into my life in a way and my predictions into what caused me to make a decision of a certain issue. 

P.S. I got full marks in this essay.

When I saw that fork in the road just ahead in my life, I chose to be a woman in purdah than to be a woman in jeans

I remember that when I was around five or six, my mother had asked me a question that would more or less define her for the rest of her life. She asked me whether she should accept purdah or not. I was baffled and emphatically said no, it was close to a shout I didn’t realize though what it actually was that I was denying my mother. What had really bothered me was that I wouldn’t be able to recognize my mother when she would wear a ‘rida’ (a style of purdah worn by Dawoodi Bohras). She wouldn’t be the same. She wouldn’t look like my mother. I was baffled to hear my siblings’ encouragements to our mother to accept it. I felt betrayed that they could so easily let our mother change herself into almost a stranger. How dare they?! I cried that day and my mother soothed me and assured me that she will remain the same forever. She did not change in the ways that I thought she would, she still had the eyes that understood everything, the lips that always quirked knowingly when I was lying and she still had the voice that could make me sometimes feel like a princess and sometimes feel like an immature child. She most definitely was my mother and wearing a rida did not change it. What had changed was the perspective of the society that we lived in. 

Living in a certain community has its own pros and cons. I believe that a community that has more pros than cons is the community where one can grow and prosper spiritually, mentally and physically. Thus, my parents moved from their old neighborhood to Clifton. It has a community that has a mixture of views of men, women and children. Women especially had no qualms about wearing anything other than ridas, they roamed however they wished and there wasn’t anyone to raise a question. My mother had no qualms either but somehow, something changed within her that made her decide to wear the rida. My father had no involvement in her decision, in fact, she told my father one day that she will be wearing one from then onwards and my father was as stunned as I was. He was incredulous that this change will last, but it has been twenty years and my mother has worn a rida without fail. She changed only in her views of how to bring up her feisty daughters; she did not push us into doing things such as cooking or covering our heads in front of unknown men. She changed in her views of doing business with some men who looked at her with superiority and even though they appreciated her purdah, but they did not appreciate them working for/with her. After all, we live in a patriarchal society and conversing with a female who sits on the ‘masters’ chair and a male sitting on the less important chair on the opposite end, is somewhat incomprehensible. Her male workers having to listen to taking orders from a woman, is rather unacceptable to the male psyche of our society.     

I wish to walk in her shoes one day as well. The only time I wear a rida is during religious congregations in the masjid. Every time I adorn these traditional clothes, I feel safe and comfortable. The beautiful embroideries, the soft cotton and the colorful appeal of it bring forth a confidence that I don’t get from any other style of clothing. It is appreciated from not only Bohras, but also from people of other communities. What is even more appealing is the fact that my parents have not forced me to wear a rida. They themselves advised me to go slow, start from somewhere and eventually I’ll get the hang of it and will wear it all the time automatically. The most important reason however, is that it is a part of who I am. I cannot ignore a significant part of my identity and in the near future, I will fulfill this promise to myself.  

I had made this promise eight years ago and as some say that mothers are always right, so was mine. Something inside of me shifted, evolved into another stage of maturity perhaps. The factors I have mentioned later are not the essence of what had actually changed within me to finally accept purdah but they were parts of my reasons. The religious side of me believes that God had helped me cross the hurdle-full road. I believed the term ‘history repeats itself’ when I told my husband. As my father was stunned and incredulous when my mother told him about her purdah decision, so was my husband. We don’t have children yet, so I did not have the support of my children as my mother did (except one). He asked me a question though, why?    

The road to reaching the final destination was filled with obstacles. These obstacles were of the kinds that are always in one’s way when almost abiding by a decision made in the past. There were nails of fear stabbing my feet each time I took a step to wearing one of the ridas in my wardrobe to work, but my confidence would fade as soon as I would open my closet and see the dresses and styles I have worn since forever. There would be endless ditches of hesitation, not knowing when I would be clearly able to answer my mother’s questions about accepting purdah, what pricked me like needles on the way down these ditches, was when she would say that I’m even married now, it’s about time. My husband is not even aware about this indecision; he did not mind me wearing traditional clothes or the trendy styles appropriate for my age. I was as confused as to what was really stopping me from fulfilling a vow to myself.

This path though didn't just have obstacles, it also had slides and roller blades that I rode to lead myself nearer to my promise. One of them was that one day I had to take a cab on my way to work as my car had a punctured tire and my husband had already left for work. I stood by the embankment, hoping to find a taxi and reach work on time (which I didn’t). My home is in a secluded area and one has to walk all the way to the end of the lane, which is a main road to the commercialized area. As I waited for an empty cab to pass me by, a white car slowed down near me and a big burly man with a handle-bar moustache gestured me to sit in his car. I was shocked and disgusted, but impassively faced away from that man. He waited for a bit and drove off when it showed that I was not interested. I was shaking by the time I power walked back home and called my husband and sobbed the whole story to him. He immediately picked me up and consoled me on the way to my workplace, but something inside of me was stirring, an anxiety that my security was jeopardized. Another factor was the fashion obsession of the society I lived in. The moment I would bring home the clothes I had just gotten stitched, they would have been replaced by another trend already, not only was that frustrating but tiring. One-third of my time would be spent pouring over magazines to have know-how on the new clothing styles. My colleagues were ruthless when anyone would come to work dressed in some way differently than them. They were definitely shocked that one day I came to work in my rida.

Their gazes at the soft folds of my rida were filled with skepticism. I never gave an inclination to my spirituality or piousness and that was the exact intention they assumed would be my reason for it. One would sometimes relate traditional change to religious epiphany. They were wrong. It was between me and my conscience, but then some say that conscience is a gateway to communicating with God. Who knows?

My first day wearing the rida was a bit odd. The news of my ensemble spread fast in the office far and wide, all the way to the manager’s office. He came by around lunch and asked me to come to his office with my tea. I was a bit nervous. My mother had her own business and she could wear whatever she pleased. I worked at a publishing company, and had superiors to answer to. After we had conversed about the usual pleasantries, my manager changed the topic to my dress code and asked if it was permanent. The nervous butterflies in my stomach did not obstruct the confidence in my voice as I affirmed that the rida is permanent. He just nodded his head in approval (as if I had asked for his permission) and changed the topic to the upcoming book release. After a split second hesitation, I also went along with the change of subject. It wasn't the end of that but it got easier for my colleagues to get used to my dress code since my boss approved. It was the natural order of things in the company I worked in.

When it came to telling my friends, they were not as surprised as my colleagues were. That actually surprised me. Their reasoning was that they knew me better than I knew myself. A close friend told me that if I had never taken purdah, it wouldn’t have made sense for me. It was just who I was, and it suited me. I was pleased by their positivity but even if they had protested, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it except assent to the change. With the tough change at work, I immensely appreciated my friends’ supports.

Now ridas have become the wardrobe that I shuffle through for work and it also comes with its fashion dilemmas, but comparatively minimal to other dress codes. There are days when I do think of wearing something else for an occasion. However my mind wipes that inkling away as I know that even though I have the option of reverting back to the pre-rida days, I wouldn’t want to. I am happy with my choice, safe from eyes that may look in a certain inappropriate way and content with the fact that it has not inhibited the normal routine of my life.

EWS = Essay 2 = It is true...

This essay is completely fictional.

It is true that public speaking builds confidence, but it is also true that to be able to speak for what you believe when no one else does builds character.

There have been a number of public-speaking competitions that I took part in. The feeling I would get when I would be up on stage, delivering paragraph after paragraph of researched and prepared work, would be worth a million dollars. I would know that what I’m saying is true and I had reference of other scholars who have stated the same the thing to support my arguments. There was an inter-school debate competition that I worked day and night for. My topic was in favor of the government policies of our country. Every day I would practice my speech and modify it here and there, trying to make it perfect. The day of the competition, as I went up on stage and I looked around at my audience, I knew that they would fall under the spell I would create by my practiced lines and I was confident that I was one of the best speakers among the other candidates. I had felt great and a little foolish as well. I felt foolish because it seemed as if I was an actor, entertaining the audience. I would bring out emotions of encouragement, inspiration, etc. for our government, no matter that my actual feelings about it were the opposite. This event didn't do anything for my own personal beliefs, but just built my confidence in how to speak in front of an audience or public.  

Being able to speak in front of a large crowd is significant in connecting with people outside of one’s comfort zone. However, when one speaks for what they truly believe in when no one else does, builds one’s character and one not only achieves confidence, but also obtains a following. This is what my father taught me. I never really understood it until I went for the debate competition that I mentioned before. He said this not just to me, but to my siblings as well. None of us understood it until we all were given an opportunity to speak up for ourselves when no one else did. My brother had an opportunity like that. He was a freshman in university and was getting his bearings in his academics and social life. The transition from school to university takes its toll on everybody and my brother was in the same boat. He had his midterms and in one of the exams, my brother was accused of cheating. My brother said that he didn’t cheat, but his friends did not support him. They weren’t sure either. My brother was called in front of the disciplinary committee and he clearly stated that he didn’t cheat. The confidence he exuded at the time confused the committee, even though a faculty member was a witness to it and he brought an almost convincing story. My brother was not fazed. In the end the committee dropped the accusation against him. The truth was that a friend sitting behind my brother was cheating, and because he did not want to get caught, he blamed it on my brother.

Not only did my brother face a challenge with confidence, but he also believed in himself and was not deterred when an entire committee thought he was guilty of cheating. There have been similar circumstances in which many get beaten down for not being able to speak for what they believe, let it be something about themselves or about the government policies of our country. My advice to all is to speak up, before it’s too late. 

EWS = Essay1 = Once I was, Now I am...

This essay is completely fictional.

Once I was ignorant, I was in university when terrible news hit the gossip vineyard. A senior girl had been raped when she was on her way hone from a birthday party late at night. There was a girl companion with her and a car slammed into their car. Three men got out of the other car and pulled the senior girl out and took her away in their car. The victim barely survived. It was such horrific news and something like happening to somebody that walked the same hallways as I did, sat on the same patch of garden in our university as my friends and I did, brought hairs on the back of my neck on end. The next day, this news had not ceased to spread and the raped girl was clearly not going to be forgotten for a while. My life went on as usual though, I went to classes, submitted assignments, cried over horrible exams and enjoyed my time with my friends. What I did not realize was that this senior girl who had been raped had her whole life changed. She wouldn't think the same way, talk the same way, and even see things the same way as she did before her terrible fate.

However, after a few weeks, I saw the girl walk around on campus alone. I was with my friends, enjoying a laugh over a grotesque joke and my eyes had gone to a girl wandering alone. A friend had nudged me and whispered to me that it was the girl who had been raped. I gave my friend a knowing look and then we went back to talking about trivial things in our lives. So consumed were we in our own selves, I did not give a second thought to the girl that walked alone.

I saw the girl again. She was in one of the senior classes I had taken. She sat at the back and since I was late, there was an empty seat only beside her. I made my way there and sat down, already hoping that the class gets over. There was nothing wrong with her. She listened to the lecture and wrote down notes as the rest of the class. But there was something about her; I knew something very personal about her. Her ordeal was open to the public and yet she sat there as if she was still like one of us. As if she wasn’t raped. A boy in the class got on the professor’s nerve for some comment he made and he was ordered to leave the class. I jumped up immediately and took the departed boy’s seat, so uncomfortable was I. How ignorant was I about that girl’s own discomfort at being snubbed so easily by me.    

Now I am just like the senior girl, a rape victim. I was astonished to be in such a position. My family background, financial or political was so normal that one wouldn’t assume that the rape was because of that. I was adequate looking. I was not an exotic beauty or a delicate doll, I was like plain Jane, and so it wasn’t because some mad stalker just had to have me. I was not even friends with anybody influential, so that some psycho terrorist could use me as leverage and rape me but not kill me. I was as plain as the Punjab province. My face must have showed the question in my head. Why me? The perpetrator had whispered hoarsely in my ear, his breath so foul, I wanted to choke. The sweat on his forehead was dripping on to me. He grunted off of me and then he said that it was because I was a girl, and I was worthless.

A couple of years after my bachelor’s graduation, I had been driving my car over to the supermarket close to my home. I had just come back from a tough meeting after which I may or may not have been fired from my job. That’s how my boss makes everyone feel, every weekly meeting was a ‘fired or not fired?” one. I got a car park in front of the supermarket and I opened my door to get out of the car. Something slipped off of my lap; I realized that it was my phone that I have a habit of keeping on my lap. I bent down to retrieve it from under the car and suddenly I felt a prick at my back. I felt a voice extremely close to me, growl at me to get into the car. Icy fear trailed up my spine, I turned my face just a bit to see if I could ask anybody for help. There was no one. It was late evening, quickly getting dark. Whatever was held at my back went a bit deeper and I had no doubts that it was a gun when I heard the man unlock the safety belt. He urged me to get into the car or get shot in the head. I tried to control the shaking that was rapidly increasing, hoping desperately that somebody would sense my distress. There were cars driving by on the road, some parked far away from where I was, if I shouted for help, I was sure they could hear me. The question was that would they come over to help me? I had no choice but to get into the car again, with the man sitting behind me, his gun positioned very close to my head.

He gave me directions to the place I knew well. It was close to the beach and so secluded, you could hear the air causing the sand to swirl around. The man suddenly told me to stop in the middle of nowhere and he got out. He had his gun directed at me as he pulled me out with just one hand. Fighting was futile. If I had to fight, I would have shouted outside the supermarket, but I would be dead too. As I stood there, my knees were almost about to buckle under me. They actually buckled when he pulled the trigger but the bullet did not hit me, he had shot the fire in the air, to just to let me know that the gun was real. Then he ordered me to take off my clothes and after that, I blanked out everything else that happened later.

I survived especially because after the rape, the man threw my phone on the ground and drove my car away. I called my sister to get me. The horror had just begun and it has remained a part of me ever since. Oddly, I remembered that girl who had also gotten raped when I was in university. How offhanded I was about it. Only because she was just a stranger to me, I had no idea what her name was or where she lived or anything. All I knew was that she was also a girl and some deranged, psychopath had also told her that she was worthless and deserved to get raped. Now we both had something in common. I would probably be able to sit beside her now.

I quit my job afterwards as a columnist from a newspaper and became a humanitarian. I would visit women crisis centers and help out with women who were also victims of rape. However, I would always remember the girl who I didn’t help. I had actually turned away from her when I should have given a friendly smile at least. How could have been so ignorant, so unfriendly, so inhumane? I wish to God that no one goes through what the senior girl and I went through. Unfortunately though, it happens more often in my country than probably anywhere else. The rapes have increased enormously and don’t plan on decreasing yet. What does a girl have to do in this situation?

EWS = Parable = A story with an implicit moral

My First Childhood Memory

Any girl in the world who has a brother has been in some way, in a similar situation as me. I was quite young at the time but this memory has been profound in building my relationship with my brother. 

It was like any other day, I was in my parent's bedroom, playing with my toys. I should have known that it was too peaceful, but then my baby brain was really focused on this huge, blue-haired doll (which was technically my older sister's and I had kind of taken without her permission, and then taken it to our parent's bedroom so that she wouldn't find out). I did not see my brother walking in and opening my mother's make-up case. He really politely asked me for the doll and I felt so trustful towards him at the time that I gave it to him without a fuss.

I saw him take my mother's favorite red lipstick and color the doll's forehead red and then put the lipstick back into the case and leave, leaving the evidence of his mischief in my hands. I was still sitting at the same spot when I vaguely heard Mum rushing in and finding her favorite lipstick ruined. She saw me with the doll and well, the thrashing I got was harsh, or at least I think it was because I don't really remember it.

Now, the same brother is my confidante, my friend and I wouldn't be who I am without his guidance.   

EWS = Fable = A story with an explicit moral.

This Fable was the first graded fable I have ever written in my life. So here we go:

Orange and Apple

Orange: "Oh man! Please God, help me!!"

Apple: "What's wrong Orange?"

Orange: "I can't tell you man. I'm so in trouble, I don' know what to do!"

Apple: "Listen, I'm sure whatever the problem is, it is not that bad that it can't be solved."

Orange: "You won't understand Apple. It's not something that I'm proud of and my parents will skin me alive if they find out."

Apple: "Orange, we have known each other since we were seedlings. Don't you trust me? Please let me help you."

Orange: "Well...."

Apple: "G on, just say it."

Orange: "I'm addicted to heroin."

Apple: *Silence*

Orange: "Apple? See? I knew it. I knew that you would judge me. Forget I said anything."

Apple: "That's not it. I'm just shocked, a reflex reaction due to the enormity of the news. When did this happen, Orange?"

Orange: "I'm not quite sure, there were new additions in the family. these oranges had come all the way from Africa and we became quick friends. One day, we were hanging out and Orange-O brought out this needle and stuck it in himself. Suddenly everybody wanted it, but I had no interest. They offered it to me but I refused.  

Apple: "Then what happened?"

Orange: "I refused every single time until one day, just to get them off my back, I took the needle. That was the day of my ruin."

Apple: "Oh Orange, no wonder you've been looking so pale and sickly. I just thought it was because of the change in the season. Not to worry Orange, I'll help you. I will support you in all of this."

Orange: "Thanks Apple. You're the best."

After 30 days of rehab....

Apple: "Orange!!!! What are you doing?!?!"

Orange: "Just this once Apple. Really, I swear."

Apple: "You're lying to me! You took it yesterday too. My brother was told to keep an eye on you when I would be busy. Orange, please don't do this."

Orange: *Sigh*. You're right Apple. This was the last, I promise."

After 10 days of sobriety...

Apple: "Orange? Orange! Wake up! Orange!!!"

Orange: "I couldn't do it, Apple. I was in way too deep in my addiction. I can't handle life without drugs. Just this once."

Apple: "Orange, look at yourself, you're near death and you still want another dose. What happened to you?"

Orange: *Silence*

Apple: "Another life wasted on drugs. Goodbye, my friend."

Moral: Between a battle of peer pressure and self-confidence, self-confidence should always come out the winner.

English Writing Skills = Need I say More?

As I started my first semester at S University, I had a certain course called 'English Writing Skills'. This course was a compulsory course and one had to pass it to take any other writing related course. If one failed this course, one had to re-take it again the next semester. It seems a valid reason, but then it was quite a shock for certain people failing this course since they all found out this little tidbit in session # 14, the second last session of the whole course. Me though? I was sailing, no cruising through this course on a fluffy cloud, with hardly any turbulence.

I'm writing about this particular course because it was quite an eye-opening experience as I discovered my own way of writing. I didn't even know that I had a certain style until I read my essays aloud in class or somebody else read mine (some teaching techniques for teachers out there :p). It felt so odd reading what I wrote aloud, it felt like I was opening my own secret diary and revealing all my dirty secrets to strangers. Not that I wrote anything related to my secrets. I wrote about normal things, but on paper, they felt like another world. Yes, the professor would read my essays in order to grade them, but she was on a different mental level than my classmates and myself. Hence, she was serious about the term private and confidential.

Also having to keep a daily journal, oh please! I was most annoyed about it, I didn't want to keep a daily journal that the professor had read and judged. However, I learned in the end that she was Switzerland, she didn't mind what we wrote and it gave an opportunity for me to write my thoughts on paper and have somebody read it, but make no judgement about them. Totally neutral. In fact we did ask her in the end that how is it possible to not make some kind of opinion based on what we write in our diaries. She said that because what we wrote is not out of the ordinary, we wrote about things that happens to almost everybody. Well of course, I made sure I never wrote anything too deep or extraordinary, I mean somebody is reading it! Just here and there stuff, occasionally threw in a bit of deep stuff if there was literally nothing to write about.

The one negative about this course was that my writing was already good enough from the start, I knew that. Not that I'm bragging or anything, but that was the negative thing. How do I make myself better if I'm already good at it? I needed to be challenged in this course because for some reason it didn't settle with me that all my other course are so tough that I had to give them attention 24/7. This course would be left behind if I didn't make it challenging for myself. In other words, it is because this course is easy for me, I wouldn't know it but I would easily keep it my lowest priority and perhaps lose marks in 'em. Things that one gains easily is always always lost easily as well. I guess. So I challenged myself by writing one essay in a third-person perspective. That was such a fail. I wasn't able to bring out the emotions I wanted. It felt distant and cold. How did J.K.Rowling do it? Her books were so...observant and yet warm. How Khalid Hosseini do it? His book 'The Kite Runner' was in a third-person perspective too and yet they were never distant like mine, the characters were so compelling. To be a great writer, one must answer this question first: How?

As I do go on challenging myself, I know Failure is not done with me, but I know that right behind Failure, I see Success too, smiling and encouraging me. Hence in my next few posts, I will be posting the those essays I failed at and those that I succeeded at. Ciao.