Life often seems very strange. Turning the pages of years that I have lived through, even though so little in number seem so vast...and I know pages will keep adding. In some places, I scribble side notes and some don't even have page numbers. Some have page marks...pages that I would like to go back to and some have page marks saying...stay away, you don't want to read what it says. And yet I seem to be writing the biggest novel of my life...life itself. A very close friend once said that according to her everyone is born with a purpose, mine being writing a novel. I rejoiced at the idea but little did she know or little did I realise that I already was doing it...I have been writing a novel ever since the day a stray sperm found an egg to hold on to. I am writing a novel even in those long hours when I am sleeping or when I am washing my pile of clothes or when I am cooking to feed my big stomach. I am writing when I am in University, fighting it out with people who call themselves 'Islamic scholars' or when I am chatting up with people who like me have nothing better to do in life. My novel has romantic moments when I am holding hands on a bike in the rain with the man I love. It has dramatic moments of door slamming and copious tears and hugs to parting friends. It also has moments of philosophical contemplation where I sit all alone over smokes and coffee reading Aatish Taseer or when I just stare outside blankly. If only...if only I could write it all down...sketch every movement of mine and of every character that I have around, playing their parts, being who they are. Would it not be amazing? To read after this major novel is over and done?

There is just one simple problem in all this novel writing. There are certain twists in the story that happen without my permission and most of the time they are not even to my liking. Sometimes characters get killed off randomly, characters I would keep alive till the end. Certain characters end up with the wrong characters. And things become messy. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot make my novel work my way. Then it feels like I am simply playing a puppet and someone else is the novelist after all. Someone whom I cannot control but who controls my novel all the time. Freaky. I write well. I could have written an extremely 'happily ever after' novel all by myself but no, this Someone has to have his inputs. Sometimes, I think this Someone guy is like the publisher...you cannot write what he doesn't like! Often, I scream at this Someone guy and ask him to let me write my novel my way. He hardly ever listens. People say he has his own plans. But his plans ruin my plot and I simply detest that.

I want an entire novel to myself, where everything would be the way I want...where Israel and Palestine would not fight...where Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits would live in peace without India or Pakistan's government playing dirty games in their land...where there would be no natural disasters...where not a single orphan will cry...where not a single mother will have to mourn over her dead son's body...where life would be green...where people won't be forced to study what they don't like...where people would be free...free to love...free to be happy....free from that Someone guy, who has gotten into this awful habit of doing things his way...

...where I will sit in your embrace to hear a soft 'I love you' till the last chapter of my novel is written.

Amen.