My weekly column in the Nairobi Star was titled ‘Life, with a Pinch of Masala’. I loved it. It was quirky and it subtly allowed people to know that the content they were about to read was from a ‘muhindi’ point of view. I had the best time when I was focused on what next week’s column should be. When I go through my old columns now, I find myself mostly grinning. I may have made things seem funny, but having an awesome editor who understood your vision was always a fantastic bonus. I have had the honour and pleasure to work with some of the best names in the industry and I have learned so much from them – including some punctuation. I used to use exclamation marks the way Oprah used to give out gifts. Every sentence got one. Exclamation mark, that is!

One of my most memorable encounters with someone who read my column was while standing by the cheese counter at my local supermarket wondering what to abuse my lactose intolerance with when I suddenly heard someone gasp out, ‘MASALA! IS THAT YOU?!’ I burst out laughing, feeling quite validated, to be honest, thinking how pleased my Mum would be when I told her I got recognised. The gentleman enthusiastically came up to me and said he read my column every week thus confirming with me that it was not just my parents who read my column. He was actually quoting some hilarious one-liners from past columns as I stood there grinning goofily, nodding away, trying to recall when I had dropped these memorable quotes. Ah! My day was made. I was ready to address the nation with my newfound fandom.

Nowadays, staring at the cursor blink on and off is what I have to deal with. I’m not sure if this lack of motivation is also known as writer’s block. I find myself struggling to recall words so I have to stop typing or writing, work out in my head what the synonym might be then forge ahead. Like now. Ideally, I would have stopped typing after the last sentence and found it really funny that I stopped at the point of mentioning writer’s block but no! I now have the need to break down my apparent ‘jokes’ and then look around to see if anyone ‘got it’. These times of instant gratification. Where are we headed? I used to have to wait until my article was published in the dailies, wait to be bumped into a few weeks down the road and then get any feedback. Eventually an email address was added at the end of my published article and someone somewhere would write to me and I’d be over the moon. Fan mail, what!

Now I don’t write enough for myself. How many times have I told myself to write those books that I have always wanted to? I used to dream of going for a skiing trip sans the skiing to write my book. There’s a back story. I went skiing once, tried it, watched little kids whizz by me as I struggled to slide down the gentle beginners slopes, fell face down, sideways, backwards while attempting to learn then finally gave up and decided to enjoy the apres ski life. Nursing a glass of decadent red wine, smelling of Eau de Deep Heat, I decided then and there that the slopes of the Alps were the perfect setting to write my book. Unfortunately, that was the last time I had a winter holiday in the Alps. Notably, it was also the first.

The writing of the book became somewhat of a pipe dream as other things have been taking precedence. Far more important things keep popping up but that’s how life works, doesn’t it? Something or the other will keep happening, and it will always be something far more important and then those dreams you had that you have been meaning to fulfill start taking a back seat and suddenly, the auditorium of life events is a full house and your dreams have got the furthest seats in the house – sometimes even asked to leave to make way for others. I refuse to let my dreams collect dust in the nosebleed section of life’s auditorium.

I don’t want this to happen to me. I want to write that book. In fact, as I write this, I know that I have ideas for three books in my head but until I don’t put those wheels in motion, they will remain as thoughts at the back of my mind. Apres ski or not, I’m determined to start off on that first book that I really want to write.

Yet, the nagging doubt lingers – will anyone even want to read it? Oh, the writer’s plight!