Golf. Uniform. Lima. Zulu. Alpha. India. Bravo.

My birth threw my parents into a fit of ecstasy. They were not thinking much and ended up naming me Gul Zaib. For the past nineteen years no one has understood my name on the first go or spelt it right. You may now understand why I chose to title this introduction with phonetic alphabets.The height of cosmic humour is people thinking Gul Zaib is a Pathan male.

For eleven years, The Mama Parsi Girls’ Secondary School was my second home. It was a school where breaking rules was considered a sin. A decade of grueling discipline saw me as one of the strictest council members in my senior year. I believe it was my exceptionally lame sense of humour and a friendly disposition that countered the strictness in me.

Two years of A Levels at St. Pats were not only fuelled with fun but politics as well. Socialising was not a normal element of school life. Having too many friends was considered abnormal and the only way to maintain a clean slate was by being non-existent. Friends who would stab you in the front were surely absent but extras who would yap behind your back were plenty. Thus it came to me as no surprise when my Deputy expressed her intense distaste for me in a text message intended only for her friend’s eyes. I was taken aback though when she mistakenly sent that particular message to me instead. Who said life isn’t funny?

I won’t go as dramatic as to state that writing and Literature are my passion. I am awfully fond of the two. I got As in both O and A Level Literature – academic achievements I am extremely proud of. My writing has a timeline and I shall gladly brag about it in later blog posts.

I don’t know how much of an introduction this was but it was not easy for me. Why can’t we just throw in our CVs? (No offense, Miss Shah! I merely find talking about myself a bit difficult.)