The Plot Thickens . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! The crux of my assassination plot (prequel, Keshu’s story) was: Keshu should be caught, Damu should escape; Keshu’s connection to Madhavrao or anyone else hadto remain a mystery.

The year was 1912. Just how could an escape be arranged? While there were cars in India since 1901, I imagined they were few and far between—and so most definitely anyone escaping in a car would be very easy to identify.

There was no help to be had from studying actual assassination attempts made by the revolutionaries. Most of the times (as it seemed to me then) not only did they kill the wrong person they had no escape plan and were caught red-handed. Well, that was not going to happen in my plot.

To add to this, Pune was a British military camp—likely to be crawling with soldiers in uniform. Out the gun would come and shoot Keshu and Damu at the first inkling of an assassination. And my novel would die a premature death.

But I was not going to give up Pune. No!

After cudgeling my brains for a while, I got it! The Empress Gardens, a botanical park, was the perfect venue:

· Adjacent to the hilly forest area

· A botanical Society function was not likely to be attended by military personnel.

I studied the map of Pune very carefully and charted out an escape route for Damu on horseback. It was all very workable. I was jubilant.

It was when I got to the police investigation that I spotted some weak links in the plot. At this point I walked the tricky tight-rope. I had to:

· make the plot fool-proof

· show a police investigation that met only dead-ends

· and yet the British should be able to present somecase.

I love murder mysteries and crime shows. The knowledge that has seeped in from these came very handy. I thoroughly enjoyed working it all out—and with success! It did make me appreciate why so many actual revolutionary assassinations went haywire. They didn’t have my advantage of being able to go back and make changes!

It was a very tough decision to delete this whole story from Burning for Freedom. But I had to face facts. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary to the plot of my novel. If I was a famous author, I might have got away with 600 pages and more. But as an unknown author . . . . So I dropped the axe.

Only the thought that I can release a prequel put the smile back on my face.

Toodle-oo.

Anurupa

To be Keshu or not to be Keshu …?

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! I am back with the trials and tribulations of Keshu’s background.

I was tripping along nicely with my writing, when I came to a screeching halt—I wasn’t kidding when I said the moments of ‘horror’ were a daily occurrence! Eek! I realized, Keshu’s name had to change …! My plot depended on it. He was going to use a false identity which would, of course, have to be his identity for the rest of the story.

Why had this not struck me before?

It was inconceivable to me to change Keshu’s name at this point. He had become an entity.

I believe, I sank my head in my hands and sobbed—and sobbed. Then, I girded my loins and bent my mind to the task.

All was not lost. If I could find a name for which ‘Keshu’ could be a nickname, I could still ride clear. But that was easier said than done. For two days I pondered over it. The parameters were restrictive:

· Chitpavan Brahmin name

· 1900 era

· With ‘Keshu’ as a contraction.

Believe me when I tell you, I came up with not one name.

There was only oneperson who could solve my problem—my mother, Dr. Indrayani Sawkar, a most amazing personality (I should really have taken the problem to her right away and saved myself heartache and headache).

Immediately, I used my ‘phone-a-friend’ lifeline.

The next day, my dilemma was solved. My mother not only had a name for me—Pulakeshi—she also had given me the historical background for it …!

Phew! Now Keshu could remain ‘Keshu’ …! I tacked on a ‘raj’ and made Keshu’s new name ‘Pulakeshiraj.’

Those days whenever I thought of Keshu, a picture of Milind Soman, actor and model—of whom I was an avid fan in my young days—would come to mind. So ‘Soman’ a Chitpavan Brahmin last name was the obvious choice.

Voila! Pulakeshiraj Soman, Keshu’s new identity was born.

And it wasn’t long before I was tripping on my next hurdle—the assassination plot.

Pip-pip!

Anurupa

My Keshu

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Keshu, my fictional hero, has an unusual, even unexpected, background. I had to traverse quite a meandering path to evolve it.

I had determined that my fictional hero had to be from Cochin in the Malabar area (for how else was I going to write about the Moplah riots). I picked Pune as the city where he would become a revolutionary. Since I loved Pune, I felt I could write comfortably on it. This was also my opportunity to record some of the fond memories of my childhood for posterity, and that is exactly what I have done in the prequel. Chingi, the cat, is one of them.

My fictional hero’s mother had to be a widow, for I wanted to write about the plight of widows in India too. I also wanted his parents to have had an inter-caste marriage (but still be Brahmins, for I didn’t want to get tangled up in a complex love story for them). This way I could give him ties to two places very disconnected from each other which too was essential for my plot.

Chitpavan Brahmin caste was an almost natural choice for Mohini with her Pune background, and one I was very familiar with. The father, I decided, would be a Nayar. I was aware that Nayar’s came from the Malabar area. I called my hero Keshavan; the name is a South Indian one, I believe.

Keshu, as I called him, became alive in my eyes even before I started to write. (Wo)manfully, I jumped into the writing foray, deciding to research as I went along. Originally, my novel was to contain Keshu’s story too (now a prequel) so I started with that.

I struggled through the prologue and was ready to venture forward when something niggled at the back of my mind—had I done enough research on the Nayar community?

No. I had just brushed the surface, perhaps. I had made a pact with myself: if even the shadow of a doubt crossed my mind on any aspect, sentence, or even word in my novel, I would check it out from all angles.

So I went back to Google and realized that the Nayars were Kshatriyas, not Brahmins, and a matriarchal society to boot; something quite, quite alien to me. Horrors! What was I to do now? Keshu’s background was critical to the novel.

After some hectic research I discovered that the Gaud Saraswat Brahmins (GSB) had settled in Cochin centuries ago. I went down on my bended knees and thanked God (this was the first instance of Divine Intervention). This I could handle, my father being from the same caste. I even studied the photograph of my grandparents to get the feel of the 1913 era. The nickname “Keshu” was by this time cast in stone for me, so I just removed the ‘an’ from his name and made him “Keshav” to turn it into a GSB name (for his last name I went through several gyrations for many months before I settled on Wadkar). Now I carried on writing swimmingly.

And then came another niggle.

Was Cochin the correct place for the Moplah riots to occur? Was it…? Back to Google again! To my horror (once more) it most certainly was not! It was a Princely State. I poured over the map of the Malabar area for cities where the Moplah riots took place. And after going dizzy I came up with a place—something unpronounceable from ‘M.’ Every two nights I would jerk awake in horror and switch the name of Keshu’s hometown from the “M something” to Calicut and then back again. This mental seesaw was harrowing, to say the least. I felt very much like the hamster running furiously in his wheel and getting nowhere.

Other questions whirled in my mind too: How was Keshu going to survive (in 1921) in a place utterly devastated by riots? What was I going to do about his being a GSB, now that he could not be from Cochin? What, what, what…?

After going from pillar to post in my mind, I called a halt to it by making some ‘executive’ decisions.

Keshu would come from a small (fictional) village on the outskirts of Calicut. The name ‘Pongur’ just popped in my mind and I liked it.
An offshoot of the Moplah riots would take place in Pongur.
Keshu would continue to be a GSB.

The readers would just have to forgive the liberty I took of transplanting some of the GSB community from Cochin to Calicut!

Phew! Now Keshu’s background was settled.

Or was it?

More on that day after tomorrow. For tomorrow’s post is going to be an Independence Day special.

Toodle-oo!

And The Dream Was Born . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

The day has finally arrived. I have climbed the Mount Everest, metaphorically speaking, and have taken the first step on my next climb—up Mount K2 (marketing and publicity). My novel Burning for Freedom is now—yoo-hoo!!—available!

Notice the double punctuation. It is strictly forbidden (along with using too much of italics), a no-no-no-no, by the Gods of Grammar and Punctuation rules. But I love them; they seem to express so much. Just this once, to celebrate the publishing of my novel, so to speak, I thought I would indulge myself. Throughout the writing/editing process I had my eyes peeled on the laptop screen lest a beloved double-punctuation typed itself unbeknownst to me. It was agonizing, I can tell you.

With that, it occurred to me that I could kick off my first post with some of the comic (though at the time I believe I could have cried) moments of my first venture into writing.

It is really impossible to put in words the extent to which I was moved by Savarkar: his life-story; his unconditional love for his motherland, Hindustan; his amazing character; his unswerving dedication in following the path of Duty. The injustice heaped upon him in his lifetime, and continuing till today was insupportable. I was a raging mass of emotions at this abomination; I could have screamed like a banshee, ranted and raved—but that would have served no purpose.

Instead, I woke up one morning with the firm resolve to write, publish, and publicize a novel channelizing all what I felt—and knew to be the truth—in it. I refused to acknowledge the difficulty, the impossibility, the improbability of it. Any mountain that blocked my path was going to be razed to the ground, for sure. I was going to do it, that’s it!

The next morning, I had my plot ready. And with that two other things happened simultaneously: A new Avatar—one quite like the Queen of Jhansi charging fearlessly on, sword slashing—took over my body and the Quivering Jelly that was within me followed recklessly willy-nilly.

To add to the complications—in addition to the chains of the Gods of Punctuation that were choking me—I threw chains of restrictions around my feet: all incidents that would make up the story would be real life ones. I don’t believe I quite realized at the time what a challenge that would be! I also needed a fictional character who would be devoted to Savarkar—who would essentially be me—and would carry the story forward. This character, of necessity, would have to be male. “But … but … how? … Can I …? I am a woman …!” spluttered the Quivering Jelly. Could I really write from the point of view of a young boy and a forty-five plus man? It seemed preposterous. “Forward march! Hup 1-2-3!” cried the new Avatar, relentless. And on I marched, without a backward glance.

This was the first of the Moments of Realization that crashed upon me several times throughout the writing of the novel.

The next one followed almost immediately. The perfect entry for Savarkar in my novel would be when he rescued my fictional hero from molestation (a true incident in Savarkar’s life) in the Cellular Jail. I can tell you I was one big “ULP!” Just how was I going to write a molestation scene? And a gay molestation at that …! I didn’t know—I only knew I would do it, somehow. There wasn’t any choice. Even the Quivering Jelly knew better than to voice any protests. I would write what was the best thing for my novel, even if it was the most difficult scene in the world.

But I have to confess, it is the only scene in the entire novel that I have written without any research whatsoever. I even did a lot of research on how to behead someone and what happens to the body afterward for Mohini’s death scene (readers will be happy to know that not much is available on this topic.) But this scene—no.

This is how I began the climb of my Mount Everest. Establishing the background of my fictional character came next —more in the second post!

Toodle-oo.