Tag: Writing

icewalla part 01

The pavement was so warm, even now. The dust that layered it was as fine as dust could ever be, ground down by the daily milling of a million peoples and cows, dogs, gods and double-decker buses. The dust that covered all the streets and roads and lanes, the dust that she had kissed an hour ago, sandwiched in non-animal tested, artificial peach flavouring. The dust that silted the bays post-monsoon, the dust that washed away yet still remained in the cracks of the road, like relatives you barely know. The dust was her shoe, the palanquin-bearers of her Temple. Later, at home, she would almost regret washing it away.

~~Icewalla~~
Part 01

“I’m ready,” Chaitanya said, and knelt down beside the bathtub. “Here we go.”

Oh.

home down now 85 bus maybe 83 didn’t see and all the lights so yellow they don’t look it when the crowds are there Doordarshan tower is so tall I want to fly from there and oh my stop my stop I hate heels stick in the grooves of the bus bus lurches at corners sends me reeling head spins am I drunk no no didn’t drink Gautam had funny smelling cigarette though and maybe of my stop my stop stop bus stop and don’t move until I get down.

Ah.

Down the street and to the right, in the narrow gaze of the streetlights, Meera walked home. The lane was deserted; indeed, even the main road where she alighted from the bus was empty save for the usual sandwich vendor with his sun-like kerosene lamp, the sleeping rag-forms of vagrants, the litter of cats come out to hunt and quarrel. The last buses had free reign of the roads that were usually choked with cars and people, and little hatchbacks packed with adrenaline crazed college students used the emptiness to scream their high-pitched anthems of remixed Hindi songs, whoops, hoots; all under the whine of a Maruti 800 that, for a moment, imagined it was a Porsche. This was the Prabhadevi neighbourhood that greeted Meera each night for the past three weeks.

She was used to the late hours by now. Fashion Week was coming to a close, thank goodness, and after that there would be the three to four week lull as designers and columnists and society folk took stock, compared bills (rarely dresses), complained about others stealing their work, their ideas, their models, their dreams. Simultaneously, they would trumpet the arrival of Indian Fashion at the Global Gates while also declaring it dead without heir. It happened every year, and Meera was sick of it every year, but it was a good job, being a model. The parties were fun, the pay was just about as much as a desk job for a 22 year old B.Sc Microbiology grad, and she was halfway famous.

Yes, famous. A man asked her for her autograph today, after the show, backstage. Not a very attractive man, but he asked — and did so politely — so she gave him one and sealed it with a peach-lipstick kiss on the paper. The man walked away still trying to discern the scribble on the paper. He bumped into a supermodel — someone really famous — and, realising his luck, dropped Meera’s autograph without a thought and hunted in his pocket for blank paper.

After the two parted Meera retrieved her autograph, marked now with the cigarette-grey of four boot-prints. Meera kissed her own peach impression, tasting the spent end of an Adidas and the sweat-perfume of herself, the noxious blue of ballpoint ink. She pocketed the paper and went home alone, again.

Halfway Famous Meera staggered sideways as one of her shoe heels snapped; she caught hold of a lamp-post and propped herself up next to it. In the jaundiced light of the lamp she looked down at the offending footwear. It was lost in the shadow of her hair, all moussed up to a mushroom-shaped cone and highlighted with streaks of yellow, red and silver. Meera was glad the bus wasn’t too crowded; fashion show audiences she could handle — ordinary people on a bus staring at her, she could not. She dangled her left foot out into the gaze of the lamplight; the heel still hung to the rest of the gaudy plastic and gold stilletto by a single glob of snot-coloured adhesive.

“‘Oh Meera,’” she muttered as she reached down for it, “‘do take the shoes with you, darling. They’re yours! My gift, pretty-poo…’”

“Really Gautam? You mean it?” Meera bent down for the other shoe and yanked the strap off with one angry tug. “But your shoes are so expensive! I’ve been to your boutique…”

“‘No, doll, I insist. Keep it. Now you take it or I’ll have it delivered to your house! Now go, darling!’” Meera held both shoes up.

“Delivered,” said Meera, and flung the shoes straight up at the sky, barely missing the streetlight. “Right. Very good, Gautam.” She waited for the shoes to fall back down to earth. She waited a full minute. Tip-toeing barefoot out of the circle of light, she looked around, and saw nothing. “Stuck in a tree,” Meera mused, and walked on, smiling about the possibility of some bird coming across it and shitting repeatedly in it — finally a good use for one of Gautam’s creations.

The pavement was so warm, even now. The dust that layered it was as fine as dust could ever be, ground down by the daily milling of a million peoples and cows, dogs, gods and double-decker buses. The dust that covered all the streets and roads and lanes, the dust that she had kissed an hour ago, sandwiched in non-animal tested, artificial peach flavouring. The dust that silted the bays post-monsoon, the dust that washed away yet still remained in the cracks of the road, like relatives you barely know. The dust was her shoe, the palanquin-bearers of her Temple. Later, at home, she would almost regret washing it away.

The first of the dust dislodged itself on the coir welcome mat of her tiny, single bedroom apartment; Meera trudged wearily in to the house that was her home, but surely a home was more than a place you never felt welcome, which she often did. Her Abode, then, for the word seemed to have a legal finality and chicness that afforded it the luxury of being used for something dry and unemotional.

Meera headed straight for the bathroom after flinging her bag on the sofa. Much of the dust mixed with a little water that often collected near the bathroom door, and perfect print of Meera’s left foot formed there, right down to the delicate striations. This print would be there even the next day, and after that too; there were no prints leading out.

She bent down to plug up the bathtub, the one thing in the apartment she truly enjoyed. A month ago she had invested in a small heater, and so thankfully even at this hour she could indulge herself in a hot, relaxing bath. Meera usually dozed off in there. The prospect of warm, liquid dreams crept on her; she opened the taps fully and let the steam rise in the tiny bathroom.

By now her daily allowance for civil conduct had exhausted, so with a quick ‘Fuck it’ she literally tore open her navy-blue shirt, little white buttons scattering everywhere, and savagely tossed it in the corner, quickly followed by the rest of her clothes. Arms stretched wide in the steam-soaked bathroom she stood, tired and triumphant, aching from head to toe and in the lower back of her soul, Venus come home from the war to sex the private treasures of her bath house.

She washed her feet with unconscious reluctance in the bidet, and the moussed-hair woman carefully lowered herself into the sultry embrace of the water.

Too hot, or not hot enough? By now she didn’t care, but only knew that her bones were aching for the water’s numbing touch, and soon they were answered. Meera sighed and sighed, and before long was asleep.

It was the cold that woke her.

Cold water. Not just lukewarm, but fridge cold. Ice cold. And getting colder? The thought drifted on the corner of her mind, and when she realised she wasn’t dreaming, Meera sat up in the bath with a start.

“C-Cold,” she chattered. This never happend before. The air around her was warm, and yet the bath was icy. She was so shocked she didn’t move. When she did try to move a glassy, cracking sound broke the silence of the room. The surface of the bath was icing over!

Before she could say another word, before she get out of the bath, before she could even gasp, the water itself pulled her in and pinned her down. Meera’s head dipped under the stinging cold water; her legs flailed wildly and struck against the tiled bathroom walls. Her left foot fractured on impact. The pain shot through her body and she was screaming even before her face broke the water’s surface.

And then she saw it. At the end of the bath, between her legs, someone — some thing — was rising out of the water–no! The water was rising, crystallizing into lazuline blue facets, the facets into a spiked dome, the dome when risen crowning a–my god! A head. A hideous, spindly head made entirely of ice. Water still tricked down its masculine features; the eyes, like beady mint candies, its teeth like rows of diamonds — both were visible through its clear ice-skin. The ice-man had by now manifested himself fully, squatting at the end of the tub, towering over Meera who just stared.

“My darling,” the ice-thing said. “I have come at last.” It lunged forward, smothering her, its icy, coarse hands cupping her face, its slush-like tongue licking her cheek. Meera screamed and struggled, but the creature just held her down in the tub. “So happy to see me,” it breathed in its glassy voice, “I am so touched. I wrote a poem for you, you know. I sent it to Algernon, in Liverpool — I sent it as soon as I wrote it. He’s going to publish it, my poem… Do you know what it was about? It was about you, my darkie love. Come, my queen, my raani — let us make love like the good days.”

Meera could barely feel the frigid penetration. Her mind had gone into shock, and it was detaching itself from all conscious thought.

Halfway Famous Meera, nude, warm, triumphant, peach in her lips and dust bearing her Temple, skipped away down a warm road that led to a place not far, not close.

Chaitanya watched her go, but though she passed right by him she didn’t notice him. The young man looked down at the tub, where the ice demon thrust away at the lifeless, pale body, her head lolling from side to side, her eyes fixed on nothingness. Chaitanya looked, and felt the shoe heel snap, the dust on his feet, the itch of where the bra had dug in and how it felt to throw it in the corner, and he shuddered as he felt the ice phallus tear away at him. The demon came with an inhuman yell, and every inch of it shattered. The rain of ice fell on Meera’s dead, violated corpse like earth on a tomb.

But earth is warm.

Chaitanya knelt down beside the bathtub. This time all he heard was silence. The vision faded, and he was back there the next afternoon, his companions standing nervously beside him.

Exhausted, he rolled back and lay against the lavatory, gasping for breath. These invasive trips took a lot out of him usually, but this time was the worst. Chandrika quickly knelt bedise him and helped him stay straight; without her support Chaitanya had neither the energy nor the balance to stay upright.

“Bhuza…smm…aah…” he said, shivering.

“It’s not usually this bad,” Chandrika said to Chanakya, who was standing at the door to the bathroom. “Help me,” she scolded him.

The man raced to her side, propping Chaitanya up. “What do you think is wrong with him, Auntie?” Chanakya asked innocently.

“Don’t call me Auntie,” Chandrika said, “you’re older than me, you know. In body, at least. And I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

“Sorry,” Chanakya whispered.

“Chaitanya!” the young woman shouted at him, and then slapped him.

“Wha…?”

Chandrika slapped him again. No effect.

“Let me try,” said Chanakya, and with all too much enthusiasm he socked Chaitanya square on the jaw, which sent him to the floor in a heap.

“What the hell did you do that for?!” The two of them stood and looked at Chaitanya, sprawled awkwardly on the bathroom floor.

“Well, at least he stopped shivering,” Chanakya said. Chandrika didn’t answer.

To Be Continued
© Copyright 2003, Vishal K. Bharadwaj, All Rights Reserved

int. bedroom – computer nook – day

PlantScreenwriting is fun. It’s also frustrating as hell, and I haven’t quite learned to do it at a stretch like regular fiction writing. Right now Samir and I average around five pages of text (equivalent to about 5 minutes of screen-time in the page-a-minute format) before we have to get off the chair and just walk around the house for 5 minutes.

The screenwriting we’re doing now involves many firsts. Number One, it’s the first time we’re screenwriting. One day we said “Okay” and after the plot was outlined we started.

It scares the living crap out of you. No matter how many books you read on the subject nothing can quite prepare you for your first hour of screen-writing. Add in the fact that we had never, ever written in this format before — not even a ten second animation script — and the prospect of writing even a 25 minute episode makes you question your sanity quite a bit. Writing a 2 hour movie is a nightmare.

SlippersThe format of screenwriting is pretty tried and tested at this point, and since most books outline the system preferred by American movie studios, there’s a lengthy list of guidelines to the format. Our first draft was slavish to this format, but we’ve deviated a bit, both because of the subject matter involved as well as the fact that *looks around* we’re not American.

There is a tendency in your first draft to be very, very dry with your descriptions, especially if you know that the screenplay is intended for someone else (i.e you aren’t producing it yourself). Style consciously needs to be kept in check (so pretty much everything I learned writing Savant went out the window). This is supposed to be easier to pitch to a studio, so that the director can read it and put in the style himself. Writer style Bad, Director style Good, or something. Since we aren’t really pitching this through the traditional American studio system (hell, if they read the script in America I’ll probably be put on the Most Wanted Terrorist list) we decided to loosen up a little and get some style in. Hopefully said style and mood will percolate somewhat to the eventual director. With stuff I know I’ll be doing myself I tend to be much more descriptive and, paradoxically, much more abstract, since I can tell myself things in two words that I’d need whole paragraphs to explain properly. Terms like “Ping Moment,” “Amit Reaction” and “Duu Kyaa? Expression” are common.

I have to thank Warren Ellis for this change. Some time ago he put a link up to extracts from his comic-book scripts, and I was surprised at how, compared to them, the saleable American Movie Script seemed like a stripped carcass. Comic scripts are more intimate, more hands on, more conversational. I love them. And so the way we script changed somewhat. It’s still a far cry from the level of detail and mood in a comic script, but close enough. Don’t want to scare everyone away.

One of the first errors made in screenwriting is the over-use of the Present Continuous Tense. People are always waiting and drinking and walking while talking and shooting and sitting. I usually end up going through the script again and changing — damn, there I am doing it again. I go through the script and change things to make them more succinct.

Vishal types away on the keyboard. He leans back and rubs the pain in his upper back. A grimace stretches across his face and all the way down his spine. The weight of the world shifts. He continues typing.

Just because it’s a screenplay doesn’t mean you can get away with Talking Head syndrome, though. It may be easy to say, “Oh, the actors will take care of it,” but do you really want some sweaty man in a track-suit gesturing with his hands when you distinctly imagined the character keeping his palms flat by his side, neck rocking left and right intermittently?

ThresholdFirsts, Number Two; this is the first time I’m collaborating with Samir on writing. He doesn’t like to type. Neither do I, but I do okay. He writes good dialogue, I’m all thumbs. He’s much more evil and funny than I am.

Number three; this is the first time we’re writing Hindi. It’s more fun than you would believe. We’re still writing in the English language (we’re more comfortable in it and work faster, besides, working with Hindi fonts on a computer is quite literally like learning the language anew), but dialogue is in Hindi. Dialogue was and is my biggest worry. I can hack decent English dialogue, but Hindi is another matter entirely (this is the reason all Hindi movies have separate “Screenplay” and “Dialogue” credits). Right now the dialogue is pretty good. It’s realistic enough, funny enough, and it gets the job done without sounding like some kind of 17th century Urdu court transcript.

This is one of the main problems with Hindi movies, especially old ones. Since most of the dialogue writers were and are Urdu lyric writers or urdu writers of some sort, their dialogues would suddenly go from (the English equivalent of) “Dude! Her ass is totally hot!” to “Mine Sir hath brought a mountain — heavy with stones and grasses verdant — of Shame(!) upon mine family, and verily shall I avenge them and their unborn sons with swift and painful work of hand and blade!”

The above is not an exaggeration. Things like that still happen (see the climax of Kuch Naa Kaho). Us being about as proficient in Urdu as any other two Good Kaafir Hindu boys, well, our dialogue is okay. It’s contemporary without being to hip (i.e. we haven’t degenerated to starting and ending every other line with “yaar” like some films *cough*Darna Mana Hai*cough*), and it isn’t flowery. Sometimes we even manage a good dialogue joke.

This is also the first time, ever, that I’m not writing speculative fiction. No magic, no warp drives. Despite this the scripts are getting more surreal by the page, but that is only because Samir and my own weirdness multiply by a factor or 34.8 when brought together. There’s some strange shit happening here, folks. I didn’t even think I was capable of such stuff.

Even if it wasn’t a comedy, even if it wasn’t in Hindi, it would be as strange. You could tell me to write a Pakistani Family Drama and I would make it strange… okay, so if I wrote a Pakistani Family Drama it would not be a Pakistani Family Drama because nothing — nothing — in the universe could make me write something as depressing as most Pakistani Family Dramas. If I write a Pakistani Family Drama half the Pakistani audience will die of spontaneous joy. The rest will call for a fatwa.

And no, I’m not giving the script away. Nor am I going to give the title away. I’ll just say that it involves quite a few B.E.S.T. Buses.

Vishal

lightbulbs

wad of paperIdeas have ruined me. They have taken more out of me than seems humanly possible, made me less human, made me less whole. I love ideas. Ideas are my opiate. Ask me about my life and I’d sooner give you a rough chart of what ideas I was having at any given point in time. I can’t remember the names of most of my friends (did I even have friends? They seem like a fiction now) or teachers — hell, I can’t even remember the faces of my few enemies.

When I was sixteen I wanted to become a graphic designer. I had it all figured out in my head, right down to the way I’d introduce myself to people when I was said Graphic Designer. “Ooh,” they would say, “you’re that Graphic Designer.”

I’m nearly 21 and now I’m a lousy Graphic Designer.

When I was seventeen I wanted to be a novelist. I was going to be the best damn novelist in history. I had it all figured out in my head, down to the dedication on each and every novel, how the covers would look, where the ISBN would be placed. They were great ideas.

I have yet to finish a manuscript, let alone publish a novel.

When I was twelve I really wanted to own a restaurant. A big restaurant. I didn’t know what kind of food we served, but I wanted a big restaurant.

Then I wanted a small restaurant. This was for a few days.

Then I wanted the big restaurant again. I had it all figured out in my head, right down to the way the menu looked and what all the staff would wear, how the people would react to eating the self-designed food and how I’d sit in the corner grinning with my mother, co-owner.

I can cook a grand total of five things including tea. I always over-salt. My mother is dead.

Sometimes my memories seem to be less firm than the fantasies and ideas that swirled around them. I barely remember the trip to Mangalore when I was nine. I do remember in exact detail the point-and-click adventure game I planned to make when I got back home. I had it all figured out in my head, right down to the tagline on the box. What? No, I don’t remember the tagline, but I do remember that I had the idea figured out. Memory’s shot to hell.

Bah, who needs memories? I have ideas.

I have so many ideas. I have two notepads full of ideas. I have a three page long list of titles of ideas that I haven’t written down yet; movies and novels and TV shows. I have them all figured out in my head. I could narrate most of them to you verbatim. I don’t remember anything they taught me in school. I don’t.

When I try to gather up my memories I feel like a young man. When I gather up my ideas, all of them, all the stages and the reworkings and reimaginings of older ones, I feel old.

Old.

Oh, but the ideas are just great; they’re your future, you never get the same idea twice, and if you lose it it’s gone forever. That idea can make your life…

…I can barely remember a life beyond my ideas, beyond the holding and nurturing of them, beyond the power fantasies of a time when those ideas would come to be.

Someday.

You know when Someday is? It’s the day right after you die. Your ideas die with you. This, believe me, is a good thing. I don’t want my ideas hanging around after I’m gone. They’re perfectly good ideas, mind you, but they’re ideas. They’re like cancers. Perfectly efficient, marvellous things when you look at them on their own, but put them in a body and you know what happens. I have Idea Cancer. Hey, that’s a great idea for a…

idiot. stop.

Ideas, they say, are Free. The fuckers couldn’t be more right. Ideas are so free they should be given away.

Here’s an idea: A man walks into a diner and sneezes onto the classic jukebox. The jukebox, coated with his germs and transdimensional energies develops intelligence, then sets out on a world-wide quest to find the defunct manufacturers who created it. Somewhere along the way it realises that it is, in fact, not seeking it’s manufacturer, but in reality is searching for the family of the man whose snot it was that triggered its ascent to life, his memories and thoughts being transferred to it. The man is now dead. His family is still there, the children — The Children! — need a father, the wife needs a husband. The jukebox moves in. He plays tunes for a living by the side of the road.

A lonely jukebox that plays in the middle of a highway just to feed its human family.

…pretty good Idea, huh? It’s yours. Take it. Do what you want with it, make some money off it; I don’t care, I have a million more ideas where that came from, and each one is potentially as good.

When you suffer, as I do, from Idea Cancer, there are only two options.

Option 1:

You get a Job. A job lets you live a life, make some money and still have your Idea Cancer; you can have as many ideas as you can fit into your testicles, and you can shape them in as elaborate a fashion as you see fit, because you have a job and you hate your boss and if only — If Only! — you could quit your job then all your great ideas would be unleashed upon the world.

Someday.

Option 2:

Don’t get a job. Don’t settle for the easy way out with the security of getting up every day and going someplace where someone else tells you exactly what to do and how to do it. Don’t settle for the fact that you can marry the slightly agreeable person of opposite gender who works two cubicles from you just because, well, you’re getting old — thirty — and you need someone to be with you, to take care of you.

Take care of yourself you idiot.

Do something. For once in your life do something. Pick one idea, any idea, you have a million of them and they’re all gold, right? Pick one and do it. There you go.

Well, now, how do you do it?

I have no idea.

This is going to be fun.

Vishal

nonano

Well, I didn’t finish NaNoWriMo again. Guess third time’s not charmed for me :confused:. Come to think of it, that particular bit of urban lore has never applied to me. Something to do with being born two days after All Fool’s Day, I’ll wager.

It’s surprising how little I regret not finishing the NaNo ‘contest’; if anything I’m slightly more happy that now I don’t have the deadline to deal with. I only think of NaNo as a competition for about two days of the year; November 1 and November 31. At all times in between and outside I don’t consider it, and once the period has passed the projects cease to be ‘nanovels’ and just end up being novels.

Polendron is a novel now. I should finish it. :rolleyes:

I will admit to liking Polendron the novel more than Polendron the character, right now. I just know too little about the character to make a fair judgement. For the curious, no, I won’t even be giving sneak peeks until it’s done, at which point the spell-checked first draft will be made available in some form.

Polendron… it’s not named after the character, you know? It’s named after a type of flowering plant that exists in that universe; one of the characters is named after those flowers. I think the flowers have some significance to the plot. Or they could just be flowers.

What you won’t be aware of if you read just that bit I posted on Restart Twice, is that Polendron is my first full attempt at having a multiple POV. Right now it’s heading in a 2001: A Space Odyssey style, without distinct long chapters, just scenes that go on for as long as they need to with the characters they need to show. I have three protagonists, maybe four since one of the characters has a superior/colleague who is always around.

I have three ‘bits’ written so far (can’t call them chapters), for about 3,500 words. Section one is your regular third person perspective, sort of like a detached first person, nothing fancy. Reading section two again I sense a bit of neutrality in the narrative bias; neither Lawris nor Arkay have ‘control’ of the narration, because I really haven’t gone into their thoughts there. I didn’t need to at that point, just introduce them, throw a plot cookie, set up the tempestuous Arkay/Captain relationship and leave.

Section three is, so far, my favourite. I make no secret of the fact that I don’t particularly like the typical spunky girl protagonist, which is why I haven’t warmed to Polendron yet. Section three has a woman.

Gods, I don’t even know her name yet (I wonder if I can get away with calling her Madam or Professor for the entire novel… might work). I’m not too fond of the other two characters in this section, but then again you’re not supposed to like Bulasara or his wife, so there shall be no tears shed when it comes time for their exit from the story.

The Professor, on the other hand, I like. Though she is one of the three protagonists, I am still toying with the notion that she will be the only protagonist who will never have a narrative from her perspective, always remaining the observed and never the observer, Sherlock Holmes style (Section three takes place from Bulasara’s POV). It might work, since she is such a mysterious character.

I like her (did I say that already?); broad-shouldered, tall woman woith long raven hair who runs around naked and spouts philosophy about astrophysics and the meaning of life — what’s not to like, huh?

Speaking of likeable women, I really should finish Tale of a Thousand Savants one of these days. That thing was full of likeable women. Too bad once it’s done I don’t plan on showing it to anyone.

Exactly three people shout: WHAAAAT??!!!

Yes, that’s right, once Tale is done I’m not letting it out. It’s too soon to show that. It would be like releasing Return of the King first. There are traps to be laid, plot twists to be stewed in things like First Days, The Cleaving of Xaria, Undecided at the Moment and a few others. And I haven’t even told any of you about Sixteen Permutations, or Tale‘s follow up, Black Spots.

Polendron, however, comes first. It’s not part of any bigger series (not yet, anyway) so I don’t have the added pressure of trying to get it right. Don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it by the end of the year. Samir and I are busy working on something that I cannot talk about. I may not be able to talk about it for at least another year to a year and a half.

No, this has nothing to do with the movie project.

Exactly three people shout: WHAT MOVIE PROJECT??

Next time, next time. :hehe:

Vishal

and we’re off!

212 words down on Polendron, my NaNo2003 novel. Dunno what it is, dunno where it’s headed; seems a bit like an organic SF/Fantasy novel right now, but who knows. I’m not pushing for a plot; she’s just showing me where to go. Here’s what I have so far:

~~

Brown, muddy sweat trickled down the cumbel’s side. Plendron hopped down from her saddle with the leather scoop and ran the faded blue tool up the cumbel’s back, collecting the sticky, sweet-smelling sudor. the bowl at the end of the scoop was full; the blue leather sagged and bobbed under the weight of the fluid as she hopped through the knee-high grass back to her waltzer.

The grass was unusually strong this season, so when she stepped on some it bent but didn’t snap, and instead behaved as a trampoline would; she jumped into the saddle of the waltzer without any effort.

Polendron fed the cumbel’s sweat into the waltzer’s fuel tank. The engines behind her hummed with the taste of new fuel. She grabbed hold of the yoke and turned the vehicle about, waving to the cumbel as she swung around. The cumbel shot her a wizened sideways glance and continued to chew on the strong grass.

Three hundred millilitres of a cumbel’s sweat was enough for even a small wagon to run for days; in the zippier single-saddle waltzer it was a month’s worth of fuel even if she ran the veldt all day and all night.

~~

More as it comes.

V

rerecurrerencece

Sigh… here I am again. Third year, third NaNoWriMo. This time, I just might finish it.

As I look back at the previous two NaNos I’m struck by how, firstly, NaNo 2001 was such a roller coaster. The message-boards (back then as a sequential Yahoo! Club), the initial burst of speed, the final three day rush to 35K… actually coming up with a plot and character set that I like even after all this time.

But I knew (i.e. I had a nagging feeling in my gut) back then that Tale of a Thousand Savants was not ready to be finished, and hence I stopped at the end of the first third, just before the Eule section. This has turned out to be true, even if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Parts of Savant’s world have been revealed to me now that were unknown before 2001. Indeed, the full scope of what I was trying to attempt in Tale only hit me when NaNo 2k2 started up and I began writing Undecided at the Moment.

I don’t know quite how, but I had in both NaNos ended up choosing to write two very important parts of the Savant canon. Pre NaNo 2002 The major parts of the Savant time-line were, of course, First Days and The Cleaving of Xaria, with some nebulous thought about what happened far, far, far later in a project (since scrapped) that was nick-named Cleaving 2. Tale was just a pulpy, action-packed affair that would introduce a few characters, kill them off and keep the world pretty-much the same. Stuff would be destroyed, but it would be rebuilt, good as new.

I didn’t count on Park coming up.

Of all the characters I have written about in the Savant mythology, there are only two I would love to — no, am dying to — meet.

Savant and Xaria?

Pre NaNo 2001, yes, that would have been my answer. But the second Park showed up in a chapter entitled Dinner by Bug-Light, entirely unexpectedly, just as someone to fill the chairs, name, shape and X-Ray glasses decided in 2 whole seconds — she had me.

Let you in on a secret: Park was going to die, originally. At the end of the Eule segment she was going to die very well, blood spattering on Savant’s coat, blood dripping off Savant’s friction-free coat just as easily. Like Oded Fehr in Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy, Park was snatched from literary death to live life anew, and perhaps a sequel. I’m happy for that.

It was during December that I thought long and hard about just what Park would do in a post-Eule setup; would I just not kill her and keep her in the background, perhaps in a coma? By mid-January I had restructured the plot in ways that not just made sense, but felt right. This was Tale as it was meant to be, this was the plot waiting to find itself.

But not quite. For that I would have to wait another year.

It came soon; before I knew it, November 2002 was upon me, my mother was dead, I was waiting for my graphic design diploma, and writing seemed the farthest thing from my mind. Still, what the hell, I might as well try, right?

I signed up for the newly refurbished NaNo website and fiddled with my author profile. When I came to the field marked Working Title of Novel I immediately put in “Undecided at the moment”.

The words stared back at me. Undecided at the moment…

Undecided at the Moment!

I had my new novel.

There were parts of Savant I hadn’t touched upon. Parts that I had, quite literally, stayed the hell clear of. Undecided was my first dive into those mercurial waters, and though I never got farther than 3,000 words, I’m glad I went there.

If Tale was (initially) a pulpy action explosion, Undecided was a meditation; a tale of death, of sorrow, of an old man would couldn’t die trying to decide his role in the grand drama. It was exactly the mood I was in after my mother died three months before.

It was a tale of renewal.

As the plot of Undecided swirled through my mind on November 1st, 2002, I learned, finally, after eight long years him being with me, what happened to Savant at 400. More importantly, I understood why.

And understanding that, like Park a year before it, completely threw me.

I stopped writing — I had to. Here were all these new things I was being told, these new experiences, this ecstacy of the years 400 that I had never looked at. Never seen from Savant’s perspective. Never, even when I had seen everything else from his eyes.

At a certain level, I felt betrayed. Why had this been kept from me? Why now, when I needed to write Savant the most. In Sanskrit there is a proverb and loosely translated, it says: “When the pupil is ready the teacher will present himself.” It had taken eight years for this teacher to present himself.

By mid-November, 2002, I had begun the rather painful task of reorganising the story entirely from Savant’s perspective. In doing so the end of Tale presented itself. I had the whole plot some months before, but the one crucial aspect that was — both in the novel and to Savant himself — amiss had been formed. The cycle that started at the beginning of The Cleaving of Xaria had resolved itself, 3225 years later in Savant’s life. The events of 400 to 500 were that much more important now; the battle-lines drawn during First Days finally made sense; the passion in Cleaving was finally real. Savant was finally Savant.

What happens in the novel after Tale, I don’t know. I’m not meant to know yet.

Same goes for this year’s NaNovel. I don’t think it’ll be a Savant novel; it doesn’t feel like one. I had a few plots floating around for the past few weeks, but it doesn’t feel like one of those either.

Oh well.

The teacher will present himself.

Vishal

blogmonster

Amit has a blog. Quake in alternating spasms of joy and horror. It is titled, appropriately, Flow of Thought, and oh babu, does it live up to its name.

Read at your own risk. It’s pretty good. He sounds like my Uncle on drugs… but then, that’s pretty much what Amit is.

V

words to live by

Your stories are like your children — sometimes you just have to let the bastards go.

V

irshaad ad infinitum, babe

When you’re depressed, you come up with Urdu shayari. Not something that could be called a kavitaa, for those require some actual thought. Still, below is the one single time I have sunk to the depths of intellectual depravity required of all Urdu shayars extraordinaire.

And even then I come up with this.

Damn it.

~

Champakali se teen ladke karte thé pyaar
Ek ne kiya chupke se pyaar
Doosre ne kiya pyaar ka izhaar
Lekin woh teesre ke saath chali gayi
kyunki uske paas tha Ferrari car.

V

oh lolly lolly lolly

Today has been the nillest of nil days. God, I hate writing blogs on days where it’s just “Oh, I didn’t do anything. Maybe Tomorrow.” I should just resort to this.

Some good did come from today. By early evening we had to go out with one of Dad’s friends who’s come over from Oman. So, this being Dubai, we headed for the malls.

Mercato was the first stop; now that it’s a few months old and has been through its first sandstorm and shower it looks a bit of a mess (not that I was ever impressed by it). The fake painted cracks and wear are now accompanies by muddy lines dried and trickled down the outside walls; when you have real dirt and artificial dirt competing for your attention on an ersatz Venetian facade in a sandy desert city, well…

It was as crowded with decked out posers as it could be; Munna and I were struck by the utter lack of any woman remotely approaching attractive. To think that I thought up a whole short film at Mercato.

Speaking of which, while Munna and I drifted off from the rest he remarked, “For a mall we don’t even like, we sure come here often.”

“I just came here to scout locations,” I said, then launched into one of my impromptu narrations of a film, in this case, a short which I had first conceived at one corner of the very same mall a few months ago.

I found that just above the main entrance on the second floor the bridge overlooks an alcove with a bench that would be much better suited to the film than the rather dull corner bench where the real-life girl that inspired it sat last November.

Munna liked the story after I narrated it to him on the bridge, and promptly solved my one main problem with the whole thing: the dialogue. I have good characters, and a good enough plot for a 10 minute film, but I hadn’t thought of any snappy dialogue yet, no killer lines. I can, and usually do think up a good line or two within a week of thinking up a project; like the whole scene that starts off Benchmark and has led to one of the funnest character and team building experiences I’ve had.

But I Digress. Samir’s suggestion? Make it silent.

Bulbs the size and number of a Las Vegas Casino facade went off in my brain. Brilliant!

Ambient sounds, people just walking around; there will be dialogue, but since most (well, all) of the necessary dialogue takes place inside shops we’d just keep the camera outside looking in. It solves the problem of having two main Indian characters talking without switching between English and Hindi (my initial idea) and makes the whole thing so universal I could kiss it.

Inadvertently, it also solves the one snag I imagined with the fourth character, that of the neurotic sales-lady (who, if I ever get the money to make this thing, I would like Spyder to play). See, she keeps popping up in every single mall and store our protags visit; in the talkie version she’d just say that she needed the extra cash, but this seems a bit flimsy in Dubai where you can legally only work for one company; having her pop around in everything from Burger King to Trussardi would be stretching it).

But now it works! In a silent I can be as surreal as I want without having to explain things. It would be one of those ‘cool’ things that people remember about the film.

Samir went on to come up with a host of kooky ideas (all of which I took good note of). It’s a frantic, energetic thing as it is; to do some of the stuff Samir suggested would be a but alienating, methinks.

So, Mercato done with, we headed for City Centre, where at some point in the snails-pace journey through IKEA I started telling Samir about another movie again.

(Come to think of it, I first told Munna that plot in the car on the way to Mercato the same night I saw the real-life girl who inspired the other short. Huh.)

I went further in depth this time, talking more about the characters and what I want to say rather than the base plot, which is what he heard the last time. We both agree that more than anything — good actors, good direction, good editing — it’s a type of story that needs to be written very very well. If I put my mind to it I can do it, I hope. Sometimes I wonder why I should, because I would like to see it as a motion picture (photographic) and I’m not about to jump into film-making in a non-animated capacity anytime soon. Oh well, it was good to get it out and prove to myself that it is indeed a yarn worth telling.

At one point Dad even listened in to my fervent narration and asked, “Which picture are you talking about again?” Makes me feel nice.

And that’s all I did today. Other than laugh at the fact that the Picture of President Musharraf on the Greenpeace deck of cards is not that of Mush, but one of his underlings.

V

Achievements:
Nil.

Also-Rans:
Had epiphanies about short films
Samir and I thought up some new experimental film-making techniques that I’d love to use sometime; will have to come up with a suitable plot for those.
Convinced myself that ‘MBR’ as a story is not complete crap, and that its protag is not a completely unrealistic character.

Entertainment
None, would you believe.

Brain Screensaver(s) of the Day:
Lollypop Girl (both original real-life cute short Arabian girl as well as film-version tall, dark, toffee-skinned goddess)
Shaarda, protag, MBR! Played by you know who.

restructuring

Well, I’m a class one gadhaa.

Today I was looking through old Savant stuff and came across a file called Bender.rtf.

“Hmm,” I said, “what’s this? Don’t ever remember….”

Double-click.

Blank Stare.

“Oh…”

Bender featured a character called Sansaarika. Pretty much the same Sansaarika who is in that other thing called, well, Sansaarika, only little older, a lot wiser, and technically a world-class sorceress with an unbelievably hot body.

Er, come to think of it, that other Sansaarika has an unbelievably hot body too.

So, problem: Two Sansaarikas. Two nearly exactly alike Sansaarikas as far as character traits go. The first one, I believe, had been assigned the physical characteristics of a woman I once saw in a Cerelac ad (god, she was cute), while the latter, well, I have a few ideas…

I spent exactly two seconds thinking about it before I went, “Well, that older one will just have to go; the other has my whole dreams of a movie career resting on her pretty imaginary shoulders, and I had all but forgotten about the Cerelac Girl Variant (But MY GOD, SHE WAS CUTE) …Fine? Fine.”

Well… except until I reached the Savant Timeline file, specifically the point after Cleaving of Xaria which reads:

Bent ( 550-600)
Short Story Collection. Start off with Bender and work your way from there. Apparently the spell can only be reversed when three comets, sixteen moons, forty-three planets, three stars and a dozen nebulae are in alliance… and nobody knows when or where that will happen again. So Savant searches for 50 years. Stories range from downright hilarious to deathly serious. LOTS OF LESBIAN JOKES. Enjoy, my future self.

Okay… so now I have two very similar characters who are named the same who are both pivotal in their own way; one is the main character of the best movie idea I ever had, and the other is partly responsible for 50 years worth of Savant stories, and is part of the official canon which I don’t want to change, because now that my memory is refreshed I remember why I loved that character (Old Sansaarika) in the first place.

The easy way out, I know, is to just claim alternate universe flukes and call it a day, but I don’t want to do that. I suppose the characters are different enough now to just change the first one’s name.

That one is problem number two. So right now one of the most beautiful women to ever inhabit my mind is nameless. Well, unless you count “Character based on that woman in the circa 2000-or-so Arabian Cerelac Commercial (MY GOD SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL)” It’s a start, I guess.

And that’s all I did today. Sometimes I surprise even myself.

V

Achievements:
Nil.

Also-Rans:
Found continuity errors and hopefully put myself on a course to repair them. Unresolved as of now.

Entertainment
Star Trek, TOS, Court Martial — Just when you thought perky female lawyers in ridiculously short skirts started with Ally McBeal, good ol’ Trek reminds you that it had them simultaneously in 1967 and Star Date 2973.8.

Brain Screensaver of the Day:
Cerelac Commercial Woman (MY GOD SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL)

back from obscurity

So I finally remembered that I do have a blog. Editorializing in my head was getting to be so much fun again that it kinda had me there.

So, Birthday recap:

On the whole had fun. For the first time in years I actually got presents from people who aren’t my family (and, in both cases, thank god for that). The presents I couldn’t choose (which were probably — I shudder to think — hand-picked) were three shirts.

Unfortunately these were trendy shirts. Indian Fashion Movie Star Trendy shirts. I swear, that black one, I’ve never displayed more cleavage than in that. The tan one is nearly a short sleeve kurta but the proportions are all wrong; I look like some kind of peasant from 12th century England, and hell, even back then I wouldn’t look good in it. The white one is the same as the black, only, you know, white. And it itches less.

Needless to say I haven’t worn any of them out of the house. I may be a freak, but I’m a freak with taste.

The second present-giver let me choose, and so we ended up at the Book Corner in City Centre. You wouldn’t expect the best bookstore in Dubai to be dab-smack-center in the most crowded mall in the city. It’s a shame that in five years it’s still the best book store, shelf-space wise. Our raddi-waala opposite Ranade Road has a larger selection of books (and frankly, a more interesting selection), but it was just nice to be around books in this town. And in one corner at the bottom of the children’s section, I found my birthday present: a Watchmen TPB. I was chided for buying ‘comic books’ but I didn’t care, because, well, WATCHMEN!!!!

Now when I actually get some money to burn you can expect me to buy up as much Warren Ellis stuff as I can manage. DC comics, please restock now.

Dinner was nice that day, at the Chinese place down the road; highlight was the Honey Chili Prawn (which present-giver, who was footing the bill, didn’t particularly like). Not as good as its chicken variant (prawns just don’t absorb sauces the same way). All in all a fun Birthday, and a nice way to ring in a new decade of me.

And I did not get a single kiss!!! Yahoo!!!!

Professional:
Let’s see… since then I finished Dolly’s flash portfolio. Not completely satisfied with it, but certainly more than any of my student work.

Personal:
Wrote an outline for Sansaarika that didn’t sound completely stupid. God, I would so like that movie to be made. I will probably have to settle for a graphic novel — movies are not the easiest of things to make properly — but I can imagine it so well it hurts to know that I’m not waking up tomorrow to head to the set and inform people on a megaphone to, “Ignore Kareena Kapoor, she’s supposed to be invisible in this shot.”

Maybe I’m just deluding myself. Outline was decent, though.

Ooh, and I finally got an opening!! Sansaarika had been floundering for a while because of its lack of a solid opening. The one that’s there now is a little surreal and not very exciting, but I love it anyway, and I unconsciously re-worked it in such a way that it fits in perfectly with the second-to-final scene. I’m still unsure that the final scene is necessary; audiences may not be too big on villain redemption, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to keep it in there. That’s what editing is for.

Sansaarika as it stands now would be a 3-4 hour film, which is alright for a Hindi film, but on the long side if it was made in English. I don’t ever want to make it in English. I would be able to stand a graphic novel version in English, but not a movie.

Meanwhile I’ve reworked Jaadoo into a very appealing, if Hollywood-ish plot. Gone is the thinly-veiled Video Girl Ai in a Salwaar romantic comedy, replaced by a pretty straightforward but nonetheless fun Urban Fantasy detective/action/comedy thing. And I can use the same opening without changing a bit!! It’s a very character-centric tale, like all my work, but still a bit of an American Movie. Scratch that; it’s still an Indian film plot, it’s just more like a western graphic novel than anything I’ve seen succeed in India.

But then, I’ve never made my films, so you never know, people may actually like them.

Yeah, right.

I’ve been coming up with a few good saleable plots. By saleable I mean that they’re English 90-120 minute stuff that doesn’t require songs, and are very America-centric. I come up with these because if I do write them one day I will try to sell them to US studios; they pay the most, I assume.

The plots themselves are pretty tame: Legal Dramas, Romantic Comedies, Disaster type things which are character-centric. Only one of them is remotely Indian, and that one is more Merchant Ivory than Yash Raj.

I have also been coming up with more mad and crazy Indian film ideas that have no chance of attaining commercial success, but I love them like my kids anyway. The latest? Something called Beat-em-Up Babumoshai.

Yes. I know.

I was looking through my Grand Plan file and sometimes it makes me feel a bit useless. All those plans and things to do, and here I am still fighting to sit down at the keyboard or the desk or the pad and do something towards achieving at least some of it.

Samir was looking at it the other day and we both agreed that if I stop thinking up new ideas right now and only flesh out the titles that are in my plans folder I’ll have a remarkably prolific lifetime career. I mean, 40 novels, 30 films in at least two languages, ten comic series and a few dozen miscellaneous bits is a good career, right?

I’m penis-waving. Ignore.

Currently writing a Savant story. I’m saying ‘Damnit all to hell’ and just writing from the heart; this one deals with his first visit to Xaus Vassa during the Nepaari days. It’s thick with dialogue that doesn’t go anywhere, and its plot is iffy, but I just like writing Savant so much that it doesn’t matter. It’s a backstory piece, throwing Savant and company into a light that they have never been publicly seen in before. I know about the sordid history, but what few readers I have don’t; they still think these people just got along from day one and all was hunky-dory. I’m interested in seeing the responses, if any, to this gargantuan story (I predict, at this rate, to finish around 10K words). One day I may be able to just transplant the story directly into First Days, the book in which it would logically take place. That would be good.

V

Achievements:
Finished Dolly’s Portfolio. My first professional assignment ever. Whee.

Also-Rans:
Sansaarika outline.
Jaadoo reworking.
3000 words of rambling Savant.
Lots of miscellaneous good ideas.

Entertainment
Star Trek, TOS, Various Eps
Perfect Blue – if you haven’t seen this anime, you must do so at the earliest
X2: X-Men United – not perfect, but still a damn fine movie, unlike some other second parts *cough*TwoTowers*cough*