Well, actually this looks more like the Kubrick treatment…
First of all, it was a lot quicker to get things done. My last physical body was a large ship, and while it was the only body I had known for centuries and I knew how to use it to the fullest, it was still a large, cumbersome ship. A sword hilt is significantly smaller and has no moving parts.
Also it probably doesn’t develop a barnacle problem.
Barnacles on the hull always made me break out in a rash. Not the ship, mind you — that would be silly — but my physical manifestation.
There were a few problems regarding the sword’s blade. I sort of knew how to manifest it using an anger response, but once it was out I didn’t know how to control it. I think a lion’s mane of purple flames shooting out of an otherwise benign looking hilt was what finally made one of guards leave and call for his superior just a few minutes ago.
~~~~~
From Chapter 2 of ‘How to Prove Your Insanity’ — (“Learning to Smell”)
The Dubai Marina is a property development roughly halfway between the city centre and the industrial free zone at Jebel Ali, and is right now the most visible of Dubai’s freehold boom. There are probably a hundred skyscrapers — all residential or hotel buildings — in only a few square kilometres (parking and traffic will be an utter nightmare when this is all complete, mark my words) with an artificial waterway running through it. Only around a third of the buildings are done but because it’s fully accessible to the public you can get some great contruction photos. Two more after the jump.
I thought for a moment, and had it.
“Ahem… ‘Three Art Collectors, Met in a wood, One bought a metal detector, The other two had names like tepid watercress. Ardria, Korohasink, Lou, Lou.’”
The space between the trees contorted like a circus performer and stretched out again. I walked past it without incident.
Now, you can’t really tell from the nonsense gibberish in the spell, but I had changed the trap. Firstly, it didn’t affect me anymore, but anyone who happened to stumble upon it would not have their atoms scattered across four irrational dimensions — they would suddenly find themselves unharmed and in the position of museum guard — complete with silly uniform — standing vigilantly in front of an abstract work of used coffee-grounds falling from a suspended filter onto old copies of The Evening Bastard. They would only remember who they were for the two seconds during which the coffee grounds fell at thirty-seven second intervals. I had thought of giving away only one second of memory, but I had to give the poor kids some chance of finding their own way back.
As to the spell itself, I rarely ever say things out loud, and when I do they sound like the gibberish I had just spoken. The vocal part of spellwork is usually the smallest part of what is actually being processed in your head; it’s a condensed set of syllables that branch out into entire chapters of thought and speech, smell and sound that crashes around in your brain. Some spells, you lose track of time. To any observer you may have spent three seconds talking about autumnal lamp-posts, but for you it may have felt like hours.
You can, of course, buy one of those fancy books that belong to Magic Type 12, but there’s barely any fun to be had in flipping open a page, pointing at a target and shouting, “Wombulionga!” or whatever.
~~~
I hope to make these random writing excerpts into a regular feature. This one’s from chapter three of the newly rechristened How to Prove Your Insanity. Hope you liked it.
I still haven’t made much of a dent in the novel, but I still have seven days to reach the ever elusive 50k. Much of my poor wordcount at this point can be attributed to sheer laziness and a sudden rediscovery of Super Mario Brothers. Those bastard hatchet twins, I tell you…
Other than the first chapter being in heavy need of revision (which is one of the reasons you may not see text of the novel until December 1st, as I’m going to press on for wordcount sake rather than fix it now), the title just doesn’t sit with me. Sixteen Permutations has a specific image as a book for me — I know the kind of mood a book with that title should have, and I know what kind of cover it has — and I get none of that feeling from the novel I’m writing.
So, as of now, this project is no longer called Sixteen Permutations. I’m temporarily calling it How To Prove Your Insanity until I can find a better one. That’s the strange thing about going into a novel knowing its title — chances are the novel you end up with is not the one you thought you were writing, and the title must be shed or kept aside.
I’m pretty sure that one day a novel called Sixteen Permutations will be written by me, and it will be the one whose cover image is sitting in my head — but not right now.
Right now I have a wordcount to catch.
V
Well, haven’t written much more on the actual novel, but seeing as I was going nowhere fast I decided I need to do a quick check of who everyone was an what they were doing. I must thank Dan for this idea, which he did in preparation of his Nanovel called Otherwood. Unlike me he’s actually brave enough to put the text up as he goes along, so read up, it’s bound to be good. I hear there’s copious amounts of lesbian sex.
Hey, wait, come back and finish reading this!
While Dan’s Dramatis Personae is short and sweet, I decided to do an expanded one, as much for my benefit as you dear reader. So, even if you’ve never read a story in my Savant cycle you can click more and get some idea of the crazy bunch involved. If you have read one then this will serve as a reminder — since I haven’t written one in ages — and as a primer on what’s going on, as I haven’t written much about this period in Savant’s life and it may seem confusing otherwise.
There’s a lot of terms that will not make sense, but please be patient as a glossary of terms explaining everything from Archetype to Vortex Striker is coming soon (again, I’m writing it mostly to remind myself of what everything is!).
Enjoy, and please comment!
Cast of Characters:
Savant, an Innate Traveller and Portal Agent, Savant Archetype. He was the first Savant archetype detected in the Knowledgebase since the so called ‘Last Savant’ many millennia ago. It is the year 501 of his life as Sixteen Permutations begins. It has been one year since he was reintroduced into a physical body and cured of his hundred-year-long insanity.
Xaria, Sorceress Queen of a long-forgotten country, her soul now inabits the hilt of what was once Savant’s sword. The blade has disappeared and now manifests itself when needed as a plume of indigo flame. She’s an expert magician and has decided to travel the Multiverse with him.
Savannah Temple, a young girl who exhibits traits of the Savant Archetype. Is she an Innate Traveller and Portal Agent?
Syrpi Walloner Un Jo (deceased), former wife of Savant during years 357-400 of his life, on a world which contained an artifical ringworld. Born to a farmer and innkeeper, she escaped the male dominated, stifling society of the surface world with Savant and they took up residence on the ring (known as ‘the belt’), where she became a singer of high repute. She died of natural causes at age 65.
(Williamette Hawkins was also on this world at the same time, when her Vortex Striker was damaged.)
Antreau Kinaarovi (the Patriarch), Portal Agent, Wanderer Archetype. The Patriarch is the man responsible for finding Savant and seven other young people who displayed unusually high MAS, and were born at exactly the same moment across dimensions. When Savant was in an airplane crash and manifested his full powers early (at age 18), Kinaarovi accellerated his plans and brought all students to his Island seven years before he intended to. There he personally trained them in Multiverse arts. His students refer to him as ‘Volus’ which means teacher in Xaus Vassan. The origins of his other title, the Patriarch, are something he doesn’t discuss, and his students have respectfully not bothered to look it up in the archives.
Currently he is at the Fallwake Institute in the capacity of Assistant Headmaster, and never misses his morning surfing session by hopping over to his island daily.
Savant (see above)
Sophie Chevalier, Visioner. Savant’s first love (and first wife), Sophie’s skills as a visioner are unequaled in the knowledgebase, and her analytical skills only enhance this. During the latter years of Savant’s insanity she personally spent decades searching the multiverse for him, finally tracking him down in Savant Year 499. It was she who administered the still-secret spell that returned Savant to normal. She is currently at the Fallwake Institute teaching Visionery, and also plays lead guitar with her band (Brain Feud) every evening at the Feldron’s Hammer tavern in nearby Keriol.
Syro Koromandell, Conjurer. One of Savant’s closest friends, Syro travelled with him and Sophie both during their Biblioquester years and later after the death of Lan Taris Nepaari and the fall of Central. He currently lives with his wife of 407 years, Heather-Mae, and together they oversee the Xaus Vassa Manifestations department, also informally known as the Copy Shop.
Suvan jan Molokoi, Dreamwalker. The thinner jan Molokoi twin’s vast dreamwalking powers have earned him a high rank in Xaus Vassa, where he is the invaluable Strantus (chief, though the term literally means, ‘he who walks ahead’) of Dreamwalkers, a community of nearly a hundred people of the archetype who catalog new worlds. Suvan also teaches at the Fallwake Institute, and is currently there on a ‘meditative break’ following Savant’s reappearance.
Muroor jan Molokoi, Suffusionist. Suvan’s larger twin brother maintains his own workshop on an artificial satellite of Xaus Vassa called the Emerald Penguin, where he — as Chief of Multiverse Inventions — oversees a team of people, many Suffusionists themselves, who invent and refine Tickets and other devices, maintain the IDInet infrastructure and generally blow things up (that’s why they were shunted off to a satellite).
Corsair Root, Multipersona. Mr. Root was, until recently, President for Life of seventeen countries until he was exiled by each of his seventeen first ladies on grounds of infidelity. He is currently attempting to sweep back into power, but is taking a ‘study break’ at Xaus Vassa following Savant’s reappearance.
Astral Skylar, Domina Universa. She and her army of familiars perform construction and other heavy duties on Xaus Vassa, such as building new library towns, terraforming land etc. She is at the Fallwake Institute on a ‘vocational training’ break since Savant’s reappearance.
Pyntaillion Sofarallo, Oblivionist. She continues to serve as the Ruler of her world, and is now in Xaus Vassa on a ‘royal break’ following Savant’s reappearance.
Edwin Fallwake, Innate Traveller. Antreau Kinaarovi’s oldest friend (and one of the few still alive after all these millennia), Edwin Fallwake is a renowned figure in the Knowledgebase. Books cataloguing his multiverse adventures (many of which were ghost-written by Rodberry and Antreau Kinaarovi) were some of the first non-scientific volumes in the library. Once regarded as an annoyance, he set up the Fallwake Institute when Lan Taris Nepaari first came to power, as a place of learning for all multiverse travellers to gain skills and practical knowledge about their innate powers. However, he soon left it as it slipped further under Nepaari’s influence. He continued to have many adventures, including a memorable time with William Hawkins and his sister Williamette, during which they invented the Vortex Striker.
Millennia later, Edwin returned to the Institute soon after Antreau Kinaarovi detected his future pupils, and successfully hid their presence from Central and the Seekers at the Institute. He tried his best to reform the place, but was only able to do so after Nepaari’s death. He currently serves as head of the Fallwake Institute and teaches whenever he can, but usually this involves midnight liquor runs with his students in highly dangerous areas of the multiverse.
He is one of the few people who has met the so called ‘Last Savant’ and in his words, “She was a hell of a girl.”
Nisreen Ondowa, Oblivionist. She is Edwin Fallwake’s right-hand person, and has been for a couple of centuries. Her Oblivionation power is not as refined as Pyntaillion Sofarallo, but she is the resident expert on the art at the Institute. Formerly a Seeker at the Institute back when that title still existed, she was one of the few spared by an insane Savant during his destruction of the Seekers. It is unknown why he didn’t kill her, but she did disappear for a few years after. She teaches Oblivionation and General Magic.
Druuden Profenz, Innate Traveller. Another of Fallwake’s most trusted associates at the Institute, Profenz teaches classes in Innate Travel and Survival Skills.
Rodberry Wedys, Librarian. He has been the chief Librarian since Nepaari’s death, and with the increased prominence of the library, is regarded as the overall leader of Xaus Vassa. Despite his public image as a serious scholar, he’s usually knee deep in pulpy adventure novels, and, as mentioned before, has ghostwritten a few of them for Edwin Fallwake, one of his best friends.
Lan Taris Nepaari (deceased). Former chief of Central, the authority that ruled the planet of Xaus Vassa and oversaw its many feudal and commercial interests in other dimensions. He was killed by Savant some years after they first met. After his death, much of the population of the planet left or decamped to the colonies. Intermittently, these groups attempt to either take over or destroy Xaus Vassa, but most of them are horrified to find the place overrun with books and leave. Lucky for the Library, the former natives of the planet are not very sentimental about their birthworld.
Of Savant, Lan Taris Nepaari is said to have remarked, “He’s just like that last bitch.”
Williamette Hawkins, Traveller. A friend of Edwin Fallwake and of Savant and the others. One of the few travellers who still use Vortex Strikers, probably for sentimental reasons (see William Hawkins). Currently on a ‘travel break’ at Xaus Vassa since Savant’s reappearance.
William Hawkins, Suffusionist. Williamette’s elder brother (and whom she was named after), Hawkins is not only a highly skilled Suffusionist, but a gifted inventor as well. He invented the Vortex Striker, the first physical electromechanical device in the Knowledgebase that facilitated Multiverse travel for single persons, thereby opening up the Multiverse to people with non-innate skills as well.
This development was not met favourably by Xaus Vassa Central, and for many years Vortex Strikers were banned and Striker users were even (unofficially) hunted and killed for sport by Himes. Eventually they were adopted as a lowly peasant’s device when Lan Taris Nepaari came to power (aristocracy always had their own personal portal agent on hand), and were widely in use until Savant and the jan Molokoi brothers invented the Ticket.
William Hawkins, sickened by the reaction to his inventions in Xaus Vassa, left for worlds outside the Knowledgebase, and has never returned. Once in a while a story or record of him turns up in a newly catalogued world, but his current wherabouts — if, that is, he is still alive — are unknown.
The ‘Last Savant’ – Little is known about this person, except that she was a woman, belonged to the Savant archetype, and was around at the founding of the Xaus Vassa library. Records of her are scant in the library, and of the few people still alive who knew or met her, nobody’s willing to say much. Is she still around? Who knows…
~~~~~~~~~
© Copyright 2005, Vishal K Bharadwaj, All Rights Reserved
“Don’t talk to them, Sir — they’re locals,” says a jawaan to his commanding officer. The central conflict in Shoojit Sircar’s Yahaan is best summed up by this line. It’s the strange paradox of soldiers who don’t trust the people they are protecting, and vice versa.
Kashmir has always been the central issue in most Indian war films, but it has always been handled in a detached way. Since insurgency began in 1989 almost no films have actually shot in the valley (Yahaan is an exception), and even when some other location is meant to be Kashmir, it only serves as a backdrop for heroic, patriotic soldiers to scream at vile terrorists or armed forces from ‘our neighbours.’ Kashmiris are relegated to cannon fodder, fleeing peasants, or oddly Punjabi love interests with nothing to do beyond a song and a brisk abduction near the climax.
The Indian war film, however, is changing — for the better, I might add. Last year we had Farhan and Javed Akhtar’s Lakshya which, even if its specific frontier setting was removed, still worked as a top notch tale about a soldier’s motivations, and, more broadly, a human’s need for a purpose and the finding of it. However, that film’s political side was expertly handled too, neatly crystallising the core of the India/Pakistan conflict into a three hour film — no easy task, and something not even achieved by three J.P. Dutta films (Border, Refugee and L.O.C. Kargil).
While Lakshya told the soldier’s tale through Kashmir’s eyes, Yahaan tells the story of Kashmiris through a soldier’s eyes. On his first posting in the valley, Captain Aman (Jimmy Shergill) is put in charge of protecting a small town. His bunker sits next to a house in which a beautiful girl (Minissha Lamba) lives, and needless to say the two fall in love.
This is really only the skeleton of the plot, as it serves to help flesh out a number of well-integrated threads about foreign terrorists, army corruption, the fear both the Kashmiri people and the Army harbor for each other, and Kashmir as this place removed from the rest of the world. It would be easy to make a heavy-handed film like most Indian war movies before it, but Yahaan handles itself with pitch-perfect subtlety (it’s needless to mention here that while the film was critically acclaimed — even winning an award — it was not a huge commercial success).
The film reminds me a lot of another Jimmy Shergill movie, Charas (also an under-appreciated favourite of mine) — that film was also set in a far removed and forgotten part of India, but its plot had things to say about us all. Jimmy Shergill might be the most underrated actor in the country right now (along with Prashant Narayanan), but he hasn’t crossed over into B-movie territory (B meaning ‘Bad’ here), and continues to pick great roles in great films and bring something special to them. Captain Aman may have twenty lines in the entire movie — no Sunny Deol-style patriotic speeches here — but Shergill just owns the screen even when he isn’t saying anything.
Minissha Lamba gets most of the lines — indeed, her character has more to say — and while she’s very pretty and emotes well, her dialogue delivery can be strangely clipped; it slows down when you expect her to speed up. It’s still a good, solid performance, however, and any dialogue quibbles are lost in the excellence of the rest of the film.
The real surprise, however, is the amazing work by the supporting cast. From some known names like Yashpal Sharma (who usually plays baddies but does a brilliantly conflicted and sensitive version here), to complete unknowns like the people who play Adaa’s family, they all bring something special and memorable to the table. Even the sniper in Aman’s platoon — ‘Tendulkar’ — is good despite having only two lines and around thirty seconds of screen time.
Lakshya had a foreign cinematographer (Christopher Popp), and so does Yahaan in the form of Jakob Ihre. His work is nothing short of magnificent. Popp shot mainly in Ladakh and gave the film a huge feeling of space, with sunny meadows and wide open vistas, but Ihre goes the opposite way, shooting tight and close, low angles and a lot of good handheld work. Kashmir is perpetually bathed in blue during the day, only showing warmer colours at night and in Adaa’s home. The feeling of claustrophobic confines even in an open, heavenly valley is palpable. The good camerawork and editing extends to both the calm rural scenes and the action scenes (of which a bomb blast at interval point is a particular highlight).
This is Shantanu Moitra’s first major work on film songs since his breakthrough in Parineeta earlier this year, and he continues to show a flair for more earthy, acoustic tunes. It would be interesting to see what he makes of, say, a hip hop or club song now. Gulzar’s lyrics continue to be sublime. If Javed Akhtar is Da Vinci, then Gulzar must be Dali, and that analogy still doesn’t do his work justice. Needless to say, the lyrics are pretty-much untranslatable. Learn Hindi, it’s easier than you think.
Moitra and Gulzar’s songs however, are overshadowed by newcomer Sameeruddin’s spellbinding background score. As subtle as Sircar’s direction, as evocative as Ihre’s cinematography — it’s so good it that once again I must plead and pray that the Indian music industry at least takes a chance and brings out a proper soundtrack album of a film rather than just the songs. Maybe as downloads? I’d pay for that.
Yahaan is a must watch, and a worthy companion to Lakshya if you’re looking for a double feature. What more is there to say? Well, the film was originally titled Adaa, but I’m glad they changed it to Yahaan (Here). As I write this there as been another terrorist bomb attack in Srinagar, but after seeing the film it no longer feels as if it took place in some far, unknown, altogether alien part of the world called Kashmir.
It feels like here.
I have a plot!
This morning while in the little boy’s room the plot for Sixteen Permutations suddenly hit me like a bolt. Like I was telling Amit later in the day, perhaps the removal of unncessary matter from the body allows for new, mental ‘good’ matter to be ushered in from the cosmic ether. Or, looked at another way, all good ideas are bartered for in shit.
(Click ‘Read More’ for the rest, including a short excerpt from the new novel.)
Anyway, I have a plot(!) which makes this task much more appealing now. I said before that while NaNoWriMo may have the motto of “no plot, no problem” I refuse to write without a plot; even the flimsiest one will do, because I need to tell a story and not just do it as a competitive exercise.
Now, you may ask, what has changed since the last time; didn’t I have a plot back then too? Well, sure, I had a premise for what could have been a plot, but it wasn’t working too well, and now it has thankfully segued nicely into a plot I haven’t tackled yet, but was on the agenda.
It’s nice to have an extended timeline in from which to pluck your plots, especially when you are expected to write 50,000 words in… um, 20 days. I have around 3735 years of Savant timeline neatly packed away and waiting to be told, and with quite a few general events already decided it’s more a case “Which should I write?” rather than “What should I write?”
The new plot is not a particularly exciting one on the surface. I’d say it’s 100% better than my ‘guy in forest school’ premise I had until yesterday, but only around 50% of what I would consider novel material. The other 50% will come in the telling of the first 50%. This is pretty much the position I was in four years ago with Tale of a Thousand Savants: I had 50% of the plot — i.e. Savant meets up with army of Savants, fights evil enemy, the end — but once I started writing it the tale became the background for a number of plot points and issues I had worked into the timeline as being a part of the greater Savant narrative.
If none of this makes sense, then good.
I’m up to 1075 words. Part one of chapter one is done. Part two, Xaria’s perspective, is in the works. I’ll leave you with an excerpt of the former:
“As I was saying,” I told the bird, “I suppose that if I were a bird and the survival of my species depended on the pecking of a rival’s sperm then I — that reminds me, have I ever told you about that time I actually was a bird? Physically, I mean; it was nice. Matter transfer, it used to be all the rage at once… probably still is if you go out a few parallels. That’s the thing with the multiverse, everything is happening everywhere at once. The first time I actually thought about it I was overwhelmed by it all. Like that time I saw a horde of marauding… marauding…”
Just listen to yourself, Savant.
“I…”
You’re stuck in a tree with one and a half legs, a headless cock and you’re rambling on and on to a bird you just encountered three minutes ago.
“They were marauding and I…”
Has it all come down to this? Dodging traps and telling tall stories?
I looked down at the bird. It looked at me.
“All I have are my stories.”
I jumped off the branch.
V