I'm stuck. Stuck. Stuck. With a whole bunch of concepts like puzzle pieces in my head. But how do they connect to form a meaningful story? There are so many tangled threads that need to be unraveled and rearranged.
It's not just the surface layer of the story plot and action. The layers of historical and cultural significance have to blend in. The emotional interactions between characters need to show the reader what's going on besides the superficial words that are spoken. The body language has to align with what's said or left unsaid. The atmosphere has to paint the picture in the reader's mind with every scene.
I feel guilty over the last few days of stuck nothingness.
So… free flow writing to the rescue. I’m taking my random notes from early this morning to write out a blog post.
I'm stuck at a scene in the historical fiction story where there's only one option to move forward. And it feels like a cliched option, which is predictable and not the twist that keeps readers turning pages. I want a different scene but so far haven’t come up with a suitable progression that fits the storyline.
Working on a series of short stories
So… I took a break from the genre historical fiction story and decided to turn some of my blog posts and other childhood memories into short stories for publication.
I’m currently working on turning some of my shikari great grandfather’s real life adventures into a fictionalized story for a short story series.
Besides this story, I'm also fleshing out the mongoose incident from my other blog post into a standalone short story. This will be part of the series.
I have already written up some memorable events from my childhood involving a bunch of bonnet macaques. They were very interesting visitors who’d come and hang out on my grandfather's fruit trees every now and then. As a kid, I named two of them Mickey and Sticky and I still remember their funny antics decades later. So they are the protagonists of the third story.
These two stories need a good round of editing, cover images and the rest of it before submission. But I want to start the series with my ancestor’s interesting adventures.
The headmaster who hunted man-eating leopards
The first story in the series is inspired by my great grandfather. My ancestor wasn’t exactly a shikari in the pure sense of the word because it wasn’t about hunting for sport. It was about protecting his place and the people and animals there.
He was called SAK, which were his initials, so I'm using that for this blog. But the stories are probably going to be heavily fictionalized as I need to fill in the missing gaps (since I don't know his full life story).
So, I'll use a different name for the character based on SAK in the story which is set around the 1930s. This character is not exactly 100% the real individual but inspired by him.
The other main protagonist of the story is the leopard which I mentioned in an earlier post. Apparently there were a whole bunch of leopards that would come down from the rocky, wild and ancient hills of the Eastern Ghats to hunt.
The farm that SAK managed was 175 acres in size.
From a leopard’s perspective, it must have smelled like an invitation to an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a range of livestock and poultry.
The 1930’s colonial backdrop
Unfortunately, I don't know all the details of SAK’s life because I never met him. I only heard second hand accounts from my grandmother and others who knew him like our aged cook Kuppan, or Kuppa Thatha (grandfather) as he was called, who was a teenager at that time.
He used to come around a few times a week and cook yummy dishes like white mutton stew with carrots and peas, finger chips (potato wedges), prawn fry, coconut beef curry, fish cutlets and other good stuff.
Kuppa Thatha had lost most of his teeth by this time and his pronunciation of stew sounded like “syou”, which rather fascinated me as a kid. And his stories of the past were mainly food-related.
He liked to cook in the open air on a wood-burning stove that was set outside the house. He didn’t like the indoor kitchen or the gas stove after an accident with a pressure cooker.
My grandmother would sit on her folding tape chair and supervise while I just hung out with them as a school kid on weekends and holidays. As he cooked, he would tell stories about how he used to make flat bread dripping with ghee for SAK and his family. My grandmother (SAK’s daughter) would join in and they would reminisce fondly about the old days.
He’d talk about how SAK had a thing for daily herb-infused oil massages followed by an herbal scrub and a bath with Pears soap. This sounds like a nice spa treatment and the closest contemporary equivalent would be an organic skin care routine with Vitamin E to deep cleanse and moisturize.
But it was an everyday ritual back when people had the time for hours long daily skin care treatments. My grandmother stuck to the Pears soap too, all her life. Even now, that particular fragrance reminds me of her.
Kuppa Thatha would also talk about how he would wait behind the bungalow for the jutka (horse-drawn cart) full of provisions that would arrive from the nearest town. The town was a few miles away and the grocery run happened once a week because there was literally nowhere else to buy things nearby.
This grocery run jutka had to be carefully guarded from leopards that would try to attack it. There were apparently man-eating leopards around and they weren’t averse to horses either.
Visualizing the scenes
I'm currently writing a scene building up to the confrontation between SAK and the leopards that would stroll down to help themselves to the farm buffet every now and then.
I've been watching this video of a leopard “sawing”, which is the term for this particular vocalization, to get a feel for the scene. It does sound like a deep mechanical sawing sound.
I've seen carpenters use big saws where two people would hold each end and drag it back and forth across the wood that they were slicing. This was before electric chain saws became common in remote areas.
But the “sawing” sound of the leopard is not high pitched. Something about the deep notes feels ominous and chilling like a movie soundtrack that plays just before everything explodes into terrifying action.
It's the feel of the waiting after one hears this sound. The build-up. The suspense that brings that sudden chill up the spine. I wonder what went through SAK’s mind when he heard this deep, grunting, sawing sound of the leopard, knowing that it was walking around the periphery of the land.
The Perspective
The only big cats I've ever seen were inside enclosures or on a screen and there was no danger of getting attacked by one, so it's a completely different mind-set from his experience.
Maybe I was more fascinated with the fur pattern and the cute paws and tail of a big cat strolling around casually blinking at visitors.
SAK didn’t have that luxury with nothing except air between him and the animal. He would have probably focused on the intense eyes fixed on him, the snarling fangs, the unsheathed claws and the tense crouched posture.
I want to understand how he experienced it.
SAK heard the sound of impending violence that could hit him at any moment. For me, viewing a big cat was just something interesting with no risk. For him, it was most likely a rush of heart-thumping adrenaline.
He definitely wasn’t thinking “Pspsps” and hoping for a slow blink while sighting down the barrel of a rifle.
He must have registered the distance. Tried to pinpoint its location. Assess likely attack points. Who and what was closest to it? All this must have happened in a flash.
He knew the place and what to expect so he was prepared. He'd had plenty of nights camping out in the hills with the boy scouts he had been responsible for in the area. Had he heard the sawing sounds then?
Coming back to the present...
… It's 3 AM now and I'm writing notes on my phone. Why am I trying so hard to figure out what went on in my ancestor’s head a century ago instead of sleeping like normal people do at this time? 😃
There's a kind of brain rush when a story begins to flow that creative types know well. Maybe it's some kind of dopamine flood from problem solving.
In this case, it's about the mental state of this protagonist. And one doesn't want to turn off that flow and state of immersion even if it's 3 AM. Not when you're visualizing this scene vividly.
More visuals
There's SAK climbing up the steps of his white bungalow straining to hear the faint sound of the leopard in the distance, mentally preparing for what he knows is coming.
There's a clear visual of the rocky hills with shrubs growing over it. Somewhere behind one of those rocks, the leopard is sniffing at the air.
There's the heavy feel of intense humidity and stillness around him as he freezes beside the tall white pillar and registers the sound. But there are trees blocking his view of the place where the sound originated.
There's the muddy smell of the earth after the evening watering at the farm. Water vapour rises from the red ground making everything suffocatingly humid.
Is there a flash of movement in the distance? Maybe a bunch of small stones rolling down the side of the slope as the leopard comes closer.
And what's the internal state of this person?
Living for years on the edge of the wild would have taught him the ways of the wilderness.
There's no time for panic. This is when he needs to implement the plan of action that he already has. He may need to make adjustments to the plan depending on what the leopard does or where it goes.
He listens carefully to identify its location. He needs his rifle. He needs to alert others on the farm.
He needs to make sure that all the livestock and every staff quarter is locked down and the people are safely indoors. Except those who are equipped to deal with this situation. He needs to be ready for the actual confrontation when it comes. And hopefully it never does if he can just scare it away.
But the leopards won’t stay away. Not when it’s hungry and there’s an easy hunting ground right there.
And back to the present...
There's a change in pace at this point in SAK’s story when the quiet evening turns into an emergency situation that he needs to handle…
And my 3 AM brain is not up for going down that rabbit hole right now. So… I’m going to sleep now.
Tomorrow I’ll work on the SAK and leopard story, the mongoose battle and the fruit-raiding macaques. And hopefully, publish this short story collection soon.
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