Writing life: The stuck writing days and sleepless early morning notes

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 was 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. There's something about the deep notes that 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 of 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.

Writing Life: On Gothic fiction, time slips and genre-bending for memorable storylines

The summer holidays had begun after school and I was at my grandparents’ house bored out of my 12-year-old mind.

That was when I decided to take a look at my Grandmother’s bookshelf and found the first gothic novel of my life.

It was a hardbound book with pages printed on wood pulp. That particular fragrance still triggers old memories of lazy days reading and mental travel to another place and time.

The story was written by an author called Anya Seton set in mid-1800s New York. It wasn’t a light read and maybe the themes were too heavy for a twelve-year-old kid but I had no regrets about reading it then or now. After all, real life isn’t all curated sunshine and happiness.

A little later, I read “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte, thought it was weird and macabre at first, and then got intrigued with its obsessive characters and psychological explorations.

I still like Gothic novels and I’m playing with the idea of introducing some of the classic gothic tropes into my particular genre of historical fiction.

Straightforward formulaic stories that follow the typical progression, and where you know what to expect are quite popular in the niche I write in… But… I want to try something different.

Where’s the fun when you can guess how it will end right from the first chapter?

 

Work hard Hooman! My treats depend on it!

In high school, most of the girls in class used to borrow books from lending libraries. They tended to binge on Mills and Boon or Harlequin romances, which are somewhat predictable and don’t really sustain interest for long.

Even in college hostel, I’d sometimes walk into some of my neighboring girls’ rooms and find stacks of these on their desks. I’d pick up one and read a few pages and know exactly how it was going to end. And lose interest.

I found it a little strange that they were so popular despite the predictability.  

But as a writer now, I want to give my readers a page-turning experience.

Evolving with the times

A massive transformation is currently going on that is already upending life as we know it. AI is increasingly getting into everything, and it’s already writing formulaic fiction.

AI can replicate what already exists. But its logical process gets confused with creative experiments. It may be able to write formulaic fiction but I hope it can’t write emotional dynamics that don’t follow a mathematical logic.

The path forward for creatives now looks like experimenting and trying new and different things.

Mixing genres can be risky because readers usually want more of what they already like. But I think introducing some gothic, unexplainable and mystical elements might amp up the stakes and add moments of tension and suspense to keep the readers turning pages.  

A couple of days back I was listening to some of my favorite rock songs and ballads by a much-loved band that I grew up on and some of the music and lyrics had a muse-like effect and got the mental wheels turning. It was about a destiny that is already written. Isn’t this a theme that storytellers just love?

The mysterious muse got me playing with the idea of a time slip with modern protagonists going into the past, probably two centuries ago… Something along the lines of Tristan and Iseult (a medieval tragic Celtic legend) meets Outlander (time travel). 

A recipe that blends parallel lifetimes, longing, difficulties and gothic elements for the atmosphere and energy.

There’s a scene in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander which gives you chills down the spine and serious reading thrills.

It’s the eerie moment where Jamie Fraser’s ghost watches the 20^th century Claire in the present time before she even knows of his existence. But he knows her from the past.

It’s a memorable scene because Claire later travels back in time two hundred years and meets the flesh and blood Jamie.

The Outlander series is genre bending enough to combine time travel, historical romance, adventure, gothic atmosphere and some fantasy. It keeps you guessing from page to page.

One minute, the female protagonist is in 20^th century Scotland. The sense of suspense and foreboding builds up, and then she finds herself in a history she’s already read about. This takes her through the bizarre experience of trying to alter a history when she already knows the ending. Plus you keep wondering if she’ll ever come back to her real world again.

And then there’s Amy Harmon and her intriguing stories with a supernatural twist. I loved her “What the Wind Knows” and “Slow Dance in Purgatory”. She bends most of the known laws of time and physical existence to create a beautiful world of make believe where the impossible becomes possible.

Each story has a unique twist. One protagonist has the gift of telepathy and helps the detective who is after a well-known serial killer. Another is an American pioneer living in a dangerous time. Another time travels to become the foster mother of a child who later turns out to be someone she knew very well. These are highly intriguing plot lines.

I’m also quite fascinated with the concept of Carl Jung’s synchronicities. Strange events that feel like meaningful coincidences that feature almost a soul to soul telepathy.

I want to paint my stories with these hues and build storylines that include these mind-bending, lifeline blending dynamics where earthly timelines, and the past and present are not rigidly set in stone.

It’s the intricacies of “the space time continuum”, as Doc Brown calls it in the “Back to the future” movies that keep the audience performing mental gymnastics over all the “What Ifs” and keep them engaged with the story.

Finding Gothic story inspirations in unlikely places

This reminds me of a famous Colonial-era story with gothic tones which originated from an unlikely small town with an interesting past.

This town, which is currently being developed into a deep sea port for cargo ships was once an ancient fishing port and international trading settlement.

It was colonized by the Dutch centuries ago, by the French and then by the British so it has quite a lot of European and South Indian history all mixed up like a salad.

The story is about the origins of St Mary’s Church which is located in the town. Someone called it the ‘Taj Mahal of South India’, which is definitely not an architectural comparison. It’s a small heritage church with a cemetery attached to it but the comparison is about the love story that brought it into existence.

The original Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum of love by the Persian/Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz and St Mary’s Church was built with a similar intention.

To get back to the famous story of the historical town and its monument of love…

The story goes that sometime around the early 1800s, a certain Major General John Pater of the British Army, who was stationed for a time at the Bandar Fort, fell in love with a Miss Arabella Robinson.

This is where the tragic, obsessive and forbidden love part of the story begins. This story definitely has the elements of a Gothic romance.

He was married and had a wife back in England more than ten thousand miles and several months of a ship journey away. 

In the late 1700's and early 1800s, British military officers serving in the East India Company could go back to England to visit their family only once every 10 years (unless they had emergency medical leave). 

After 10 years, an officer could go back for a visit for 3 years but the ship journey could take 6 months each way, which cut their vacation time to about 2 years. They also had to pay for their own cabins on board ship and received only half the pay while they were away. 

Wives of officers lived in military cantonments where he was stationed so that they could be together but this doesn't seem to be the case here. Most women at that time chose to remain in Britain back then. For these reasons, many did not marry and remained single for much of their 20's or married local women. 

This real life story is set around the late 1700's, so it's possible that this was an arranged marriage and not someone he actually wanted to marry. Perhaps a marriage of convenience for the sake of family reputation, property or influence. 

He was a high ranking officer in the British army, which could indicate that he may have been from an old or established family line. And traditional families had their versions of arranged marriage back then. Or maybe it was a situation like Mr Rochester's from Jane Eyre.

Even Jane Austen’s novels talk about arranged marriage stories like that of Miss Bertram from Mansfield Park. Or Pride and Prejudice, where Mr Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, wants him to marry her daughter, when all he wants is Miss Elizabeth Bennett. Or William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair which highlights these social dynamics.

Or maybe he married young and regretted it later (Scientific research shows that the human brain fully develops the capacity for long term risk assessment only by the late 20s. People in general are prone to impulsive decision making before they reach this milestone. Perhaps it’s best to wait on major life decisions until the brain reaches its full thinking capacity and ability to evaluate long term consequences).

This is speculation driven by a need to understand the roots of it. As an author, one doesn't consider stories from a place of judgment but observe human behavior from a place of curiosity.

From the perspective of a fiction author, there is always the why. Why did he do that? Was there a reason? If so, what were they? Or maybe there was no logical reason but it was a powerful emotional connection where they felt like they belonged together. You seek to get into the minds of your characters and protagonists while writing fiction. And for real stories that have complicated twists and turns, you try to unravel the mystery. 

But no one really knows the full story of John Pater and Arabella Robinson anymore.

Besides this, Arabella was a Catholic and he was a Protestant. Some say she was Anglo Indian. They wanted to marry but their churches and society wouldn’t allow them to. So she eloped and began to live with him, which apparently caused quite a scandal in their community. But after all the high stakes drama, they still couldn’t find a happily ever after.

She caught Malaria and died in November of 1809. None of the churches would allow him to bury her in their graveyards because they had violated the rules of that time. And so, he had her body embalmed and kept it in his house where he grieved over his lost love alone.

Eventually, he had to buy a piece of land to bury her. But he didn’t exactly bury her in the full sense of the term.

He was so heartbroken that he had her embalmed body dressed in her wedding gown and put her in a glass coffin which he visited frequently. The coffin was operated by a lever and pulley mechanism that would cause it to rise out of its tomb.

This part of the story reminds me of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights. It’s the same kind of obsessive love that doesn’t let go after death.

John Pater built the building around her grave a few years after he buried her. And called it Arabella’s Chapel.

 

Shot this picture of St Mary's Church, built in the 1800's, around Christmas time when we visited the cemetery (decked up for Christmas but the building badly needs repairs)

There’s not much information about what happened to John Pater after these events.

Some say that he was later stationed at Madras (which is currently called Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, and located a few hundred miles away).

There was a General Patter’s Road in Chennai (although the inscription on the gravestone says ‘Pater’, which must be the correct spelling since he placed it there himself). The road was supposedly named after him. But time eroded that memory.

In recent years, it’s been renamed after a local and politically significant figure (The politicians like to keep things interesting and confusing for the postal delivery guys and everyone who uses navigation systems, because they think renaming places will get them more votes.)

As for John Pater, some sources say he moved back to England after he retired while others say he was buried in Madras.

Some more research online revealed that he was in fact buried in Madras. One source is from the “List of inscriptions on tombs or monuments in Madras, possessing historical or archaeological interest” by J.J. Cotton, 1905. It says,

Lieutenant General John Pater, The Honorable East India Company (H.E.I.C.). Son of Charles and Elizabeth (Powell) Pater.

' A very good natured but enormously fat man of the Cavalry. The founder of Patter's Gardens and Patter's Road. He erected a monument to Miss Arabella Robinson at Masulipatam, November 6th, 1809. He was Captain on April 22, 1784, Major on November 19, 1790 ; Lieut.-Col. on December 31, 1796 ; Col. on January 1, 1798 and Major-General on January 1, 1805. He retired on the Off reckoning Fund, May 13, 1813.' 

I also found this summary which repeats much of the old story that’s still going around: 

Captain John Pater, fell in love with the Catholic, Arabella Robinson, daughter of Captain W. Robinson. They could not marry because Pater was a Protestant, also he had a wife back in England. So they lived together causing a great scandal. They had a daughter Sapphira, born in 1790. Arabella died in 1809 at Masulipatnam and was refused burial in consecrated ground. Pater had her body embalmed, laid in a glass casket and kept it at home. A month later, he bought a piece of land and started building a chapel to bury her in. This took him three years to complete. Pater would visit the chapel, opening her tomb lid with a pulley system to see his beloved's body. In 1816, he handed over 'Arabella's Church' to the East India Company. The church was consecrated in 1842 and renamed St Mary's Church (Masulipatnam). Pater married a second wife and had two sons, John and James. Lt-Gen John Pater died in Madras in 1817. He had a brother Rear Admiral Charles Dudley Pater of the Royal Navy.

And there are some details about their daughter:

Nov 1794 Baptised in Trichinopoly, daughter of John Pater and ___ Robinson

(Major, H.C. Cavalry) Aged 4 years

9 Aug 1813 Married Captain Charles Hawkey R.N. Commander of HMS Barracoutta.

They had four children.

23 Jan 1826 ' Mrs Saphira Hawkey, late of Madras. 

Her children were also in the army. There are some discrepancies between this record and the story that people tell. If Sapphira was born in 1790, then they must have been together for at least around 20 years, whereas the original story says they were together for only a short time. 

I’ve seen the St Mary’s church in Chennai (which is in the State of TN hundreds of miles away from the one that Pater built, which is in the State of AP). It’s an old overgrown cemetery under a flyover that I drove past frequently but I never visited it.

The church’s architecture looks interesting although the place is sadly in ruins. 

Anyway, I hope the souls of the protagonists of this real life story were reunited in the afterlife since they couldn’t find their HEA in their earthly life.

As for the glass coffin and the lever that moved it up, the local people say that the sexton of the church accidentally activated it one day when he was cleaning the place.

He was terrified when he saw the mummified bridal body and it scared him so much that he had a heart attack and died. And the church permanently sealed the grave under the floor.

One can still see the inscription and the monument which is built against a wall.

Arabella’s Chapel later became part of the mainstream Protestant Church and was renamed St Mary’s Church. And it’s currently run by the Church of South India (CSI) and is in bad need of repairs. They hold English language services inside the building and the grounds around it serve as the official Protestant cemetery now.

There’s a shopping mall and a big supermarket nearby and a busy road outside the grounds now so it doesn’t feel spooky or ghostly.

But there’s a sense of intrigue and a sensation almost as if the emotions and memories of those people who lived then are still hanging around, when I visit places like these. The ones that have been around for hundreds of years and have interesting stories associated with them.

And there’s a curiosity about the stories of people who once inhabited the same spaces and all that is associated with it.

 

This scene must have looked exactly the same centuries ago

 

Or this... 

 

I took these pics on a drive to a river delta recently

My fictional stories are not set in this place but the feelings and motivations of people are the same all over the world. And so we see similar echoes in classic old stories like Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the legend of Tristan and Isolde and others that people like to talk about. 

Or the Twilight series, which was so hugely popular some years ago. It's not the vampire wrapper that makes the story so hard to put down. It's the difficulties that stand in the way, the impossibilities, the obstacles that they are willing to overcome. Edward Cullen could have been something else besides a vampire and the story would have still had that core element that pulls at the reader's interest. Maybe Edward and Bella could have been from North and South Korea, or from rival families, or some other obstacle that corresponds to the cultural landscape of a specific time period. 

I’m also intrigued by the different shades of human nature. The many layers that make up a person beyond what is immediately apparent on the surface. They make compelling characters who linger in the psyche.

This Colonial-era officer with the glorious military career and his private and intensely painful heartbreak.

My great grandfather, the visionary who reclaimed land from the wilderness but died relatively young, was many different things to different people. He was a scholarly book-reading, violin-playing family man who was also a successful leopard hunter in the early 1900s.

I want to explore stories like these in my blog posts and find inspiration from them for the fictional ones.

To this day, people still talk about the story of John Pater and Arabella Robinson, mainly because of St Mary’s Church.

Some people dismiss it with an “Oh! That old story…” and an eye roll, but some romanticize it.

After all, this couple had a love so strong that they were willing to defy their society, families and institutions just to be together, and then it all ended in tragedy anyway. I wonder what kind of a pull there was between them that they went to such lengths.

This story definitely has a legendary feel to it and Gothic story elements.

It’s lingered in my mind for years and I’ve felt a compulsion to write something about it but… it’s their tragic story and it feels too sacred and disrespectful to write it as fiction.

But it does inspire me to write something similar.

I don’t want to write tragic storylines. But how do I turn a story with heavy Gothic elements into a happily ever after? It’s like making sunshine out of shadows.

I want to draw inspiration from the main thread and a few elements of the story. Not a dark tragedy but a HEA (happily ever after). That may be possible only with supernatural or mystical elements, time slips, synchronicities and bending the rules of material existence.

 

Don't write dull stories, Hooman, when you've got me for a muse! 

I don’t really care for light, fluffy, superficial stories and casual interactions between the characters. Those are the skim through once and forget types of books. They’re predictable to read and boring to write.

When I first got into historical fiction writing with a ghostwriting side hustle, it was the equivalent of a creative mental playground to keep from the tech writing boredom. But it was heavy on the formulas and expected outcomes. I did that for a few years while simultaneously writing marketing content for IT so it’s easy to write those but… they’re for the audience that likes the comfort of knowing exactly what to expect.

But the stories that you remember and want to read again and again are those that linger in your psyche for years. The ones with high stakes, extraordinary happenings and a touch of the supernatural.

Just like the twelve year-old who couldn’t put down that old wood pulp book and still draws inspiration from it several years later.