Hemanth Gorur's Blog

“All doors are open.”

No, that’s not a pitch from a real estate agent confirming Vaastu compliance of a villa. And no, it’s not double entendre from the latest erotic thriller either.

That’s the way Indian politics is being run these days. When in doubt over who should be your alliance partner, keep your doors open. You never know who may walk in.

The recent J&K elections, or the aftermath rather, was replete with this curious one-liner doing the rounds. All doors are open. Every politician worth his salt (or wood) was found mouthing this rather inane but handy obfuscation that said everything without revealing anything.

Take the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for instance. Reacting to media inquiries on possible suitors for government formation, an IBN article quoted the delectable Mehbooba Mufti as saying that she was “in the process of exploring all possibilities”. Clearly, all her “doors” were wide open.

Not to be outdone, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah’s doors were also open, if only wider. In a MilleniumPost article, he admitted to as much: “All options are open. The option of forming a BJP government is open. The option of supporting somebody is also open. The option of joining some government is also open… All three options are open.” If Shah’s doors were open any wider, he could have as well been sitting in an airplane hangar.

Snooty Omar Abdullah of the National Conference (NC) went one better in a FirstPost article and said that “there is a crack (in the window) open for the PDP.” Whatever that meant. This, after allegedly hobnobbing with the BJP top brass. Clearly, he wouldn’t bet his cojones over a crack.

While party mouthpieces went around knocking out statements about doors and cracks, there was hectic canoodling going on behind the scenes, with the PDP sending out coy glances through the window to all and sundry while waiting for the BJP to knock on its doors, the BJP running a door-to-door campaign with “marry me” written all its lovesick face, and the NC pretending to have closed-door discussions while vainly positioning itself as a “key” player.

This fetish for doors is not new in Indian politics. In the run-up to the 2014 J&K elections as reported by IndiaToday, PDP had exhorted the people of the troubled state to “show the door” to the NC and the BJP. After all, only if someone drives out these parties can the PDP then make a show of inviting them back in. Hence the doors.

The BJP too is no stranger to slamming doors or opening doors or generally keeping them open. They adopted similar watch-my-door tactics with their now-hot-now-cold ally, the Shiv Sena, after the 2014 Maharashtra elections. If only to prove a point. That it was no one’s doormat.

There are various other door types and sizes in operation. Parties like the Samajwadi Party revel in opening specialized doors to welcome individuals as opposed to entire parties, as they did for BJP rebel Jaswant Singh earlier in the year. Evidently, it was a much smaller door.

And then there are others who announce formation of mega-parties when the constituent individual parties cease to have relevance. Like the Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and a clutch of other hopefuls did when they ganged up to form the Janata Parivar. In this case, there were more doors open than one could count. Not that anyone was.

A curious exception to this new-found malaise in political parties of using doors, cracks or doormats to woo or shoo alliances after (or before) elections is the Congress. But, not because it’s principled or closed to post-poll alliances.

No, the reason for the Congress’ exclusion from these dour antics is frustratingly simple. For keeping doors open to potential allies after elections, you need to have doors in the first place.

The Congress, battered as it was by the Modi tsunami during the 2014 parliamentary elections, seems to have no doors left. Last heard, the party was still busy finding wood strong enough to stand in place and replace the deadwood the party finds itself saddled with.

Forget the politicos. Think about the average voter. Think about you and me. What about the stink bombs that politicians throw around just before elections, promising everything under the sun, inevitably ending up as the wind that passed by after the elections? Ah, keep the doors open, silly!

NOTE: This post is part of the Here and Now series (a satirical take on everyday happenings) on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: A Case Of Sour Rapes.

I must admit this piece got inspired (wrong choice of word, I know) by How Not To Get Raped And Other Dumb Ideas by Diya Banerjee which washed up on The Huffington Post the other day. To people who still have no clue as to what I’m talking about, it’s about the numerous instances of heinous rapes that have started dotting a once-civilized country called India.

Well-meaning activists and pressure groups have been dishing out the standard fare when it comes to solutions: increased security for women, more stringent laws, speedy and time-bound delivery of justice, setting up of fast-track courts, “women only” service providers, sensitizing men and boys, raising noise levels by organized picketing, lobbying for banning of radio taxis, protesting the ban after the government bans them, yadda yadda yadda.

Bollocks, I say. These are duds at best. Been there, tried that, didn’t work. Can’t blame the poor sods who suggested these measures, either. There are only so many “sane”, “implementable” solutions to go around.

Now, perverts are everywhere. Like houseflies. You can’t just wish them away. You have something that he doesn’t, but wants. Clearly, a case of sour rapes! So, you can’t wish away the rapes either.

You need solutions that have more bite. Erm, at least more teeth.

Like the following.

Lobby the authorities for a Central Government tax on rapes. If there’s one thing Indians hate more than traffic lights, cleanliness and neighbors, it’s paying taxes. Threaten sexual offenders with rape tax and see the sex crime graph go limp faster than an offender’s johnny.

Develop virginity locks operating on Microsoft operating systems. All you got to do is arm your delectable panties with virginity locks that run on MS gookware and forget the password. Good luck to you (and your pervert rapist) trying to recover from that. Better still, if your operating system crashes (and God knows it will), you can kiss your hopes of unlocking your panties goodbye.

Install a guillotine-type cigar cutter in your you-know-what. I don’t need to tell you how this works, right?

Say you have Ebola. And jump on the hapless pervert, with the express and verbalized intention of raping him. You will be, unwittingly, the cause for the new (and suddenly unassailable) record in the 100 meters dash. Warning: Think of something funny to say when a certain Mr. Bolt comes after you for ruining his sprint monopoly.

Use reverse psychology. Perverts are like kids (yeah, yeah, wrong example, I know) in this respect – a dash of reverse psychology always works. Spread open your haunches and sit with your junk nicely laid out. In the open. In the shadiest of alleys. And roll your eyes in opposite directions. Beat me silly if your would-be rapist doesn’t stop and think, “I know that look from Sonagachi. The hoe’s down with something. I’m outta here!” Pointless to add, this one’s an offshoot of the preceding trick.

Play dead. No, I’m serious. Men are like animals. Correction – men are animals. Once they sniff around and find you no good, they’ll vamoose. No squirming? No fun. Simple logic (from their limited perspective), na? If bad comes to ugly, they may, at most, take a leak on you (marking territory, if you will) before they saunter off in search of their next doe-eyed prey.

If you have zanier solutions to this clear and present menace in Indian society, you know where to hoot and picket. Meanwhile, zip up, girl!

NOTE: This post is part of the Here and Now series (a satirical take on everyday happenings) on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: Hiss Of Love (The Indian Chamcha’s Take). Read the next post in this series: Of Open Doors And Cracks.

Imagine a wormhole in all its beguiling, seductive allure. Two twisting ends in interstellar space joined by a funnel. Two entirely different universes connected by a seemingly implausible conduit of empty space. Two sets of space-time coordinates separated by an esoteric bridge.

You have here a freaky concept that debunks all logical premises and promises to transport you magically to a world that is otherwise beyond reach and imagination. You are allowed access to a universe that had hitherto existed only in your imagination. Or one that you couldn’t imagine.

It is every author’s dream to suck the reader into his story and transport her to the universe of bewilderment and intrigue the minute the reader lays her hand on his book. Newbie authors often admit to a twinge of wistfulness when a browsing reader picks up his baby, gives it the once-over and promptly moves on to the book next to it.

Enter the author’s wormhole – the back cover blurb.

The blurb at the back of your book is one of the three hooks (the chapter opening and the book cover being the other two) at the disposal of the author to reel in the reader in the crucial two minutes it takes for her to decide whether to buy your book or not.

The humble blurb does multiple things. It provides a falcon’s eye-view of your story in a single glance. It raises questions in the reader’s mind – questions that she would want answered. It provides ample foil to trade reviews (if any) on the back cover so that the reader can wash down the story and market reactions to it in a single gulp.

Most importantly, the blurb is a funnel that transports the reader into your story’s universe instantaneously without giving away too much. And keeps her there.

So, what goes into creating that all-alluring blurb?

Take one of the master storyteller’s novels, The Shining, by Stephen King. This is how the blurb reads:

Danny is only five years old but in the words of old Mr Hallorann he is a ‘shiner’, aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, Danny’s visions grow out of control.

As winter closes in and blizzards cut them off, the hotel seems to develop a life of its own. It is meant to be empty. So who is the lady in Room 217 and who are the masked guests going up and down in the elevator? And why do the hedges shaped like animals seem so alive?

Somewhere, somehow, there is an evil force in the hotel – and that too is beginning to shine …

Note the first part of the blurb. The protagonist, his defining characteristic and the setting are outlined in one simple paragraph. It is also a cliffhanger in that it raises the pulse by dangling the prospect of the protagonist going out of control tantalizingly enough for us to read the blurb further.

The second paragraph, although itself riddled with questions, raises other questions: what’s unique about Room 217? Why are the hedges shaped like animals? What’s making the hotel develop a life of its own and how’s Danny involved / impacted?

The third paragraph (really just an open-ended sentence) throws the plot wide open by hinting at a conflict (what happens when Danny’s ‘shining’ confronts the hotel’s?) while not giving anything away on the conflict resolution – perfect recipe to whet the reader’s appetite and set her up for a bone-chilling ride into King’s world. In other words, an effective wormhole.

What approaches do you follow while writing the back cover blurb? Write in.

NOTE: This post is part of the On Writing series on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: 5 Killer Openings To Hook The Reader.

Phone calls from people who you thought had long fossilized themselves in the upper echelons of the corporate world are always unnerving. Not to mention hil-effin-arious.

This one came from a batch-mate of mine. We go all the way back to business school, yet hadn’t managed to keep in touch during the years after. Until now, that is.

Said batch-mate was a die-hard ‘Chamcha’ (that’s what a butt-kisser is called in India) at work, so much so that we’d rechristened him ‘Bruce Chamcha’ (Die Hard? Bruce Willis? Get the connection?). Anyway, a well-meaning chap, even if generally confused most of the time.

So, Bruce Chamcha called. He had just returned from Australia and was apparently gung-ho about a new campaign called ‘Kiss of Love’ that had taken urban India by storm. Before I could explain to him that it was just a protest against moral policing by publicly kissing your loved ones and not an avant-garde reunion of butt-kissers to celebrate sycophancy, he was off.

Here’s what transpired between him and a right-wing nuttie who was protesting against the ‘Kiss of Love’ protest.

An obviously hostile right-wing nuttie: “So you’re one of those young ‘uns, huh? Who want to get some cheap thrills in the name of liberalization of society?”

Bruce Chamcha: “I’ll have you know, mate. It’s not a cheap thrill. The kissing we do is an art. Not everyone can do it.”

Right-wing nuttie (nose wrinkled in disgust): “What’s there to it? You put those silly lips together and press.”

Bruce Chamcha: “Yeah mate, but you need to know where to press.”

Right-wing nuttie: “What do you mean?”

Bruce Chamcha (smiling self-righteously): “You need to know which cheek to kiss. And which part of that cheek.”

Right-wing nuttie: “Cheek? You fool! This is lip-to-lip kissing we’re talking about. If it’s just a kiss on the cheek, who in his right (wing) mind would protest against all this kissing?”

Bruce Chamcha (thinking this must be a new way of butt-kissing that he’s unaware of): “Lip to lip? That’s a novelty. How exactly do you do that, mate?”

Right-wing nuttie: “Trying to play fresh with me, eh? You select the loved one you want to kiss, go near her lips, and press your lips against hers. Don’t tell me you haven’t done it. And, stop calling me ‘mate’. Makes me queasy, especially during this protest.”

Bruce Chamcha: “Go near her ‘lips’? Isn’t that going too far, literally and figuratively? I mean, I can understand sniffing around the cheek and licking it once in a while before you get to the actual kissing, but going near her lips?? Whoa mate… err… homie, sorry but that’s gross.”

Right-wing nuttie: “Ew! You actually plan to do all that you just said on the streets here? You have the cheek… err… nerve to call me gross.”

Bruce Chamcha: “By the way, why are you saying ‘her’ lips? I don’t have a female boss. I kiss up to my male boss.”

Right-wing nuttie (eyes wide in horror): “Arey kuch tho sharam kar (have some shame)! You guys are dragging your bosses in today for your obscene antics?”

Bruce Chamcha shrugs.

Right-wing nuttie: “That too, male bosses. Come to think of it, I’ve always felt these kind of protests were gay and loco. But, how did your bosses agree to this in the first place?”

Bruce Chamcha (sympathizing with the nuttie’s ignorance): “That’s how things work out there, mate. Bosses are always ready to get kissed. It’s in their blood. It feeds their ego and confirms their position of power.”

Right-wing nuttie (thinking he’s now seen them all): “You need to kiss your boss to make her feel like a boss? Hmm, that’s new. Doesn’t sound so bad, either. I mean, I know a lady nuttie in my organization whom I’d love to show she’s the boss. And make her feel so.”

Bruce Chamcha: “That’s the spirit, mate. You’ll soon rise to the top without much squirming.”

Right-wing nuttie: “Hold it right there, mate… err… dude. Don’t get all Freudian with me. I get it. You don’t need to bare it all. But, tell me. Why exactly did you join in for the ‘Kiss of Love’ protest today?”

Bruce Chamcha (now confused): “‘Kiss of Love’? I thought this was the ‘Hiss of Love’ protest.”

Right-wing nuttie: “What’s that now?”

Bruce Chamcha (with a grave look on his face): “You know what happens when you give your boss’ butt a kiss of love, right? Newton’s Third Law. An equal and opposite reaction from your boss. The ‘hiss’ of love. I wanted to protest against that. We can take anything in return for our servility, but not that.”

Right-wing nuttie: “Boss’ butt?” (faints)

NOTE: This post is part of the Here and Now series (a satirical take on everyday happenings) on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: The “Maa-Behen” Of It All. Read the next post in this series: A Case Of Sour Rapes.

Every civilization the world over is characterized by a word or phrase that immediately places it in a class by itself and uniquely identifies it. For 21st century India, it’s “maa-behen”. For the Hindi-challenged, it literally means “yo’ mama & sista”.

It all started with the “gaali” (cussing). If you ever want to swear (which may be more often than you want if you’re in India), you have the maa-behen gaali, which is an evolved and eclectic class of invectives that includes the Indianized version of “mofo” or “mutha-fucka”.

Pound for pound, a maa-behen gaali is the meanest badass when it comes to linguistic intimidation, achieving in a short volley what other words struggle to do even with increased decibel levels and aggressive body language thrown in. Because it hits where it hurts the most – below the belt.

So, let’s say your buddy ditches you for a late night romp with his current flame, who do you take it out on? That’s right. The poor sap’s mama. A “teri maa ki…” (your mama’s…) settles scores quicker than your buddy can remember his mama’s name. Those three innocent-looking dots there? Use your imagination, silly! Effective, no?

Add a “behen” to the gaali and you have just doubled the badass quotient of the gaali. For, now, the hapless sap has to remember not only who his mama is but also who his sista is, apart from imagining what the three dots are doing (or going to do) to them. Quite a predicament, if you ask me.

If you ever doubted that India’s a maddening, melting pot of cultures where its values clash harder than its lorries on the roads do, here’s the inexplicable proof – the mother of all contradictions if you will – the maa-behen lingo finds mention in the most revered of contexts too. Surprised?

The typical Indian guy reveres his mama like nobody’s business. If ever there were a reverence-for-mama industry, the top ten billionaires would be all Indians. Hell, all billionaires in that industry would be Indians. And all Indians would be billionaires. At least, those that had a mama.

As immortalized for ages by that classic one-liner in Deewar when Bachhan gloats, “Aaj mere paas gaadi hai, paisa hai, bangla hai, naukar hai, … Tumhare paas kya hai?” (Today I have cars, money, bungalows, servants, etc. What do you have?) To which Shashi Kapoor nonchalantly deadpans, “Mere paas maa hai.” (I’ve got mama). Riches getting mothered by relationships. Sweet.

In fact, Indian movies have immortalized two constructs that have had a stranglehold on fawning cine-goers for decades: “maa ki mamta” (mama’s love) and “behen ki shaadi” (sista’s wedding). You’ll find heroes in most Indian movies jumping over mountains fueled by the former and grabbing at stars to accomplish the latter. Like, who needs Superman or Green Lantern?

So, what gives? With so much reverence for Indian mama’s floating around, why the maa-behen gaali then? Hee hee. You forgot to read the fine print, dipshit. The reverence is for MY mama, not YOUR mama. Capisce?

With Indian politicos asserting their might as headline-grabbers in recent years, move over, maa-behen. It’s time for a new lexicon: maa-behen-didi (mama, younger sista, elder sista). There’s an Amma (equates to “mama” in South India) who distributes TV’s like pancakes, a Behen who answers each probing question from society or media with a new statue of herself, and a Didi who revels in chasing away businessmen for daring to, well, do business.

Actually, Indian politics is replete with such larger-than-life family figures with self-anointed titles of entitlement and endearment. Take your pick from “Tau” (elder uncle), “Bhai” (brother), “Beta” (son), “Damaad” (son-in-law)… well, that list is lengthier than the list of expletives you can string using maa-behen-didi.

Which brings me back to the gaali. A maa-behen gaali today, can therefore be above the belt, unlike its predecessor of yore. For those three dots (remember them?) can now mean something entirely different. A “teri amma ki…”, for example, can now actually mean “your mama’s pancakes”. Erm… on second thoughts, not very much above the belt, eh?

NOTE: This post is part of the Here and Now series (a satirical take on everyday happenings) on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: The Sex-ahon Line. Read the next post in this series: Hiss Of Love (The Indian Chamcha’s Take).

Do you dive into a swimming pool straight away without dipping your foot in first? Do you buy a perfume without doing a skin-test first? If not, then why do you expect a reader to fall for your novel without skimming through the opening first?

There are three ‘hooks’ that can grip the reader as she browses through the millions of titles available for purchase on a given day – the book cover, the blurb at the back of the book, and the first three chapters (or the opening). Well, make that four if you want to include reviews on the cover, but many authors, especially newbies, do not have the luxury of having marquee reviews to crow about.

While the other hooks can be the subject of separate posts by themselves, the opening or the first three chapters are really your first, and perhaps your only, chance to grab the reader and throw her headlong into your story.

Anybody who’s somebody that matters to your book’s publication and its success – agents, publishers, reviewers, readers – is going to invariably sniff at the opening first. Smells good? They dive right in. Stinks? They throw your book back where it belongs – in the pile along with the others.

So, here are some quick and simple ways that newbie writers can use to create that irresistible hook.

Paint a casual scene of an unreal world. Think of it. What better way to hook your readers than with something like: “Janek got off the cab and paid the driver. He looked down. The category 4 storm raging a few miles below seemed to cover the entire North American continent.” The casualness of the scene conflicts wildly with the surreal nature of the world painted. And that pops the question in the reader’s mind: “What else could be happening in this strange world?” This type of opening applies predominantly to books in the fantasy or sci-fi genres.

Barge straight into the brawl. Nothing like dropping the reader right into the thick of the action to get her adrenaline flowing. Now, here’s the catch: don’t give away too much by trying to explain why whatever’s happening is happening. Keep that for a bit later. Your focus is on drawing the reader in into a volatile scene, immersing her in it completely and whet her appetite for follow-on action and rationale for the action by the time the opening’s through. This technique is usually adopted by writers in the thriller or mystery genres but is not necessarily limited to those.

Challenge the reader’s intellect and sense of reason. This usually takes the form of a teasingly difficult puzzle, conundrum or intriguing phenomenon around which the story gets built. Take your pick from encrypted messages, secret societies, alien swarms, paranormal sightings, unexplained disappearances, rebirths, … well, you get the idea. A word of caution: by no means are these phenomena gripping by themselves; rather, they just provide the broader theme. It still depends on how well you can sketch the characters and make their conflicts believable within these broad themes.

Make a known protagonist do something unusual. This works only for fan fiction where readers need no introduction to the protagonist and know fairly well what to expect from him or her. Throw the reader off balance by having the protagonist indulge in uncharacteristic behavior and you’ll have the reader thirsting to know why for the remainder of the book.

Kill someone. This is, by far, the most effective way to get a stranglehold on your reader’s attention. Murder (or even natural death) begs motive (or reason), and motive demands back story. A death at the beginning of your novel sets the stage beautifully to set up the back story, build the reader’s expectations and provide conflict resolution, with the motive or reason for the death either vindicated or debunked by the end of the story. A classical hook.

The above are, by no means, an exhaustive list of great opening hooks. Read around and you’ll probably find a few hundred more. A little like chess with its gazillion variations. But, the above should get you started in case you’re fresh off the blocks or weighed down by writers’ block.

What’s your favorite opening hook? Write in.

NOTE: This post is part of the On Writing series on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: 5 Ways To Get Off Your Newbie Writing Ass.

An interview with Farhan Akhtar, an Indian actor, brought out a curious phenomenon unfolding in India these days – separating the sexes and chaining down the fairer sex. While the actor fumed at the developments, I’m happy that it’s happening.

Yeah, you heard me. I’m happy that finally women are being chained down by diktats and are being denied access to proximity with men. It’s time to draw some lines around here.

And why not? There are scores of lines (both real and imaginary) drawn around the country to tell our intrusive neighbors to keep their hands off. Like the McMahon Line that separates India from China in the north-eastern part of the country.

So, isn’t it time we drew some (lines) INSIDE the country? After all, we’re a country known for “lakshman rekha“, “maryada ki rekha“, and all kinds of “rekhas” (including, of course, the glamorous actress of yester-years who goes by the same name).

So, let’s draw one to chain down the women of India (by corollary, to keep the men away) and call it the “Sex-ahon Line”.

Back to the Akhtar interview where he lambasts certain enlightened institutions for segregating boys and girls at college assemblies.

Is Akhtar out of his mind? What better way than this to teach our youngsters that “male” and “female” are not two genders of the same species, but two entirely different species themselves. Species which needed to be quarantined lest we have unsolicited mutations. Or unsolicited solicitations.

These enlightened institutions are thus well within their rights to draw an imaginary Sexahon Line between jostling teenagers vying for their first up-close-and-personal whiff of the other sex. The message? Hands off!

There are other enlightened souls these days going around suggesting that girls should stop using cell phones. Reason? Boys will send them lurid messages and entice them into scandalous relationships.

Solution? Simple. Snatch the cell phones from the girls. How dare they take advantage of technology and put themselves in a position where they become easy targets for innocent boys who cannot reign in the urge of their loins! I agree. One more Sexahon Line to draw. Hee hee!

The enlightenment is not over. The very same enlightened souls, who seem to be experts in male-female interactions and dynamics, have also suggested that women desist from wearing colorful clothes or jeans or skirts. Reason? They will be the cynosure of roving male eyes.

I’m beyond ecstatic. This is tailor-made to draw that saucy Sexahon Line on female dress code and send a much-needed love tip to young Indian boys. Girl in colorful clothes? Okay to ogle at. Girl in monochrome? Not okay to ogle at. Wait for the color, silly!

But, some people just don’t learn. Like the participants of the “The Kiss of Love” campaign held recently in Delhi and other parts of India. Said participants smooched in broad daylight just to spite moral cops who were against public display of intimacy.

Hell, what’s wrong with what the moral cops said? The audacity of said participants! Especially the women. Don’t they know that their lips have been lined with not Maybelline or Revlon but with Sexahon which is designed to keep in moisture and keep out male overture?

The best of line-giri is yet to come. Sample this. The honorable chief minister of an equally honorable Indian state came up with this peach of an idea in the wake of crimes against girl children at schools: have only lady teachers, chuck the men out!

That’s right. Out with the male brigade from all schools! Enter the Sexahon Line. Targets being the unfair sex this time.

Why stop at schools? Out with the men in all places where there’s even a remote chance that a hapless girl child will stray into their territory – hospitals, hotels, factories, apparel stores, malls, libraries, coaching centers and what have you.

In fact, why bother ourselves with cherry-picking? Let’s target ALL professions. Let’s create rampaging hordes of unemployed men who now have more time on their hands to plot their next lusty move. For, that’s all they’re born to do.

Before I run this piece off to press, here’s a final howler: a well-meaning institution has barred undergrad girls from entering its library. Before you start frothing, here’s why they did it: girls at the library were attracting (or would attract) more and more boys to the library.

Scratch your head all you like but didn’t you see that invisible Sexahon Line at the library’s door? Isn’t it logical and humane to deny girls learning opportunities when they’re guilty of… well… being girls? Who asked them to dress up and look pretty and attract the love-struck males around when quarantining the sexes is the way to go for a healthy and orderly society?

In toto, I’m quite happy with what the lovable Sexahon Line has achieved. India today is totally crisscrossed with perky, saucy lines of all sizes and colors, each with its own proud legacy of creating gender divides which are oh-so-wanted these days. Who needs old-fashioned concepts like love! Or sex!

The sexes are dead. Long live the Sexahon Line!

NOTE: This post is part of the Here and Now series (a satirical take on everyday happenings) on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: Down In The Dumps? Take A Dump!

I’ve had quite a few wannabe writers coming to me with that pin-up one-liner: “You know, I have a lot of ideas but I don’t know where to start.”

Or this: “I don’t know if my writing’s any good.”

I didn’t either, when I started out. I still don’t. And that’s what eggs us writers on. To better ourselves (and not to become another King, Rowling, or Hemingway).

Here are a few ways you could get off that butt and put actual words on paper.

Get or set a daily writing prompt for yourself. What do you do when you hesitantly rustle up a new dish? That’s right. You keep sampling it in between. Which does two things. One, it keeps you headed where you want to go. Two, the saucy little kicks to your taste buds spur you on to speed up things. That’s what prompts do to your writing.

Set up a private blog. You need to know what “your writing” looks like when “published”. Blogs are the easiest and quickest way to get off the blocks. No one ever need know you have a problem with run-on sentences or overly passive voice. Or a fetish for narcissistic characters. Until you decide otherwise. A blog’s your bestie with whom you confide your worst writing fears with.

Set a daily word count target. 500 is a good number to begin with. Sometimes, I also tell newbie writers to plot their word count progress on a spreadsheet and chart it. You’d be surprised with what visual depiction of your achieved word count can do to kick your behind when you’re falling behind.

Make technology work for you. Blogs like WordPress have tools that can trigger mini writing frenzies. One such tool is the ‘Press This’ tool, which grabs content off the internet and creates a post for you. Edit it, add to it, and publish it. And, hey presto! You’re away!

Join a writing group. Online or offline – it doesn’t matter. All you need is to hear other voices of hapless souls making this once-in-a-lifetime jump from blissful sanity to erudite lunacy. I’ll be god-darned if you don’t become a convert. For writers with already a few lakh words behind them, I contradict myself and say ‘don’t join a group’ just to write, but that’s stuff for another post.

End of day, there’s only one person you need to convince that the cockamamie scenes running around in your head deserve a spot on paper. There’s only one person you need to impress with your linguistic acrobatics and tomfoolery in prose.

Yourself.

Not your mom. Not your neighbor. Not your current flame. Not your high school teacher. Not the local bestselling author. Not the writing group’s self-imposed editor.

Y-O-U-R-S-E-L-F.

Now, how hard can that be?

NOTE: This post is part of the On Writing series on this blog. Read the previous post in this series: Don’t Just Bleed. Hemorrhage.

An entrepreneur friend of mine from Delhi landed in Bangalore (where I live) the other week. Huffing and puffing, he barged in through the door and plonked himself on the couch, exhaling loudly as he ripped off the metal clamp that he had inserted his nose into.

I looked at my watch. He was a good five hours late. I was about to ask him the reason for the delay in his flight when he silenced me with a stinker. “Yaar, what the eff is wrong with your city?”

I asked him to relax, not knowing what the eff he was talking about.

The friend snorted, beckoning for a hand-held fan. “You know? It was easier to find Bangalore from the air earlier. It used to be a patch of friendly green when you looked down. Today, the pilot circled for two hours but couldn’t spot the darned city!”

Obviously, the three-hour flight plus the five-hour delay had somehow tickled him the wrong way (or in the wrong place). But Bangalore is still green, I protested.

The protest fell on hairy, deaf ears. For the tirade continued. “Yeah. But it’s dark green! Almost brown!”

Giving him the fan and a thanda to boot, I gave him a look. What do you expect, I asked him airily, with garbage shrouding the city in a protective cover. The cheek of these Delhi-walas, I say! Can’t they make out the city’s changed?

As if reading my mind, the friend, sipping the thanda with a suspicious tongue, shot back. “What do you mean the city’s changed? It’s no more the Garden City?”

Eh? What’s that?

“Err… Garden City?”

Of course not, I chided him. Bangalore’s become a dump and become the “Gar-dump City”, what with all the garbage floating around, raining down, seeping up and oozing through every conceivable pore in its seams. You mean you weren’t “current” on that?

On the defensive, the friend looked down into his thanda, sipping religiously. After all, Delhi-walas are supposed to be current on all affairs, including current affairs.

Hang on, I told him. You are late by five hours, but your flight delay was only two hours. What happened to the remaining three? Did they get sucked into some wet compost pit?

The lop-sided smirk returned on my friend’s face as he gave the thanda a final passionate slurp and turned to me. “How do you think I came here from the airport? There were no effin’ cabs, yaar! Or those three-wheeled contraptions…”

Autos, I volunteered helpfully, knowing fully well the hairy ears were not tuned to human frequencies.

“Yeah, autos. I tell you, not one in sight. Had to use the public transport. Can you believe that, yaar? From the airport, that too! By the way, the extra three-hour delay was because we were all struggling to get out of the airport. Strangely, I couldn’t see any roads leading out of the airport, you know?”

Oh, there are roads in Bangalore, I reassured him. Need proof? I pay my road tax. So, there should be roads out there somewhere. Only, they’re lost under the sea of put-put-ting two-wheelers and the tidal waves of tuk-tuk-ing public transport vehicles.

The mention of public transport made my friend’s nose wrinkle up again. “Kya yaar, you call that public transport? Hideous looking vehicles, with their rear half cut open and sloshing to the brim with dark green and brown blobs!”

Oh, that. It was my turn to smirk. That, I piped up, is par for Bangalore… err, the Gardump City nowadays. Dump trucks have taken over the public transport system, you see.

The wrinkle deepened, opening up a frown in the process. “Those were dump trucks?”

Of course, I chided him. I then threw on a haughty air (contaminated, of course, by the aroma of sewage that’s so omnipresent nowadays). There are so many dump trucks, I explained with an un-wrinkled nose, that the civic authorities have done away with public transport buses. Not only do we save on gas but also clear up the roads by having dump trucks double up as public transport vehicles. Brilliant, na?

The wrinkle-weary friend doubled up, tears streaming down his un-wrinkled cheeks. “Dump trucks for public transport! What next?”

I leaned back. It was going well. My know-it-all Delhi-wala friend had a lot to learn. With a smug smile, I explained that the very same dump trucks had other uses as well. Such as mobile lavatories.

The jaw under the wrinkled nose hit the floor. “Huh?”

What better place than dump trucks, I elucidated with a flourish, to take a quick dump when you need to on the fly? After all, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Picking up his jaw, the confused friend nodded his assent, even if grudgingly. “Convenient, but gross yaar!”

Wagging a pointy finger, I tut-tut-ed. Don’t, I told him, dump to conclusions. I mean, don’t jump to conclusions. After all, you can hardly conclude your dumping while jumping.

The nodding became vigorous. “What else do these amazing dump trucks do?”

Imagine, I told him, that you are being dumped by someone. Now, if these dump trucks are moving around 24×7, the stench they would generate would surely make the dumped guy, which is you, forget about the pain of being dumped? And the dumper would surely rethink her decision to dump you since nothing, not even her relationship with you, could be quite as bad as the dump truck’s stench?

The nodding stopped and the head-wobbling (customary in Indian conversations when defeat is imminent) started.

And finally, I exhorted, if you are ever “down in the dumps”, just remember how you escaped from Gardump City and that’ll immediately cheer you up. How’s that for instant therapy? It’s sure to leave you breathless.

“What else do you Bangaloreans… sorry, Gardump-ians do? Is this the change you were crowing about?”

Of course, I exclaimed, thumping him on the back. We’ve also become masters at passing the buck. At “dumping our work on others”, if you will.

“How so?”

The civic authorities for example, I explained, dump their responsibilities on us.

“That happens all over India, yaar…”

Not like here though, I solemnly corrected him. Here, the civic authorities no longer pick up our dump and dispose it though they merrily levy municipal taxes and drain taxpayers’ money with nary a second thought. Their new mantra? You generate the dump, you dispose the dump!

Someone once asked me what writing was all about. I was tempted to answer in superlatives of prose – a fulfilling reverie, a cathartic epiphany, a literary orgasm that leaves you happily spent.

But, I bit back the momentary gush of verbiose. For writing is none of those glorified, intellectually rarefied and abstract moments of feathery flourish that people will have you believe.

No, writing is far messier. It’s about having your nose to the grindstone, not knowing when the grinding will stop. I remember laboring over one of my manuscripts for ten months. Yes, you read that right. TEN MONTHS. That’s like eons in writing years.

And I still only had my first draft. Which meant I was probably only 20% done in terms of getting it published!

Writing’s about growing a four-inch-thick layer of blubber that arrows and harpoons can effortlessly bounce off. Believe you me, you’ll need it.

Ask any writer who’s hung his work out there to dry. You’ll be asked who taught you to construct sentences. You’ll be deep-fried for being too descriptive. You’ll be smoked and barbecued for being too terse.

You’ll be roundly chided for thinking anyone would ever read your literary misadventure that seems to run all over the place yet go nowhere. And, oh! Yes, you’ll be called names. And, guess what? That’s just for starters. Scratch four, make that six inches.

Writing is another word for fighting with yourself. I remember, for my first novel, I fought (with myself, of course) to keep myself on the planned plot outline. I fought over the names of the characters, some of which honestly sounded more cockamamie than call names of your average one-year-old tot.

I fought over the book title. I fought over which was more important: Writing? Or other inconsequential things like sleep, grub and social company? I fought over the mode of publishing, the amount of marketing I’d force upon myself, and practically anything else I could possibly fight over.

I fought. Period. And, boy! Did I lose! Did I also win? I don’t remember.

So, like some great soul once said: “There’s nothing to writing. You just sit in front of a typewriter and bleed.”

Maybe that’s all there is to it. Just bleed.

And have a hemorrhage while you’re at it.

If all that sounds a bit of a dampener for a newbie writer reading this, it’s meant to be. Writing’s not for everyone. Not because it’s an intellectually exclusive activity. But because it’s mentally draining. Physically wracking. And psychologically scathing. It puts you through the wringer like no other profession can.

If you still feel you should write, go right ahead and take the plunge into the ink. Who knows? You’re probably the one Morpheus is searching for.