Hari’s story

A week has passed since I posted my review of Hostage for a Hood by Lionel White. During this period I read more than I usually do, including a couple of unfinished novels, and wrote more than 3,000 words of what I think is shaping up into more than a short story. The characters and the setting are Indian.

At this point it could be either a novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words) or a novella (17,500 to 40,000 words), as categorised by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I'm writing about five hundred words a day though the word count is moving up in tandem with my confidence. I hope to have the story ready by Christmas.

I haven’t thought of a title yet or what to do with the story once it is written. I'm thinking of self-publishing through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s a crime story of sorts, more atmospheric and less hardboiled. The main character is an investigator in the Mumbai Crime Branch. His name is Hari, a popular Indian and a Hindu name. In Sanskrit, the name stands for Lord Vishnu, the supreme god, and one of the Great Trinity. It also refers to the colour yellow and its hues. The Hari of my story is neither god nor chromatic although his devout parents, whoever they may be, could have named their son after the revered deity.

In case you’re wondering how the name is pronounced, this will give you an idea.

“Hari? What kind of a name is that?”
“It’s a proper name.”
“As in Harry Potter or hairy legs?”
“No, as in hurry up, please!”

In May this year, I wrote a post about my experiment with other forms of writing, a collection of short stories including one about an Indian avatar of an American cowboy, a short book on self-help, and a possible flash fiction.

About the flash fiction piece, I had observed, “I have no idea where this is going, if it is in fact going anywhere at all.” Since it wasn't going anywhere, I despatched it to the recycle bin. The short story collection and the self-help book are still in the works.

For now I'm enjoying writing Hari’s story. I type out a few lines every now and then, at work, and then again at home late evening. I’d love to spend all day writing it out. So far it has been the most realistic writing project I have taken up outside of my newspaper job.

Every morning I revise what I wrote the previous day, wherein lies the challenge. I read the rewritten words and sentences and find a dozen ways to rewrite them. Which word reads better? Which line sounds convincing? Where do I draw the creative line? Is there a line at all? How come I can't see the line!

Hostage for a Hood by Lionel White, 1957

A review of a gritty crime novel by Lionel White for Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

Every minute she had was borrowed, and every second ticked off the time for murder.

© www.pulpcovers.com

If ever I have read a hardboiled story about a lead character who happens to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and gets into serious trouble, it’s Hostage for a Hood, 1957, by Lionel White. Chronologically, it’s the American crime writer’s twelfth novel out of a total of nearly forty dark and noirish stories.

Joyce Sherwood, small, slender, beautiful, and in her early twenties, is returning from the bank with a cashier’s cheque for $2,600 when she crashes her seven-year old sedan into a Cadillac on a deserted stretch of Brookside. Two hoodlums, one of them carrying a Tommy gun, step out of the other car, assess the damage to their vehicle, and straightaway hijack Joyce, her French poodle, and her Chevy.

The hoods were on their way to ambush an armoured car ferrying a quarter of a million dollars and a pretty housewife had suddenly messed up their plan. Cribbins, the one with the Tommy gun and in charge of the caper, takes Joyce with him to a deserted mansion in Cameron Corners, an old farming town two hours away. However, before he does, Cribbins and his accomplices manage to ambush the armoured vehicle, kill the driver in cold blood, and make off with the loot.

Joyce’s dream—of buying a new car for her loving husband and ex-marine, Bart Sherwood, for their first wedding anniversary—soon turns into a horrible nightmare, as she is chained and locked up in a dark and dingy room inside the mansion.

Enter Detective Lieutenant Martin Parks, in charge of homicide of the Brookside force, and his assistant, Detective Horace Sims, who are understanding of Bart’s plight but can do little without leads and witnesses. Also enter the other hoodlums including a particularly evil junkie called Santino who is obsessed with sex and slaying, and a sexy moll called Paula who unwittingly sparks trouble between Cribbins and Santino.

Back home, Bart Sherwood is anguished by his wife’s sudden disappearance. He doesn’t lose faith in Joyce in spite of the possibility that she might have run out on him, with another man and all their savings. He and Joyce are crazy about each other.

“My wife and I are in love with each other. Joyce wouldn’t leave me. Even if she wanted to, which is preposterous, she couldn’t have done it this way.”

Joyce spends a week in abject fear and chained captivity during which she comes very close to being raped and killed and, in one particular scene, is a mute and tormented spectator to a midnight romp between Cribbins and Paula on her bed. There is no graphic description but White tells you what is happening through the shock, surprise, and humiliation felt by Joyce.

With little help from the police, it is left to Bart Sherwood to find his missing wife and he does so by following a series of coincidences, including the reappearance and disappearance of their poodle.

Frankly, I didn’t realise that Hostage for a Hood was a caper until my blog friend George Kelley brought it to my attention that Lionel White, in fact, specialised in capers. And, in so far as capers go, this is the best one I have read in many years. The characters are atypical but very well-drawn; the plot is solid from the start; and the narrative, while slow to begin with, gathers momentum and finishes with a chilling climax. Recommended.

Delhi is Not Far: The Best of Ruskin Bond, 1994

© Wikimedia Commons

Roald Dahl and Ruskin Bond have common ground in India. The British novelist, born in Wales to Norwegian parents, and the Indian author, born in Himachal Pradesh to British parents, are two very popular writers of children’s literature. Their books are prominently displayed in Indian bookstores and continue to sell in good numbers.

Bond, 80, is more Indian than many Indians and this reflects in his vast body of work consisting of many novels, short stories, essays, and songs and love poems. He writes about life in the hill stations close to the Himalayas in North India. The award-winning author has been singularly responsible for the growth of children’s literature. Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, in 1934, and now lives with his adopted family in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, at the foothills of the mountain range. He has never left his adopted country.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

In many ways Ruskin Bond reminds me of that other celebrated Indian writer, the late R.K. Narayan, who wrote about the charming life in a small fictional town called Malgudi in South India. While Bond’s and Narayan’s stories essentially grew out of their experiences in the north and south, respectively, their writing styles run parallel in terms of simplicity and lucidity of prose.

As with Roald Dahl, both young and old read Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan. They are the ambassadors of Indian literature.

© www.littlesistersofthepoor.in

I don’t think I have written about Ruskin Bond earlier. An opportunity arose when I recently bought his collection, Delhi is Not Far: The Best of Ruskin Bond, 1994, from the annual charity sale at Home for the Aged run by Little Sisters of the Poor, founded by Jeanne Jugan in 1839, in France. The old-age home is located behind my house and I have picked up many good books from their yearly fair, as much for a charitable cause as for my own.

Delhi is Not Far is a 428-page anthology of four decades of Ruskin Bond’s writing, particularly the best of his prose and poetry and essays and short stories. India Today has described his writing thus: “Bond’s sentences are moist with dew and the mountain air, with charm, nostalgia and underplayed humour… (he is) our resident Wordsworth in prose.”

While I read his stories a long time ago, this is the first time I’d be reading them in an anthology and I’m looking forward to it, especially his five tales of the macabre. I didn’t know Ruskin Bond wrote those too. He begins his introduction with these lines: And here I am again, in my little room overlooking the winding road to Tehri, writing another introduction. No one has ever offered to write an Introduction for any of my books, and so, perforce, I must do my own.”

Rendezvous by Nelson DeMille, 2012

“I saw her in my field glasses. It was a woman.” I added, “They make good snipers.”

Remember the alien that haunted and hunted a US special forces team in the jungles of Central America in Predator, where only the head of the commando unit survives in the end? Cut back to the Vietnam War and imagine a sniper eliminating an elite reconnaissance patrol, where again only the leader of the detachment lives to tell the tale. Except, in Nelson DeMille’s Rendezvous, the sniper is neither man nor alien. It’s a young woman who is as deadly with a long-range Russian-make Draganov rifle as she is sensuous bathing naked under a waterfall, in full view of the lieutenant whose men she is taking down one by one.

The female sniper, clad in black silk pajamas, plays mind games with the ten-man recon patrol which, in spite of being entrenched in the dark and treacherous jungles of Vietnam, has nowhere to run or hide. They are lost and confused and are sitting ducks for the “bitch,” and DeMille shows them no mercy in this crisply written story.

The sniper torments the nameless lieutenant by killing all his men and then mocks him by sparing his life, so that he can go back and tell everyone about her, and thus create the legend of the female sniper. Her trophies should not go in vain.

Rendezvous is entertaining with an element of unintended humour, and it moves at a brisk pace. I don’t know if there were female snipers in the Viet Cong that fought the carpet-bombing Americans, but there were highly-trained insurgents whose guerrilla tactics often won the battle against the enemy.

Rendezvous is the second of Nelson DeMille's Kindle Single; his first was The Book Case (2012), a delightful story about a murder in a bookstore, which I reviewed a couple of years ago. I recommend both the novellas.

Love Ageth Not by Ramabai C. Trikannad

On August 16, I reproduced a poem titled How Long? by my late grandmother Ramabai C. Trikannad who was a writer, columnist, poet, and a spiritual aspirant. Below is another of her poems, Love Ageth Not, which I’d like to offer as an ode to all those who have found their soul mates and have loved and cherished them all their lives.

I sit in my garden chair,
Musing on faraway things.
The hush of the evening air,
Rest to the weary heart brings.

My hair is turning a grey,
Lines in my hands I can trace.
Long years have passed since the day,
I loved to gaze on her face.

The bud of love would unfold,
To blossom and fade away.
But my worn, feeble life holds,
Perfume of the longpast day.

The strength of our arms is run,
We make our aged pair.
But the spirit of love won,
Still with each other we share.

A deep voice calls and I rise,
“It’s so cold, the wind is blowing,
To linger, dear, is unwise,
Come in, the fire is glowing.”

© Ramabai C. Trikannad

B(l)ogged down

You might have noticed that I haven't posted anything significant since my review of the first Hardy Boys adventure on November 21. I have been rather busy with work-related commitments and deadlines. Although I do get the time to read, especially while commuting to and from my office—a good 45-minute journey one way—I prefer to play chess online, listen to music, or play scrabble on my tab with Android as my opponent. All three activities reduce stress. I find a game of chess extremely relaxing and addictive. It keeps the mind off mundane thoughts. There is immense satisfaction in checkmating your opponent or getting your opponent to resign, and you don’t need anyone to rejoice in your victory.

Meanwhile, I completed John Grisham’s latest Gray Mountain and read a short story by Leonard Finley Hilts called Murder Rides High, both of which I’ll be reviewing soon. For now, though, I'm content visiting blogs and leaving comments, if I have something to say. It’s actually a relief for me not to post my own.

Musings on a tired Tuesday

There are some things you don't forget. In my case there is a line someone said to me. Rather it was a question to which I had no answer. It has stayed with me.

I was in my late teens and on a trek to a mountain top 3,000 km (1,864 miles) above sea level. We were a big group and I was part of a small bunch of college friends and new acquaintances. The night before the long trek we halted at a desolate railway station and slept on the platforms. Some of us walked along the tracks, others sat huddled on the platform, talking and joking and laughing. It was winter and quite cold even by western India standards.

The conversation veered to sun signs and ego trips for that is what discussing sun signs are usually about. Linda Goodman was the unseen referee. We talked about each other’s sun signs, our good and rotten characteristics, and bragged about famous people born under our signs. A Gandhi here, an Einstein there, a Churchill above, a Hitler below.

One of the girls in the group wanted to know my sun sign.

“I’m a cusp,” I said.

“Between which two signs?”

“Libra and Scorpio,” I replied. “Bang in the middle.”

“What!” she said, and then came the unexpected question, “How do you manage?”

That took me by surprise. I didn’t know what to say.

Since then, I have always considered myself to be more Libra than Scorpio. I owe allegiance to the scales even though there is seldom any balance in my life. The signs are all there. Show me a menu with more than one dish on it and I’ll show you how not to make up your mind. Suggest a dozen lovely places to visit and I’ll come right back at you with, “So where do we go?” Point me in the right direction at an intersection and I’ll scratch my head and look the other way. Watch me make a decision to write a book and then watch me dream about winning the Booker already. And that’s just tipping the scales. For a Libra-Scorpio cusp, I manage quite well. I do, don’t I?

What was the wisest, weirdest or wackiest question you were asked?