My Protagonists.

 

Though I have stopped reading recently, in my opinion it corrupts the free thinker, [more about it later] I was an avid reader since my childhood. And often I wondered, when writers wrote about the feelings they had for their characters ‘outside’ their write-ups, be it a short story, poetry or novel. I thought it was odd. If you are taking it as a slice from life, they in fact are in flesh and blood and nothing extra ordinary if they come out and talk with you, on the contrary the writer had based his story on their experiences, nothing his own.

When the characters from my new novel, ‘Nine points and Beyond’ took possession of my thinking process I was at loggerheads with myself. It was nothing of sort I had experienced before nor have read about it. May be, I was too involved in the process of writing so they left me paralyzed me as a being.

For example though it is said you, everybody for that matter is never 100% male and/or female when I tried to think from the point of Narayan , a young lad , all robust, manly, athletic, handsome with homosexual orientation, I could not go under his skin to that extent. All that what I had read, only got transpired on the paper, nothing from my field of personal experience. So when I started jotting him down on paper at a particular moment I just could not think ahead. In frustration I got up from the desktop and was irritable for the rest of the day. My experience to have writers’ block! Why, in practice of 50 years barring only 2 patients, none came out even on the medical grounds! Maybe I attributed all these qualities to him just to show that in spite of being ‘All’ this, one’s sexual orientation could be alternative, to endorse the normalcy of the condition probably, but ‘He’ did not like it. He did not want to be gay. He pleaded with me, ‘please don’t make me Gay, and let me be as normal as one can be.’ And surprisingly I sympathized with him being romantic to the level of stupidity. So even being Gay he has a lady love who loves him for what he is. And gave him all those emotions what a heterosexual adolescent lad could have. I don’t know by doing so whether I deviated him from the natural course what Gays follow because I was just not aware of it. Anyway I wanted him to be as ‘Human’ as possible, sexual orientation being just one facet of self; I feel I am successful in doing so. At places I myself was so worried about him that I wanted him not to go wayward but being IITean topper he had his head firmly on his shoulders and he chose the right path in the most dignified way!

Second character that bothered me a lot was the victim of Pedophilia. The condition though prevalent in every society right from the inception of humanity, only now it is being discussed openly. Even being consultant but not practicing Pediatrics I hardly came across any case of child molestation having its repercussions in adult life. It’s so habitually pushed under the carpet in hush hush tones that whatever we experience may just be the tip of the iceberg. Why he meekly surrenders to the rascal? Stray instances if the child is having good psychological back up from the home or the peers he/she takes it in his own stride and leads a mostly normal life.[Again what’s that? It has become a fashion now a day to go deep to the roots and excavate some figment that maybe/may not be the reason for ‘THE’ behavior , not considered as normal] But if they are repetitive, that too under duress the victim suffers a lot, carrying the burden of it even to his adult life. Again a domain, alien to me, like Homosexuality. Lot of reading, going through references and addition of study, done on my own, of the young ones from the particular area brought him on the paper. Again because he is intelligent does not carry the cross on his shoulders throughout the life and changes according to the circumstances. May be again outcome of my being romantic to the core!

Third one did not pose much problem because though he comes from an orthodox background, it remains just at that, A background! What posed a dilemma for me was how to paint the religious outfit he hails from? Though maligned for their extreme right wing outlook, in my personal experience average RSSite is quite a level headed person and is always on the go to help anybody and everybody when the need arises. On the broader front I feel the thinking that, ‘If Israel can do it why not Hindus?’ could be the root cause for their extreme thinking. For me, in 21^st century ‘Religion is the most redundant thing!’ His father being journalist, helped him to break the barriers, which I feel was always at back of his mind, to give fanatics the jolt of their life time. In my personal experience, it’s a fact but least dramatic. Families from both the sides happily attended the wedding and both are leading a normal life but on an alien land! The crux lies here!

I frequent an asylum being run by a young energetic lad since he himself was eighteen and stories of likes of Shewanta/Mohini abound. Of course with happy ending. So that too was not a problem but the problem was of hearts. Only girl in the novel, practically childhood sweetheart of one of the boys has to accept that he is not the one for her but apart from him there is none for her! May be cliche’ again but I had to end novel on most romantic note. It was possible only because they were on the same level though their sexual orientations mismatched.

All in all, all of them occupied a huge part of my life taking away huge chunk of mental peace in the process. I realized on the way, that it is possible for your characters, to whose existence you and you are solely responsible, to hound you to the level of disturbing your daily life.

But is it not the life all about?