Indian Detective characters

Indian Detectives

It is amazing when you think about the fact that the entire genre of detective fiction that exists today started with a single person – Arthur Conan Doyle. He was not the first  detective character by any means –  Edgar Allan Poe created a character called C.Auguste.Dupin, which is supposed to be first modern detective...the concept of the impossible murderer in ‘Murder in the Rue morgue’ and the idea that the best place to hide an object is in plain sight as in ‘The purloined letter’ both came from this character.

Another early detective was ‘M.Lecoq’ created by the French author Emile Gaboriau, who used to spend his time in various disguises. And there were some other minor characters – Charles Dickens created a detective ‘Inspector Bucket’ in Bleak house, and Wilkie Collins wrote about a mystery situation in ‘The woman in white’. (Those of you old enough can remember a Doordarshan ripoff called Shwetambari or something which was based on this novel)

But this is all mere quibbling. All these characters are long forgotten except by mystery junkies. The quintessential detective of all time was none other than the great character created by the good doctor – Sherlock Holmes. Doyle cracked the funda of how to create a great character who knows the truth and  yet maintain story tension for the reader, by having a dim-witted companion as the story teller, who knows as little as the reader and is as lost as he is  – and hence he created the other great character of Dr Watson.

Holmes is so well known that there is no need to talk anything about him. (If you don’t know about Holmes, then I wonder why you are reading this!). Not only is the enduring image of a private detective, but he had an undying influence in all future detective characters. They were all either copies of Holmes, or consciously trying to be as different from him as possible.

Not too many of the copies are remembered today, but two of the anti-Holmes are the most beloved characters in detective fiction. First is the ex Belgian policeman with the egg shaped head and long moustaches – M. Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie created Poirot as the anti thesis of the testerosone filled super hero Sherlock- clones. He was a small dapper man, a  foreigner, no disguises, no physical strength, no clue finding and no stud-giri. In fact she created a Holmes clone called M.Giraud and made him a figure of fun.  After that, she went even further and created an even more unlikely detective, going as far as possible down the anti-Holmes path – a little old lady living in a small village who ‘disapproved of murder’ – Miss Jane Marple. Here she managed to break the mold of the dumb narrator as well, and made it a normal 3^rd person novel – which was again a remarkable feat.

The American school of detective fiction did not go quite so far – they continued with the testerosone blast, but only added some cynicism and unshavenness, and replaced Sherlock’s cocaine addiction with a  simpler bourbon whisky addiction. Writers like Dashiell Hammett, Philip Marlowe and Erle Stanley Gardner produced ‘hardboiled’ private dicks like Sam Spade who were eagerly lapped up by Hollywood with amazing actors like Humphrey Bogart creating a visual icon of the tough detective.

Since then there have been detective stories of every nationality and timezone – from Cadfael the monk in 14 century England to Elijah Baley investigating robot murders in the far away future. There are fat African woman detectives in Botswana (Precious Ramotswe of the No.1 Ladies detective agency) and Red Indian Navajo detectives and what not.


In India, strangely, we have never really gone in for the detective genre much. The only 2 major characters are both bong created – Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi. Satyajit Ray created Feluda (Prodosh Mitter)  as more or less a Sherlock Holmes clone – same tall thin strong guy who is good at everything – from Kung fu to Shooting to medieval history and has a dumb narrator in shape of his cousin Tapesh. It is still great fun to read, though the stories are a bit thin and dated.

Similarly Byomkesh Bakshi is another Holmes and Feluda  clone created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, complete with a dumb narrator in the shape of Ajit Bandyopadhyay. I have actually never read this dude, and know about him only because of the serial on Doordarshan, which was really cool.

Apart from these two characters, who are pretty old in the tooth – Byomkesh was written in the 1930s and Feluda in the 60s; there are no Indian detective characters that I can think of. HRF Keating wrote a series of books about Inspector Ghote (one was made into a film with Naseeruddin Shah) but they didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Even in films and TV there were not too many detective stories. By the far the most famous is ‘Karamchand’(so cool), then the popular but crap quality ‘CID’( which is strictly speaking, a police procedural and not a detective fiction). There were a few films like ‘Do Jasoos’, ‘Gopichand Jasoos’ etc which were more a spoof than a detective story. There were a number of mystery stories but without a central detective character.

Modern writers have tried their hand at it – Miss Marple clones in Smita Jain's “Piggies on the Railway” and Kalpana Swaminathan's “Monochrome Madonna” and a few others.  But frankly, they all suck.

I wonder why, actually. Detective stories are fun for all – fun to write, fun to read – they are basically an intellectual adventure with some spills and thrills – a crossword with gore, so to speak. 

So I also decided to try my hand at it.

The first challenge was the character – what would be a good name and character? Just when I was thinking of this, a mail from a headhunter popped into my inbox. It was an old Bajaj alumni who signed himself as ‘Dipy’ singh.  Just then, my boss came to introduce one serd to me, who had just joined as the head of sales....

‘Meet Mr mumblety mumble Singh’ He said.

 ‘Eh?’

The serd grinned toothily and said ‘Oh, you can call me Dipy’

Two Dipys in 2 minutes – has to be a sign. Dipy it is. So I called my detective Dipy singh. It is not possible for a detective character to be a bearded and pug serd, so I converted him into a cut serd, and balding too, just because I felt like it.

I made him into a tandoori chicken and cold beer fan, because I am one, and it was fun to write about people eating tandoori and drinking cold beer. Yum yum, I am salivating just thinking about it.  Also, it sounds like a very serd thing to do. A teetotaller veggie serd would be a really sad and depressing thing. Now if you eat and drink like this, you will be a bit plump and dumpy – but not too much.

Next you need a dumb narrator – and who could be dumber than me? So I made myself the second character –  a fat slob writer who is Dipys drinking partner.

I was very clear that I don’t want to investigate some normal murder and suspense stuff – it should be something weird and supernatural, but can be investigated logically by a detective.

I had just been to a blood bank for some reason, and it struck me that this would be an ideal place for a vampire – ready-made blood. But how would an Indian vampire be different from a phoren one? And how would a detective catch him? All this thinking went into the first Dipy story, which you can read here, if interested.

http://www.ketanjoshi.net/Fiction05.html

But after that, I thought that Vampires are too much of a western idea – not indian  enough. So I tried to think of specifically indian situations and mystery ideas that could be from there. I wrote a story about Tantric curses, one about a godman, etc.  As I wrote, I tried to make it Indian as far as possible, and unlike a normal detective story. The character and story frequently twisted in my hands, and ended up on paper quite different from what I had jotted down in my starting notes. Oh well, Thats the real fun of writing – when a story creates itself and dances on to the page.

I put together a few stories and made it into a book, which I put on the Kindle store - which can be accessed through a Kindle, any tablet, smartphone and even on the PC.  

http://www.amazon.com/Dipy-Singh-Private-detective-ebook/dp/B005WB244M

What will happen to that is a real mystery, but by gum, it was fun to write.

Hair

I am addicted to Masterchef Australia, and am so sad that  its gonna end today L

So I thought I would write a post inspired by Masterchef.  As everyone knows, the universal sign for the chef profession is that long hat they wear. I remember seeing it for the first time in Richie Rich comics – Chef Pierre used to wear it. Later I saw in the ads and banners of many restaurants – a smiling guy wearing that damn stupid hat. 

‘Why do they wear it ?’ I asked my mom

‘It’s to prevent their hair from falling in the food dear’ she told me.

Oh. But why such a tall hat? I wondered...wouldn’t it be easier to wear a normal cap or something? And now you do see a lot of chefs wearing plastic hair nets, or Hayden wearing a baseball cap.

And with good reason too. Seeing a hair in your food, or much worse, finding one in your mouth is the most disgusting experience. Ugh. You are chomping on some succulent food, and suddenly you feel a foreign object in your mouth. You play with it with your tongue, and find that it is a hair! Yech. Then you pull out a long strand from your mouth and throw it out and glare at the cook, who shrivels in shame. You sit there and wonder whether to puke, or get up from the table in disgust and just shrug and carry on eating.  I know people in each category.

In fact, finding stray hairs anywhere is a disgusting experience. You pick up the wife’s comb to run through your hair, and recoil on seeing her long strands caught in it. You see it lying on the floor and it’s disgusting – you turn to berate the person who is supposed to sweep it up. Hairs which clog the bathroom drain are even worse.

Hair! Ugh!

But isn’t it strange?

 That same hair, when it was attached to the scalp, was the most beautiful thing.  It was one the most beautiful attributes of the wife’s beauty. You ran your fingers through it and caressed the satin like threads, you smelt the hair after a shampoo, and bought strands of flowers to adorn those dark tresses. Hair neatly oiled and combed were a sign of culture and civilisation, hair kept loose were erotic and alluring. Nothing but the best oils, shampoos and conditioners were good enough for that hair.

But now that it is separated from the body -  it’s a disgusting thing. It makes you shudder.

Why?

When I thought about it, I realised that this applies to all things. The love you flourish on something which is a part of your system, turns to an equal amount of disgust when it is separated from the system.

The food and drink which you so lovingly prepared and ate, enjoying all aspects of look, feel, smell and taste, evoke disgust when they exit your body as shit and piss.

The hair you lose, the skin which is shed, the sweat that is lost, even the air you breathe out – all of it is seen as disgusting, and something to loathe.

And not just in your bodily system, even in a social or political system. Someone you have purged from your system is seen as something to be avoided and repelled.

Organisations  actively hate ex employees – especially victims of sacking or layoffs. They are not allowed to come inside the office or interact with the current employees. They are treated as scum.

You would hate an ex partner – an old spouse or girl/boy friend -  with a passion. The bitter relations of divorcees are legendary.

Even in society, the worst punishment that can be imposed is to make someone a pariah – cut him off from the social structure. He/ she becomes a waste product, and something to be avoided at all costs.

A person who used to be a friend, and with whom you have had a falling out – is more reviled and hated than any other enemy.

This is not something natural – nature is a circle, and all that is blooming today will become waste tomorrow, become fertiliser, get absorbed back into the system and the day after tomorrow again be a part of the blooming tree.

If you were wondering what is the point of this rambling write up – that is it.

Don’t hate things illogically – don’t cringe at stray hairs and don’t hate people you have fallen out of relationships with.

If you have ever hated someone, just think of a chef’s silly  hat, think of a girl’s beautiful hair, think of  a hair in your food and smile.

Bad books drive out good books

Some of you might remember a principle from your economics classes = 'Greshams law' - which says bad money drives out good money.

A similar thing seems to be happening with books today. Bad books drive out good books.

Let me explain.

The fall of Indian writing which can be traced back to 'The Inscrutable americans' by Anurag Mathur. This was the first simple language low IQ book about a horny Indian boy in USA, and it struck a chord with many first time readers, who were turned off by the depressing, turgid, self absorbed and unreadable prose from the 'serious' indian writers.

Anurag took it down the 'dumbing down' path and wrote a simple book for the less sophisticated crowd. . I had a discussion with R Sriram of Crossword on this, and he was very clear that this was because a much larger amount of people - the non serious readers - could read and enjoy this kind of book. This made this a huge hit with the college crowd in the nineties.

Among this college crowd was a wannabe litteraeur from  a corporate background - Chetan Bhagat.

 He sparked off a massive change in Indian publishing which will go down in history as Chetan Bhagats revolution.

Chetan wrote a book from the heart -'5.1 someone at IIT'. It was crappily written and plotted, but at least it was from the heart. It became an unexpected best seller, due to its easy paced language and identifiable characters. It fulfilled the basic need of written entertainment - it identified, it engrossed, it entertained. Rupa also played ball by launching at an incredible price of 95 rs - accessible to all. the average penguin book was about 200- 300 bucks.

A combination of factors - the uniqueness of the book, the zeitgiest of the times, the burgeoning college and young professional audience, the allure of the 'IIT' branding, the pricepoint, exploding word of mouth, all combined to make it the highest selling book in indian english history. BOOM. Never before had the publishing industry seen anything like this - it left the entire industry shell shocked.

It made enough money for an IIM A investment banker in Hongkong to leave his hugely paying job and come back to India to take up writing and gyaan baazi full time - that kind of money. The first indian book to be optioned for a movie.

It was a publishing and writing wet dream.

CB could see a good thing when he saw it, and using his management skills, he  identifying his target audience and writing for a large  populace - call center people in '1 night at a call centre' ,   Cricket and religion in '3 mistakes of my life' - intercaste marriages in '2 state' and the social revolution in '2020'  - all making him a juggernaut of the Indian writing scene in his thirties.

All this when the entire traditional reading, writing and publishing fraternity sneered at him. 'Pop writing' , they said, 'no substance'. Not a patch on Rushdie or Naipaul or Ghosh. A Justin Beiber of indian writing.

But hey - who the fuck cares? He was the king. He was selling. The masses loved him. and most importantly - people realised that this was the way to bypass the traditional literature scene completely. Screw the intellectual mofos and the elitist editors and reviewers.

People realised that you dont need to write good literature to be a success - you just need to be simple in your language and write about college, and price it cheap.

A shit storm of crap books ensued.

This lead to a range of writers writing about their college lives, and even a publisher who specialised only in such books -  a bengali owned firm called Srishti publications. Soon you had books on IIT, IIM, JNU, REC, Delhi college, architecture colleges - you name it.

These books made it big too -see these books in the flipkart best seller list 'Life is what you make it', 'I too had a love story', 'Horn ok pls' 'oh shit not again' 'you were my crush' etc etc. Walk into any shop and see the piles of these books.

So a number of people jump on the bandwagon with more such books with pathetic writing and plot, shoddy copyediting and overall book quality, and more newbie readers go for them. The book shop owner sees this and starts promoting these books in their stores at the expense of more traditional books - and the vicious circle continues, finally resulting in a bookshop having only crappy bestsellers, and a generation of readers who have grown up reading only crappy books and thus have no taste whatsoever.

A normal wellwritten traditional type of book has very little chance of success now, because no one will want to take the effort of reading it, therefore Book shops wont stock it, therefore the publisher will not be able to afford to publicise it, and therefore it wont sell. Therefore the bookshop wont stock it. therefore the publisher will not print it. therefore, such books will not be available at all.


The cycle is complete. The bad book has driven out the good book.

Some thoughts on marriage

Some thoughts on marriage

There was a spirited argument at a bachelor party about why people get married, or in other words, why does the institution of marriage exist ? why get married at all, when you can just live together with a mate of your choice ? This sparked off a hot response saying that this is against Indian culture, or 'sanskruti.'  The logical question at this point was, obviously, 'what is this sanskruti?' - pls define the same. That pissed him off, and the discussion went tangentially from there.

Anyway, that started me thinking about marraige. What is marriage ? The dictionary defines 'marriage' as a 'contract' - a legal union. A couple can be said to be married only when a priest or a legal authority says that they are married. Else it is a casual union, without any kind of legal or moral sanctity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage

 That got me thinking even more - why should  a social authority like  a priest or magistrate have a monopoly on marriages ? It should logically be only between the two concerned parties, and at most their families.

Indian sanskriti defines various  types of marraiges , which includes stuff like Gandharva vivaha (where the couple just agree to live together, without a license Eg case of Shakuntala and  Dushyanta ), Rakshasa vivaha (Groom fights girls family for the girl - Eg Abduction of Amba Ambika and Ambalika by Bhishma), Asura vivaha (Purchase of the girl for money)  and Pisacha vivaha (a kidnapping and forced marriage). Later Manusmriti laid out 4 legal/ socially acceptable forms of marriage – Brahma, Arsha, Daivya, Prajapatya; but the point remains that less conservative forms of marriage were known and practised in Indian sanskruti, until social sanction became too powerful to avoid.  

http://society.indianetzone.com/weddings/1/hindu_types_marriage.htm

This brings us to the point at hand – why is marriage so crucial to society, that immensely complex and powerful traditions, laws and religious taboos were created to control the mating function?

One logic put forward is that marriage exists to avoid  competition and ensure the DNA pass on of the male. Unmarried females are a cause of concern in less sophisticated societies, as all the males want to mate with them and impregnate them, causing strife. 'To the victor comes the spoils' leads to the strongest guy 'owning' all the women, leaving nothing for the lesser dominant males - as can be seen in the animal kingdom, as in Lions and Gorillas. This situation is intrinsically unstable, as the strongest guy will become weaker and the young males will become stronger with time, leading to a constant situation of strife.

To avoid this, society came up with a fair distribution policy, alloting one mate to each person, and no one else will be allowed to pursue the mate - with the understanding that he / she will also not pursue other mates. This will ensure smooth pass on of DNA.

 However, there are some gaps in this theory - mainly, what happens in case of an infertile mate? Indian culture is replete with stories of Holy sages being called in to provide their sperm to fill in for dead or infertile kings - Eg Ambika and Ambalika of the Kuru clan, Kunti, Madri and Gandhari, Drupad, etc etc. The children of these unions were inheritors of the property and royal privilege, even though they were definitely not the descendants of the said kings.

 Contrast that with the fate of Ghatotkacha or even Karna - they were children of kings and queens, but due to the fact of their bastardy, their illegitimacy, they were not eligible for kingship, even though their father / mother acknowledged the kinship.

 So that brings us to the actual cause of marriage - the ability of society to identify inheritors of property, and ensure smooth pass of title.

The only reason that marriage exists is to provide  a clear and unambigous social structure to ensure property holdings. The whole basis of the capitalistic system depends on ownership rights (Meum and tuum, the greek concepts of mine and yours) If every ownership title was simply a matter of 'strongest take all' , it will lead to chaos. A father would not be interested in farming if he could not ensure that his child would not get it after him. this is especially true in case of land and farm holdings - if every bastard and by-blow was entitled to his share, social structure would be at a pass.

In fact, in England, they went even further and said that only the first born legal child could inherit land, even the other legal children were left with nothing. This was the law of Primogeniture, and was installed to prevent fragmentation of land holdings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture

Thus we come to the three principles of marriage

1) Equality - every man should be able to get a mate, and available females should not be cornered by a single big bully

2) DNA pass on - to enable each male to pass on his DNA in an identifiable manner. Thus the distaste for adopted children, illegitimate children and 'cuckoos' - children born by other people impregnating a wife.

3) Property title and caste/ social class - to ensure smooth running of social capitalist / monarchist system. In a tribal or hunter gatherer system, illegimate children are not taboo, as  it makes no real difference to the social structure. Only in a more mature system will you see this insistence on a 'lawful' marriage and 'legitimacy' of children.

So while the dynamics and love, support, sex etc between the couple is the cornerstone of the relationship between the couple, it is the social requirements listed above which are the cornerstone of the institution of marriage.