Holmes needs a Moriarty!

I’ve embarked on a literary pursuit lately- the writing kind, I mean. Of course, I’ve been reading everything I could lay my hands on ever since childhood. But all I was ever interested in reading were crime & detective thrillers, novels and short stories- the kind purists and critics love to dismiss as not-very-literary. In my defense, Arthur C. Doyle and Jeffrey Archer did a better job of keeping me awake through all those Saturday nights than any biography ever could in an afternoon.

I began writing in an impromptu competition- of writing a story that made sense in 11:59 minutes just to show off to a friend one boring evening. It turned out surprisingly well. Or so that friend said. And I thought, “what the heck! I’ll write a novella with this as the introductory chapter!”

Two weekends later I read that first chapter I wrote; To say I was appalled would be a euphemism. But what could I do, I’d already written two more chapters introducing the hero and the heroine! And to think I was half-way through a third chapter for which I bullied a friend into letting me build a character based on him!!

As all great artists do when met with such insurmountable obstacles of criticism, I sought a second opinion. And a third. And a few more opinions, just in case. During all these I was pretty careful to not ask opinions of dear friends who’d give brutally honest reviews. I was not wrong in that. Thus began my novella.

And then it stopped.

The trouble was, I ran out of ways to make the hero look ‘awesome’- I mean, there are only so many ways I can show that a guy is good at what he does or how he does it! And that the heroine is a strong, independent woman who can hold her own! Damsels in distress are passé, you know… I even gave him a heartbreak and her a mysterious back story for good measure; What else could I do!

One day weeks later, I was binge-watching a James Bond movie marathon and it struck me- the villains were good…like reaaaaally good. Formidablé, as the French song goes, is the word for it. Wonderful and formidable.

I had Le Chiffré, Blofeld and Harvey Metcalfe on the top of my mind and I felt a passing regret for not paying attention to non-fiction sooner. So I went ahead and asked my friends and colleagues who their favorite villains of all time were- in movies, books, TV shows and cartoons too. No, not cartoons… Who hates anything in cartoons anyways! The answers were incredible – top of almost everyone’s list were their corresponding bosses: of course, what did I expect! Some married folks answered wives, some bachelors said girlfriends and most just gawked at me like I just asked them to name all of Saturn’s moons. A vast majority that reads or watched movies paid little attention to villains at all. But everyone remembered how much they hated ‘that scary looking douche’ or ‘that terrible scarface’ or ‘the psycho madman’ in so-and-so story or movie.

For a long time after that, the story went nowhere. A few lines here, a few paragraphs there, all disjointed- like a nation without a leader, a life without a purpose, like Holmes without Moriarty! Every time I even thought about jotting down something, the silliness of it all bored the life out of me. Writer’s block sucks! Particularly when you’re not a writer in the first place. Perhaps something similar happens when you don’t have enough challenge in a drearily predictable day and you keep thinking of running away one morning and bungee-jumping your way back to life.

And then one day at our daily tea-break ritual at work, I hit gold: this crazy friend came up with a  name: Hannibal Lecter. I watched the movie that night and figured I didn’t have the stomach to endure a marathon of the TV series namesake. I got a few new ideas for a fictitious villain now, but my real-life villains haven’t left me with enough time  to write lately. But I have a feeling I’ll finish the story very soon.

Meanwhile, if you have reached thus far plodding through all these ramblings, it could mean you’re pretty bored or have ample time to kill on your hands. Might I recommend finding yourself a villain to vitalize your days and scare the hell out of your nights…

 –    Nishh