Till a few months ago, I used to call myself a 'writer', and then I used to pause for effect. However, of late I have realized that I cannot write to save my life. And then I went to look for the route cause of this effect, I started to trace back all the uncomplete stories that I had written to see where exactly I went wrong. I dusted all my old notebooks and diaries to see how my writing had shaped or dissolved over the years.
And then I came across several unfinished masterpieces, which made me strike my face with an open palm with each page I turned. It would take a long time for me to write about them all, but I have to make a start somewhere.
I'll start with the solitary page of a 'Long Story' that I had planned to write, which had the title 'My Life In the US Marine' (for reasons that escape me at the moment, perhaps because at that time to me, the US Marine were Da Shit), the main character's name was Jimmy Nelson, and the story started with him sitting on a park bench watching some children play. All of a sudden a bearded guy approaches him and says 'Do you wish to be a part of the US Marines?', to which old Jim replies 'Why not?'
All this seemed to me at that time the standard recruitment procedure for the Marines, this attempt at spewing garbage ended with Jimmy boy accepting a few books which were 'required reading' to be a Marine. Perhaps overflowing with awesomeness, I decided to not continue writing this story, you know, when the power in your hand is too big to be controlled. The rest of the diary whose first page I had spoiled thus, was empty.
This was when I was in sixth, and one of the most half-baked productive times for me. Because, (and in this case I distinctively remember everything), I started writing a space adventure epic. Earth had been destroyed, and using something I wrote as a 'wormhole', one percent of the Earth's population had succesfully migrated to a planet called 'Carborundum'. (which, after Avatar's Pandora and Unobtainium, seems quite imaginative). The main character's name was Chuch Roosten, which means absolutely nothing at all. I am bad at names, I will explain this later.
Chuck Roosten starts his journey stranded at an obscure alien planet with a fascination (read : fetish) for triangles, where everything, beds, toilets. televisions are all triangular in shape and warm mango juice is the favourite drink.
I was really making good progress with this one, and I added enough detailing and space crafts and aliens to give George Lucas a hard on, but then I do not know why (I do not distinctly remember) I stopped writing the story, after writing around fifty A4 sized pages.
Then came a long long long time for which I was obsessed with The Godfather. Anyone with Cajones cannot read the Godfather and remain unimpressed. I thought this guy Puzo with the video game name was a good thing, and promptly read three more of his books (Omerta, The Last Don and The Fourth K, in that order) to realize that this guy Puzo with the video game name sucked, and that Godfather was in fact bleeding brilliant.
I decided that since a work of a seminal nature inspired by The Godfather had not been produced in India, it was my burden to do this. And so I started writing an untitled novel, about an industrialist who lived in the outskirts of Vadodara, and had the rather impressive name of 'Abhishek Raizada.' I borrowed this name from a friend, and read it aloud, if it does not strike you as the name of a man with influence, I do not know what will.
The one bit of this attempt that particularly interested/disgusted me was that of when a righteous Foreman working in a Candle making factory of Raizada industries, (Genco Oil, Raizada Candles...you see the connection) notices that a worker has not been coming to work by the amount of wax piling up near his work station. The Foreman then goes and investigates the dissappearance of the worker, and finds that he is being persecuted by a goon named Aslam. The righteous Foreman goes and battles Aslam, thereby killing him and paving his way to becoming a 'made-man'.
What irked me on reading it again was that instead of checking the damn attendance roster, this guy has to look at a pile of wax to check whether a worker is coming to work or not.
