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World Building 101

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So many people dream of writing a fantasy novel, and one important part of that is building an immersive world that the reader can disappear into. I’d like to start by asking you to reflect on something. Think of a fantasy world that you really like. (Examples could include Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, ACOTAR, Fourth Wing, etc.) Imagine that world for a bit and think about why you like it so much. What makes the world feel real? One little diversion I want to take you on is that there’s this concept of primary and secondary worlds. In Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories,” he talks about two worlds. The primary world is the real world - the everyday world with humans. The secondary world is the one created - the fantasy world. It’s a world that the author creates, complete with its own history, rules, people, and governance, just like the primary world. When the reader enters, they kind of accept the inner truth of the story while they are immersed in it. When you want to construct a world, you...
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Official Class Reader

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A couple of days ago, my professor asked for a volunteer to read a passage aloud in class. I volunteered instantly. A few minutes later, there was another passage she wanted someone to read. She looked around the classroom, and no one volunteered. “Lazy bums,” she teased. She started reading herself, and I asked her if I could read. She said yes, and I did. I loved hearing my voice echo around the room and seeing how my friend settled in when I started reading, like I was telling a story. I loved listening to my own voice modulations and the way my breathing varied with each sentence I read. Today, when there was a passage to read, what she said was simple. “Our official class reader, go ahead, read.” Earlier, I never liked being given titles in class. They’ve always led to me being teased relentlessly. But this one was one I liked. It was one that I thought actually represented who I was. It was a title I was glad to have. For years, in school, when teachers asked for a volunteer to r...
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Tamil Pride

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If someone tells me to talk in Hindi, I won’t. If someone tries to talk to me in Hindi, I tell them that I don’t understand. I don’t use Hindi unless I choose to. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. My Tamil pride developed slowly. For a lot of people, it’s inbuilt as they grow up. I came into it later, when my friend told me to say my ‘r’s more like a Tamilan ( since I had trouble pronouncing the Tamil ‘r’ and ‘zh.’) That led to the development of pride in my language. It grew more when I read a book called The Dig, which was about the Keeladi excavations around the Vaigai River. This archeological site is believed to be older than the height of the Roman Empire. (When the Roman Empire emerged around 27 BCE, Keeladi was already thriving). Now, for those of you non Indian readers, here’s some context. India has 22 national languages (last I checked). Hindi is the official language of the union government. I’m Tamil, which is one of the 22 scheduled languages, with a literar...
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Reading for the Sake of It

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I love sitting in a corner, curled up in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate. The weather should be cold, maybe even rainy. There would probably be some soft music in the background. The main object of my focus would be the 700-something-page book in my hand, perched on my folded legs. Yep, I’m that girl. The one who would love to be on Instagram loudly debating the pros and cons of romantasy characters. I’d doomscroll reels about book boyfriends and then realize it’s the middle of the night and I have an early class the next morning. But these days, I haven’t had the time to curl up to read just for the sake of it. I’ve been having to read a lot for class. On the other hand, A Court of Splintered Harmony is coming out, and everyone on the internet, including me, is rushing to reread the Maas-verse before the book comes out. Between all this, I feel like I’ve forgotten what it feels like to read at my own pace, without deadlines, class discussions, or the pressure to remember everyt...
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Leave Something Behind

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As I walked past the little reflection corner on the fourth floor of the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), I saw a woman sitting in front of a table, on a cushion on the floor, writing something with her forehead scrunched in concentration. At first, I thought she was someone who worked at the museum, and she was writing a report or something like that. I went closer and saw three rows of cards arranged in front of her. They were cards for the museum’s visitors to write on. The cards had little questions for visitors to answer, and then there were hooks to hang them on. One question that stood out to me was ‘Where do you feel most connected to the world around you?’ When I saw that, I had to pause and think about what I would write. At first, I thought I should write something grand and expected, like ‘on the mountains,’ or ‘at the beach.’ I lifted my pen, about to write that, but it felt like something that would be on a postcard. I thought about the places where I really felt at h...
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Rajinified

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For as long as I can remember, people have been telling me how great Rajini is. He is, undoubtedly, a superstar. Last night, I realised that for myself. (For context: Rajinikanth is a Tamil actor, fondly called the superstar of Tamil cinema. His aura and fanbase are unmatched. An actor just became the CM of Tamil Nadu. There was a lot of doubt about whether he would win the elections or not. If Rajini decided to contest, I have no doubt he would win.) I watched Jailer 2 last night, the latest Rajinikanth movie, released just a few days ago. In the days between its release and my watching it, my Instagram feed was filled with edits about Rajini’s aura and videos of his fans losing their minds in theatres. I was looking forward to experiencing it for myself. I was a little sceptical, though, since I was watching it in Karnataka rather than Tamil Nadu. I wasn’t sure if people would react the same way. They didn’t, really. There were a few whistles and cheers, but the audience was relativ...
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An Unwelcome Return

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I sat cross-legged at the top of Mount Kailash, deep in meditation. The cool snow beneath me helped me focus, its sterile scent mingling with the smell of wet soil carried from a rushing stream somewhere in the distance. Around me, snow stretched across the mountains, untouched except for the occasional movement of wind across its surface. I could hear it whispering against the rocks before disappearing into the valley below. Vasuki’s smooth scales felt like warm metal resting against my neck, his body curled comfortably around my shoulders as it had been for longer than either of us cared to remember. My stillness kept the balance of the world. Even with my eyes closed, I could sense the movements of mortals, the rise and fall of the oceans, the forests growing and burning, and the countless little lives moving across the Earth. There was nothing unusual. Nothing that demanded my attention. I inhaled deeply, letting the familiar scents of snow and wet soil settle my mind, and sank fur...
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Of all the Places in New York, I Choose Taylor

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The board in the lobby of Madame Tussauds told me that the music zone of the museum was on the fifth floor. Little did I know that we had to get past all the other attractions and groups of celebrities to make it there. I thought the anticipation might be the death of me. As I made my way through the floors, getting closer and closer to her , my heart rate increased infinitesimally. Sure, the other figurines were eye-catching, but there was one in particular that I was here for. The music zone was as bright as Times Square on New Year’s Eve. As the marketing description for the museum says, “Every day is New Year’s Eve at Madame Tussauds.” It certainly looked like it. Flashy billboards covered the walls, and poised around the room were figures of the people who had changed the music world. Visitors posed with and smiled at the statues, as if they were real-life people. My eyes zeroed in on a 5’10” tall woman with straight blonde hair, bangs above her eyebrows, and iconic red lipstick. ...
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After the Hour

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Disclaimer: This is a continuation/ adaptation of “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. You can find the link to the text here. The Story of an Hour   I’m working from the line “Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.” “I should like to identify the body,” she whispered. “Why, Mrs. Mallard, women do not see the dead. It is unheard of,” said Richards. “He is my husband. I have seen him in all states. I believe I have more of a right that you, who is merely his colleague.” Mrs. Mallard waved her hand, dismissing Richards. She clutched her nightgown with one hand and wound the other around her sister’s waist. “Josephine, I shall not ask you to come with me-” “-But I will not leave you to go alone.” The two sisters descended to the streets and walked towards the mortuary, where Mr. Mallard’s body would be. Josephine stopped at the entrance. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Mrs. Mallard nodded and let go of her sister. She entered the building. The men in the room stopped wha...
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Not Every Platform Is an Invitation

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The other day, someone DM'd me on LinkedIn. At first, I thought it was someone looking to create a genuine professional connection, because I have received connections like that before. However, this person decided to ask me if I was married. When I told him that this was LinkedIn, not a dating app, he said, ‘this is a private chat, right?’ LinkedIn is supposed to be a place where people can make connections that could help them further their career. People list their qualifications and share their professional achievements, hoping someone will boost their career. Somewhere in the middle of that, someone decided that my relationship status was a legitimate way to start a conversation. Why should a professional connection be treated as a romantic opening? Apparently, the fact that he was messaging me privately was reason enough to disregard the context in which we had connected. But a private message doesn’t change the purpose of the platform, nor does it automatically make a person...
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Who Wins the Love Triangle

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In recent years, love triangles have been all the rage. The most popular ones are from The Vampire Diaries, ACOTAR, My Life with the Walter Boys, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Twilight, Never Have I Ever, XO Kitty, and Ginny and Georgia . Love triangles are popular because they act as an amazing point of conflict that helps drive the plot forward. They turn intimate emotional conflicts into high-stakes public drama. However, what I want to look at is who really wins and how it happens. All over social media, there are polls and posts about which of the boys in these triangles are better. Even though The Vampire Diaries is over a decade old, there are still people asking, ‘Are you team Damon or Stefan?’ As new stories pop up, these questions arise again and again. Many times, people choose the ‘bad brother.’ They choose the one who’s troubled and sad. They choose the man who needs fixing, the one who asks for them and fights for them. (I have a whole other article about this interesting p...
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Someone I can Call

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When I call Gavin, there’s a good chance he will be sitting at a juice shop, with a cigarette in his hand. I don’t know why this is the image that comes to mind whenever I think of him, but it is. Maybe because he is almost always there when I call. Maybe because I have called him enough times for the image to become familiar. He usually answers with “sollu maaa.” (Tell me, ma). It’s an invitation to say anything I want to. Was something wrong? Did I have something I needed to say? Did I just want to chat? It’s such an ordinary thing to say, but I don’t think he realises how much comfort I have found in hearing it. Gavin is a friend’s older brother. I’ve known him for about a year, perhaps a little less, but I don’t remember a time when I had to work particularly hard to become comfortable around him. I was shy at first, as I usually am with people I don’t know well, but he was familiar in a way I hadn’t expected. He was nice to me; he spoke to me, and somewhere along the way, he becam...
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They Sounded the Same

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“Ahhh!” I screamed as I saw something jumping out of the corner of the bathroom. My mom rushed in. “It’s a frog,” she pointed out. “Calm down.” My first thought was that a frog would never be in my bathroom in Connecticut. Last night, I’d walked out of the airport, stepping onto Chennai soil. ‘There’s no going back now,’ I thought. Before we got on the plane in New York, my dad asked us to wave goodbye. “We aren’t going to come back here,” he said. Being ten years old, that felt very final. No one told me I’d start sweating buckets as soon as I stepped out of the air-conditioned airport. Next to me, my five-year-old sister wrinkled her nose. She was bundled up in a pink sweater, wearing a purple backpack. “Ewww. What’s that smell?” “It’s the sewage smell,” my dad informed me as he hailed a taxi. The only welcome we got from Chennai was a suffocating hug from the April heat. I had a house in Chennai, but it wasn’t set up yet. My parents built it in the early days of their marriage. Toni...
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Teaching Love Through Monsters

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What kind of books are we giving young readers? My class and I had a long discussion today about the kinds of things that young readers are reading these days. Around and after COVID, the genre of dark romance became extremely popular. One book, published around 2021 and still widely spoken about today, is Haunting Adeline . What's so special about it, though? Why do readers flock towards it like flies to honey? There is non-consensual sex, pretty much rape. There are graphic descriptions of that rape. There are things like trafficking, abuse, stalking, and basically other things that you would probably put a man in jail for doing to you in real life. And yet this book is extremely popular, with readers starting as young as fifteen, despite the trigger warning that appears at the beginning. It is important here to think about how influential writers can be on their readers, especially when those readers are young. A fifteen-year-old who reads this book is not necessarily going to i...
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Challenge Things

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The idea of challenging something can be an amazing place to start writing from.  A few days ago, I wrote a post about where you can get ideas from to write. This one is something that a visiting author, Anjum Hasan, who's here to conduct a workshop, said.  As reading for the workshop, she gave us a couple of short stories and excerpts from longer books. All of them seemed to be addressing caste issues. She told us that it was unintentional, but that it was an underlying tension and problem in Indian society. Unknowingly, all the pieces she gave us were about class, hierarchy, and caste divisions - and of course, their repercussions.  That's when she told us that these writers are writing about this issue to challenge it. She told us that if we are looking for inspiration to write about, we should think about what bothers us. What do we hate and want to change? If we think long and hard, we'd be able to find something that really speaks to us, that has been on our mind fo...
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Why are all heroes’ parents dead?

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Parents have to die for the hero to flourish. That is a pretty strange line. But think about it. Batman. Iron Man. Spider-Man. Harry Potter. Some of the most popular heroes’ journeys start with a loss they have never asked for. Their childhoods are interrupted and somewhere in the wreckage, the hero is born. Bruce Wayne does not become Batman because Gotham needs him. He becomes Batman because, as a child, he watches his parents die in front of him. Tony Stark does not become Iron Man simply because he is a genius with a fancy suit. It takes his kidnapping, his near-death experience, and the realisation that the weapons his family business produces are hurting people for him to finally change direction. Peter Parker learns that “with great power comes great responsibility” only after Uncle Ben is gone. That pattern is so consistent it’s kind of suspicious. In these stories, parents seem to be important sacrifices. They need to be taken away before the protagonist can become extraordina...
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The Fat Cat

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Today I attended an exclusive workshop about the art of storytelling by Geeta Ramanujam. She’s the founder of Kathalaya, a storytelling movement across India. She started her day with a story-like introduction of herself. One story wove into another and never bored us. After that, she made us introduce ourselves with a story about ourselves. Then, we settled in to listen to more stories, including a folk tale that we were part of reciting. By that I mean we reacted to the song-story, which formed a part of the folktale itself. Our big activity of the day was to work in teams to create our own little story using the elements we had talked about throughout the day. We had four words based on which we had to make and perform our story. The ones my team had were laborious, light, cat, and happy. Here’s what we came up with… Once upon a time, there was a fat fat cat. He was so fat, he could hardly be considered a cat anymore. One day, a bright light appeared in front of the cat. From it app...
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What’s so Great About Watching A Re-Release?

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I just went to Avengers: Endgame and absolutely adored it, even though I knew everything that was going to happen – except the end credits. As I watched and saw the theatre full, I wondered why this happened. It’s not just about this movie, but a lot of Tamil movies that were re-released were also received with equal energy and enthusiasm. One reason I came up with was that it might be because of the fact that it’s familiar. There are no jump scares. There isn’t going to be something unusual or unexpected. Usually, the movies that come back are years old. This lets the audience walk down memory lane, and it takes them back to who they were when the movie was first released. It’s comforting to know exactly what’s going to happen. You know the dialogues, when the villain is going to appear, when and where the hero will make his grand entrance. You know which joke is coming too. There’s no nail-biting anxiety because you know what’s going to happen. You can sit back and enjoy. These movie...
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Safety is a Right

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Yesterday, I had to take a bus home at night. I had to take an auto (tuk-tuk) to the bus station. I, too, like many women out there, had to call a friend and ask him to stay on the call until I reached the bus stop. It was a small little thing that has honestly become normalized today. Women do it unconsciously, hoping that it will help them stay safe. But I did think of this. In light of the Cornell 7 tragedy and a bunch of similar things happening in India, my Instagram feed has been full of tragedies. There are countless posts telling women how to stay safe: stay alert, don't walk alone at night, share your location, call someone while travelling, keep your keys between your fingers, carry pepper spray, watch your surroundings, don't trust strangers. And, of course, women should be taught to protect themselves. Our daughters should know how to recognise danger. They should know what to do when something feels wrong. They should be aware of their surroundings and have the con...
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Come on, you should try it

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At the core of my being, I’m just a girl who loves being with her brothers. However, the question is whether or not they like being with me. One thing that brought us together years ago was my brother’s love for Chilli Parotta. When I moved back from the United States, my cousin brother’s family and mine used to go out for lunch a lot. One day, my brother decided he wanted to go to Saravana Bhavan, which was my first inkling that something interesting was going to happen, for my brother usually preferred chicken and this restaurant was purely vegetarian. When we got there, he asked me if I wanted Chilli Parotta. At first, I gave him a confused look. I wondered why he wanted to give me something with ‘chilli’ in the name when he knew I had a very low spice tolerance. “Come on, you should try it,” he urged. I hesitated for a moment. But being a little girl who idolized her brother, who had five years more life experience than I did, I said yes. When it arrived, reddish-orange and steamin...
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Where do our Stories Come From?

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We often applaud our epics and think they are the most original and unique things to ever exist. However, if you look at them, they actually have similar elements. Let's look at three case studies: the Ramayana , the Mahabharata , and Homer's Iliad . First of all, all three of these stories are about a central war. There's the war that Rama and the Vanaras wage against Ravana, the Kurukshetra War between the Kauravas and Pandavas, and the Trojan War. All these wars are entangled with women - Sita, Draupadi, and Helen. (They're fought by men who think that a woman needs saving - for those of you feminists out there.) Something happened to these women: Sita was kidnapped, Draupadi was dishonored, and Helen was taken to Troy from her husband. (People just can't leave these women alone.) These women aren't mistreated in the same way, but what happens to them becomes entangled with the men's war. Secondly, there's an interesting similarity between Achilles an...
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A Little More Magical

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For as long as I can remember, some part of me knew I was destined to be a writer. You might wonder why a small child would think that. The answer is pretty simple. My name means writing. As a child who grew up hearing that, I realized that it was something important and that it was something that kind of belonged to me. My first memory of writing was back in the first grade. I had an activity in class to write a very short story, with illustrations. It was supposed to be a retelling of any classic well-known story. We were given simple white board books, blank canvases that we could turn into anything we wanted. I decided to rewrite the story of the three little pigs. I called it, The Three Little Fish. It was set underwater. I don’t remember much about it, but that was the first time I saw my name on the cover of a book, proudly lining the bottom of the front cover. I remember feeling a sense of fierce pride. This was something I had created and no one could take it away from me. I g...
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