Musings on a fifth Thursday

I’m trying to take my writing beyond newspaper reports and blog posts. I’m working on a collection of short stories set in my city. The stories are in the making and I’m still playing around with a few ideas one of which includes an Indian version of an American cowboy, a gunslinger or a marshal, on horseback and in full western gear. He’ll carry six-guns and he'll be fast on the draw. I don't know if I can lasso the character, the story, and the setting the way I imagine but there’s no harm in trying. I want each of the stories to be as outlandish as possible.

I'm also working on a book on self-help that has a huge market in India. Everyone seems to be writing one these days. The problem with writing self-help is that you tend to get preachy and the last thing I want to produce is another cure for insomnia. I'm rewriting the three chapters I've written so far and I’m fighting to keep my eyes open. I'm thinking of consulting other self-help books.

Four decades ago, my late father wrote nearly a dozen short stories, mostly family dramas. He was a fine journalist and a gifted writer. I envied him his language but I was also proud of it. He wrote them with a fountain pen in long hand and typed them out neatly on foolscap paper, on his dull blue Smith Corona typewriter (not the one in the picture). I'd been sitting on this little treasure of tattered and yellowed pages all this while. A couple of months ago, a dim bulb lit up over my head and I decided to transfer them onto the computer, and try and publish them as a book or an ebook. I owe it to him.

I've also been writing something else off the top of my head. I think it could turn into some kind of a story, maybe flash fiction. It begins like this…

I woke up Tuesday morning and finally cleared my bowels. What a relief it was. It’s not the best opening, pun or no pun, but it’s certainly the best way to start the day. I rejoiced in that single act of self-gratification. It beats Christmas morning. If only my ritual the previous day had been as productive, I'd have top-scored at the interview. I was squirming in my seat and my inquisitors, a grim-faced restaurant manager and a mean-looking head chef, took my discomfort for a nervous attack. They looked at each other and telepathised, “This guy is shitting in his pants.” I wish. They said they'd call me before sundown. They never did. That was yesterday.

A paragraph somewhere in the middle of the story goes like this…

I took a bus that dropped me outside the restaurant. I stood there and looked at the place. I didn’t like it. It looked shady and it smelled of vice. It was a bar and restaurant and not the other way around, which meant nice families didn’t go in; only inconsiderate men did, the kind who drank and gambled and thought they deserved a break from their wives and mistresses four times a week. The food was an inducement to drink more booze and blow up more money, and then take an advance on next month’s pay.

By the time I reached 900-odd words, I was in my element…

As we neared the door it was opened by Quasimodo’s twin. We entered the room and the door banged shut behind us. I wheeled around and saw the hunchback in front of the door, his broad twisted frame blocking my escape, a hideous grin pasted on his freaky face. I was trapped and I was very afraid. My mind pressed a dozen panic buttons. I was going to be framed for a crime and spend the rest of my life in prison. Worse, I was going to be sodomised, tortured, and murdered. 

I have no idea where this is going, if it is in fact going anywhere at all.