As a writer and reader of fiction, I know it is necessary to anchor a plot in a time and a place to make it come alive in the reader’s mind. A specific time and specific place give it the credibility that fiction demands for the “willing suspension of disbelief”. Most often it is the authenticity that separates the pulp from the read-worthy fiction.
Too many writers have created fantastical places, towns and villages in such great detail that long after the story is forgotten we continue to believe the place exists. Check out Utopia, a place that cannot be located anywhere on Earth and yet everyone knows what it stands for. Perhaps it is a place that is present in the human mind and interpreted in a million different ways. Utopian, the adverb, has gone into language as something so perfect that it defies definition.
I think most readers still believe that a “Malgudi” village exists. Malgudi was created, detailed, and peopled by the inimitable R.K. Narayan in such vividness that tourists to Mysore still ask how far it is from the city. More than a village, Malgudi is a feeling, a culture that reaches out and envelopes not only its characters but the reader. Somehow it’s just not possible for the reader to imagine that these people could belong to say Davangere or Tirunelveli.
Most readers of Agatha Christie know Saint Mary’s Meade as well as they know their own neighbourhood. And her Brackhampton—sleepy English villages that are not conducive to activity of any kind except a murder or two. The Harry Potter generation of course know Hogsmeade as well as they know their own town.
Mayurkhund is one such place. A small royal family ruled thikkana in the deep of Rajasthan—a green oasis on the middle of a relentless desert that plays a focal point in my book of the same name. A young girl from Mumbai, Amaari, is compelled to go back to this remote place to lay the ghosts of her traumatic childhood growing up as an orphan in the palace. It was from Mayurkhund that her mother, mistress of the Maharaja vanished into the thin air even as she slept as a four-year-old. For Amaari, Mayurkhund draws and repels and creates fear in equal measure. And yet she must go and spend a month there not only to pay back old debts to the Maharani but also put to rest the unfinished business of her abruptly truncated love affair with the prince.
Mayurkhund, to me, was something very vivid even before it was set down on paper. But to be so real a town has to have history, its own myths and lore and legends. And things that set it unmistakably apart, like the proliferation of peacocks that thrive in this small oasis in the desert. Mayurkhund has its myths. The lonely Fakir who thrived in the wilderness and offers shelter to an ancestor of the Maharaja. He tells him that he has been waiting for him to come and start the settlement that would in time become his own kingdom for generations to come. It has its plurality in terms of Hindus and Muslims with a famed Devi temple and the miraculous Dargah dedicated to the Fakir who started it all. Though changing times have seen a mall or two spring up, Mayurkhund remains steeped in old world feudal spirit and is rife with rumour and gossip. With its now dilapidated palace and servants whose children continue to serve the family, Mayurkhund is a perfect frame that holds my plotline together.
What can sometimes be very jarring is when a writer chooses to locate his story in a place for which he has not done adequate research or familiarised himself with. That is why the prolific writers prefer to create their own stages and then repeat them like proud parents.
The fantasy place itself begins to play a role in the plot...almost like a character. And things that happen in its precincts cannot happen anywhere else easily. It anchors the plot and gives it the depth that makes it memorable. If it is very vivid it calls for more plots to be located within, more characters, more events and becomes the link for a series of books strung together with a familiar backdrop which has already drawn the reader in. But alas not everyone is an Agatha Christie with her immortal, ever meddling biddy Miss Marple.
Creating a township can be a wonderful creative exercise provided you give it the finishing touches, the history and the geography and the unique character of the place that can fire the imagination of the reader. And make it come alive in the heads of all those who visited it in the book.
Sadiqa Peerbhoy is a seasoned advertising professional who has been the writer and creative director behind the making and sustaining of many Indian and global brands. To keep her sanity in the maddening world of advertising, she took to writing a topical humour column and has been a columnist for three newspapers over a period of two decades and has a large base of readers who still fondly recall her ‘Swalpa Adjust Madi’, ‘Myopic View’ and ‘Sweet n Sour’. Hundreds of her short stories have found their way into magazines and weekend papers and won several awards. She has scripted serials for Doordarshan like Sara Jahan Hamara and the long-running Honee Anhonee.
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