Hastakshepa

Now I am planning to write in English. I mean a fiction and a non-fiction, that too by end September 2012.

I am doing the writing in English. Even the thinking is in English!

I remember my German teacher mentioning about thinking in German Language when you need to write German sentences!

But come to think of it… I have done thinking in English Language way back in 1996 itself!

I was in a company which was selling Coffee and Tea harvesting and curing machines. I used to be on the site. I was staying in many coffee and tea estates. During the free time, I was writing in odd sheets of paper.

Yeah, I had seen a weekly magazine called The Asia Week probably covering many Asian Countries. There was this article called ‘Occupational Hazards’. I felt very bad when I read the article.

It was about a South Eastern Asian Country. The capital city Police ‘found’ 3 journalists dead during different days. They dubbed the deaths as ‘accidents’. The article made my blood boil. How callous one can be?

The journalists were trying to expose a few misgivings of the Government machinery and they were brutally murdered and the murders were branded as accidents.

The article set me thinking. This is not just some Government of some Country. It could happen anywhere. After all, the Government is people, where most of them turn to be very ambitious and ruthless when it comes to earning unaccounted money and saving the chair respectively.

So, I started the story with an Indian Background.

A State in this country. A Chief Minister. His daughter and 4 journalists.

Mitrajeet, the hero of my story hits upon some illegal activities happening in the CM’s house. He does it only by chance. He tries to investigate. The investigations takes him to many places. He meets many people.

To his shock, he comes to know that 3 honest journalists meet horrible ends. Their mistake – trying to expose some underhand dealings happening at the highest level.

Actually I did not try to add anything extra. The article (one page article) itself provided me with all the stuff.

I added some local colour by making one journalist a Hindu, the second one a Muslim and the third one a Christian. After all, the journalism does not know caste or creed. It only knows one thing – truth to be told to the readers. A sort of scavenging job, not so well paid, but giving a lot of satisfaction of making people aware of the unknown immoral activities.

The story really went well. The novel was published in Kannada Prabha magazine as a daily serial. I did get a good number of ‘good’ reviews as a mature writing.

The book was also published by my friend Vijay. He suggested me to talk to the artist for the cover page.

So I sat with Mr. Monappa who has done cover pages for quite a good number of my novels.

I told him that I wanted a politician with only poison in his body.  Journalism is the real hero of my book. If it is possible a few newspaper clippings which talked about attack on journalists.

Wow, the cover page which was done by Mr. Monappa was fantastic!

There was this politician who could be easily recognised by his ‘Gandhi’ cap. (I don’t know why the cap is synonymous with Gandhi who stood his whole life for truth!) A pen with ink dropping. He also had made a collage of newspaper cuttings with headlines ‘screaming’ about attack and unnatural deaths of journalists.

I find this novel as a special one since I took a subject which is like a newspaper item, but still made it interesting till the end.

It’s called ‘Hastakshepa’ meaning putting your hand where it is not required – a typical of corrupt politicians!