A new project

I have noticed a very interesting phenomenon.I believe it's quite common, though I have the example of only 2 people (myself and another) to cite till now.Whenever I'm studying in earnest for an exam, I usually start getting ideas; about new story plots. Of course, majority of them never get written, and some of them I leave in between. Honest confession : I've finished writing only 1 short story so far, and I was never fully satisfied with it; although the people who read it said they liked it, but I know it wasn't nearly good enough.

Anyway, it's been more than a year since I last attempted to write fiction. My 2nd minor exams for the semester are going on now, and I've had yet another idea. Only, unlike the last few ideas, I'm so much enamoured by this one that I've decided to make it a formal project for myself to finish this thing off.

Well, let me first talk about where the idea originated from.In the past few years, I've read a number of books that explore the ecclesiastical concepts of God, heaven, hell, pain, redemption and such, from a non-propaganda(as in church propaganda) point of view. Notable among them are books from Anne Rice, where she talks about sensuality and the supposedly-damned seeking redemption. The old vampire novels, like Dracula, simply wrote off vampires as essentially evil beings, with evil being their sole driving force. Anne Rice told her stories from the point of view of a vampire.And to do that essentially gives some human quality to the character of a vampire.If your narrator is a human being, then he can tell vampires to be evil quite easily, because he doesn't know anything about what makes a vampire tick; what goes on in its head.But if the narrator is a vampire, then the creature has to tell a tale in terms of motives, feelings, and his own thoughts about his situation, about God, about his place in the scheme of things(if he believes any scheme exists at all). So what she's done is to fit a former old world monster in a human mold. She goes further than that, and in her book 'Memnoch the devil', brings forward satan himself to tell his tale. The same idea has been used by a number of other writers, for instance the confession of satan in Hellblazer comic books; and if we're talking about comic books, I can't resist to mention the 'Lucifer' series which is all about the devil himself. And you have to admit, the temptation to listen to the story of the devil from his own mouth is quite irresistible. And why? Because he was the first rebel ever. And rebels make great heros, no matter what their ultimate fate.That's why Romeo was a hero, though he died; that's why Oedipus was a hero, because he still wouldn't accept divine providence as a fact of life, even after it had totally screwed up his life.They dared. And the first one to dare was the devil. Moreover, being defined as the great tempter, it's logical that he would have a charismatic personality (to help with the PR), and a persistent and ruthless streak. Classic protagonist/antagonist material.

And then I got to thinking, what about God? Well, the devil can never tell his story without talking about God and what actually brewed between the two at the dawn of creation.But then, it's the devil's version of the story; as all the scripture is the human being's version of the story. And since none of them actually knew what God was thinking when He did the things He did, God keeps moving in mysterious ways : and we can never identify with Him as a person; while we can identify with the devil when he's telling his tale.

As I said, I've never read any book in which God comes forward to tell his story in full detail. I have read some books when God gives a guest appearence and explains a few things, but still remains utterly cloaked in mystery for all that.
And I can see the reason why. Firstly, that's what God is supposed to be : mysterious. Secondly, as I pointed out before, people love rebels. Rebels excite people, while judgemental father-figures are anything but exciting/interesting.To wit, God doesn't make a very good fictional hero material. How can He be? Heros are supposed to have flaws, He has none. And despite His well-established PR departments all over the world, the boss rarely makes an appearance Himself. So people don't have a way of identifying with Him.Hopeless case, you see. And so, as anybody can guess by now,I've decided to take up the challenge of bringing life to the dreary old stereotyped character.I am going to tell the story of God the way he would like to tell it.

The story of God : it's virtually infinite.Moreover, I want things to be a bit secular; that is, I want to include material from different civilizations. As anyone can see, it has the potential to be a total mess. So, what I've decided is, I'll start from the Old testament version of events, and tell the story of Moses and God, for starters. I've already got some idea of what form I want the story to take,but I would need to do a lot of research if I want to make it into something worthwhile : something good. I'm going to read the Christian and Hebrew versions of the tale of Moses for starters, and then find some other sources.Moreover, I figure I'm going to start writing along with doing the research, to keep the idea alive in my mind.

There's only 1 thing I'm afraid of. Earlier, whenever I had a good idea,some vivid imagery in my mind, and decided to postpone writing it until I was free from my exams; the imagery,the life and the richness usually disappeared by the time I felt I was free enough to start writing the story.That's when I lost interest in the whole thing and gave it up. I don't want it to happen this time.So, I've made up my mind that no matter how I feel after the exams,I'm going to go ahead with this and write something.I figure once I start the ball rolling, eventually it'll become better.I mean, like everything else, imagination gets better with practice.

So that's all I had to say about it. If anyone has any suggestions to give,I'll be very much interested.

L'histoire ... qu'est-ce que c'est ?

Ask any person the above question, and most probably you'll get the answer that 'histoire' has dual meaning in french : history and story. And therefore the semantics of the word are context dependent. The Italian word 'storia' means the same thing. Both these words are derived from 'historia' of the parent language, latin. Ergo, there has been a whole linguistic tradition of signifying some degree of similarity between the 2 concepts. I don't know whether it was done intentionally or not, but if you actually ponder upon the various aspects of histories and stories, some interesting things are observed.
I myself started thinking about it yesterday, when I finished Macbeth and was reading the history related to the play. The play is made up of characters and events from the Irish folklore. And by what I read, it seems that Shakespeare improvised heavily on the original story. First off, the main characters of the play were real people. But according to the old (and so the more reliable) version of events :

1. Duncan was something of a milk-baby, heavily dependent on Macbeth and Banquo ; as opposed to the wise, venerable and sagacious ruler of the play.
2. Banquo was privy to the murder plan of Duncan, but didn't interfere for his own selfish ends ; as opposed to the epitome of nobility in the play.
3. Macbeth was a wise and just ruler ; as opposed to the neurotic tyrant of the play.

And the reason for these heavy improvisations ? Well, the play was written to be played in front of King James I, who was supposedly the descendent of Banquo. So obviously Banquo had to be painted as a hero and consequently, Macbeth as a villain. And I can't really blame Shakespeare for taking liberties with history like this. Firstly, the play was really good. Secondly, he never claimed it to be 'real' history. Thirdly, I understand his position. You see, the genealogy and history of my own family has been recorded for many generations by a people called 'Bhat' or 'Charana'. They are traditional folk poets. They are called at weddings (rarely these days), to sing the family history and update their catalogues. Now, if they want to get paid( and they are indeed paid very well at such occasions), then they would obviously 'smooth over' any unsavoury details. I mean, you wouldn't want your wife to know at the altar that your great grandfather was a serial killer or something like that.
As I said, at least Shakespeare never claimed his play to be actual history. But people have been playing ball with history since the dawn of civilization itself. The history of ancient India was messed up so hopelessly by imperialist(British) scholars, that every now and then I get to read something about the newly discovered inconsistencies in it. And we're still studying their version in schools, mostly. Similarly there was the news of a madarsa in Hyderabad where the history books portrayed Aurangzeb to be some kind of a tolerant, benevolent hero; while in the official and popular texts, he's supposed to be the worst of the mughal lot. Worse; at least Aurangzeb has been dead for more than a couple of centuries now; but a few years ago I read about schoolchildren in the government schools of Bihar reading about Laloo Prasad Yadava as a part of their curriculum. Of course, he's made out to be the greatest hero there ever was. He's actually compared to Lord Krishna in these texts !
The problem, stated in the most general terms I can think of, is that every piece of recorded history was catalogued by some person/group of persons, who had to do it under certain constraints : bound by either external obligations or their own subjective point of view. So, the account is bound to be incomplete and imperfect. Some aspect, some perspective, some data is almost always left out; and sometimes, some fabricated data is added.
This addition of fabricated data is most obvious in legend and folklore, and by the very definition of legend and lore, excusable. But it has to be subtle and insidious in texts professing to be serious historical texts. So, how far should I trust these texts, and exactly how much does it actually affect my life in any serious way? I'm quite sure there must be some parameters to judge the authenticity and worth of a historical text.
I haven't reached any resolution to the problem yet. I discussed it with one of my professors, assuming(correctly), that this problem must have been researched on. She gave me some food for thought, the name of a book ("What is history" by E.H. Carr), and a proposition to do a term paper related to the problem. I'm not sure about the term paper yet, but I will keep looking for answers, and keep writing posts about every new development, until I arrive upon some conclusion.

Limits of freedom of expression

The day before yesterday, I set out to write a post about the written protest against Islamic totalitarianism issed by Rushdie, Tasleema Nasreen and 10 other intellectuals. I intended to compare the Mohammed cartoon to the 'Da Vinci code' by Dan Brown, and to raise the question of exactly how far should we go with the freedom of expression; and is it ever justified to put a check on it. It seems fortunate that I didn't finish my post then, as a few incidents have occured since then, which bring out the question in a better way. On friday an article on the very same topic by Hans Kung , was published in The International Herald Tribune.
I recommend reading these posts by Gypsy scholar on the protest by Rushdie and the others and on the Hans Kung article. Also, to keep things balanced and in the proper perspective, here's a blogpost from the Muslim Student Association explaining the muslim sentiment on the whole situation.