Maggar Singh, My Saviour

Thanks, Nandu. I was waiting for your comment all the while but you were busy dishing out cuisines from across the country! Aaj toh Nanduben bani hai, kal kaun sa avtaar? Way to go, girl!

 

Ayyayyo! Devre/kadavaLe/devuda save us!!!!

 

Maggar Singh, My Saviour. Part 2 Of 6


I quickly went through the text I had typed. I felt I had created sufficient tension to every female reader of our newspaper. I marked out areas where I could add further details in the final copy. Now that I had introduced the villain I paused and mentally created his spine-chilling activities. I was now ready to bring him to life. Taking a deep breath, I began typing….Suddenly I was interrupted by a rough voice “Hello…Hold on...”



I was startled and stared at the screen in front of me. The voice had indeed come from the PC monitor. The villain I had created was there and he was talking to me! I shook my head in disbelief. How could this happen?

He asked loudly and clearly, “Why are all writers alike? What is your problem with the villains?”

I stammered, “What…what do you mean?”

He replied arrogantly, “Why are you guys so biased? Why do you always make a negative character always look roguish? Don’t we have smart, suave and handsome criminals?”

I regained my composure and said, “Shut up! This story is mine. Who are you to ask all these questions? I am the captain of this project and I will take the storyline wherever I fancy. No one can question me.”

He seemed to cool down a bit and he said, “Okay. Okay…. You are very hot headed! I thought as a character in the story I too had some rights.”

“Who are you to pass comments on me? You are just a creation of mine; I am your creator. You have no rights whatsoever. Learn from Reena, she has not once objected to anything I wrote, good or bad about her, so far.”

“Boss, she is, after all…after all, just a woman. In our male-dominated society, where have we given women the rights to express? If they want the tag of being a ‘good woman’, aren’t they supposed to nod and agree with us all the time? Don’t ask me to be like her. As a character in this story, I think it is my rightful right to ask all the right questions to my dearest writer!” He said with a mocking smile.

“Keep quiet. You are disturbing my tempo.” I said, ignoring his mock.

But he was in no mood to give up. He said, “You writers always talk about freedom of speech and blah… blah. You are denying the very same rights to me. It is not fair.” He was persistent, not ready to give up. He was compelling me to talk to him.

I said, “Well, tell me quickly what your problem is?”

Now in all politeness, he said, “Writer sir, I am an important character in the story…can’t you make me well built and impressive?”

I could understand his cunning bargaining power clearly. For a second, I wondered as to why Reena never tried to bargain for a better deal in all these days? I had made her intelligent and beautiful. Was she happy with just those adjectives? Didn’t she care for her rights? Or was she a product of years of subjugation? If a villain could bargain for his rights, couldn’t she as a heroine, bargain?



I said, “Listen, you dumb witted fellow. I can not make you tall or well built. You will become distinct and noticeable. You should be like…like… a common man without a spine. No one should notice you. You should be creepy but blend with the crowd. Hope you understand my intentions and thoughts now.”

“Hmm….that is interesting! I commit a crime and vanish! Wow…like Mr. India! No wonder people forget and forgive villains’ crimes, so easily! People get back to their carefree sheep-like existence very quickly! Not bad…..You are quite intelligent. You understand us well!”



His compliment sounded like an insult. I ignored it and said, “That is right. Because you blend well into the crowd, people won’t notice you; they won’t suspect you and they trust you as one amongst them. That is when you strike and get away. Our system has enough loopholes to protect you guys. Hope you are satisfied and will you let me work now?”

He kept quiet for some time. I could carry on with my writing for a while. After about half an hour he interrupted me again. “Sir, I thought over what you said. Whatever you say makes some sense. But in reality, people are of all natures, shapes, and sizes. You writers make characters uni or bi-dimensional creating stereotype images of heroes and villains. But in reality, don’t we characters interchange amongst ourselves?”

I looked at him quizzically. His question had confused me multidimensionally!

Looking at my confused expression, he continued, “For example, you may treat a person ‘X’ as a hero at a given point in time. At some other point in time, due to certain circumstances, he may be forced to commit a crime and then the society treats him as a villain ‘Y’. While in reality both X and Y are the same. So stereotyping and your explanations fail to make sense.”

“Hey…You are trying to confuse me now. What you say is true in reality, but in a story or a novel, we use characters which are uni or bi-dimensional. This helps in narration and it won’t confuse our readers. Stereotyping helps our readers to easily identify with the characters. If we start writing about all dimensions of characters, each one of us will end up either creating super-epics or land ourselves in mental asylums.” I tried to clarify a writer’s predicament.

Unrelentingly he said, “Everybody thinks of himself as a hero. What about the villain? Even a villain can become a hero sometimes or even surpass a hero!”

Bugged with his interruptions, I retorted, “Now Prakash… stop your wordplay.”

“Excuse me! Who is this 'Prakash' now?” He asked quite aggressively.

“I have named you ‘Prakash’ in my story. You are the villain in my story. Got it?” I said, matching his aggression.


(All images have been taken from the internet for representational purposes only.)
***********************************************************************************

 

Thank you so much, Nandu.
Isn't it so? That's the reason we have so many emboldened creeps in the society, world over.

 

Thanks, please be with me in this experiment of mine.