Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Strolling Bengaluru, India's City of Gardens

 Sujata Massey



Coming back from India about a month ago, I was hit with the reality of an upper respiratory virus so I laid low. And then there was all hell breaking loose in government--which continues. It took a while for me to take a deep breath and want to share the pleasant interlude of my two-week trip to Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa. Because right now--I think we all need a vacation.

My story starts in the city of our arrival, Bengaluru. My traveling companion, the trustworthy Tony, and I arrived on New Year’s Day at 2 a.m. It took about an hour to get luggage, cash, and out the door at the airport, and then a 45-minute journey by car to the ITC Windsor Hotel, a place I had chosen because the pictures online made it look so old fashioned—the opposite of the sterile, high-tech hotels for which the city is famous. As our driver slowed to pass an old wall and gate and then up long, tree-lined driveway toward a wedding-cake-white building, my spirits rose. We passed through the usual metal-detector security to a round marble lobby with a busy front desk, where I was pleased to see clerks were present at the difficult hour of 4 a.m.






As I was handing our passports to the desk clerk, a drama was unfolding next to us between his colleague and a cluster of teenage boys, all in black T-shirts and jeans.

“I’ve booked a room. My friends are being told they can’t come up. Why’s this happening?” one boy asks, leaning over the desk, holding his American Express Gold Card like a magic wand.

The clerk, perhaps six years his senior, makes a tense reply about hotel policy limiting numbers of people in rooms to numbers of beds, but the kid won’t accept it. He’s paid for a room; he has a right to have his friends there. 

Security comes, and so do more staff. The kid softens his tone and says “Look, we’ll just go into Dublin.” And although it was not said aloud—but seemed very clear—the youths would eventually leave the Irish pub and transit upstairs to the room.  A number of signs—the card, the clothing, the attitude, the type of English spoken—cause me to suspect the boy came from a wealthy family, perhaps in IT. 

“Very sorry about that,” the clerk murmurs after the boys are gone and we are getting our keys. A rush of late reservations meant that the hotel overbooked rooms and thus is surprise-upgrading us to the Lord Auckland Suite. Sounds fancy, I thought—and wow, it certainly was. THANK YOU!











The Windsor Hotel is built inside and out like a British colonial relic, but because it was built in 1980, it couldn’t have hosted Lord Auckland, who was Governor-General of India from 1836-1842. Opening the door, we found a 75-square-meter suite, the size of a nice one-bedroom apartment, with a large drawing-cum-dining room, and a separate bedroom with a king-sized tester bed draped in silk, and a large marble bathroom. New Year’s Eve in a hotel can be noisy, but nothing got through the walls of this room, and sleep between smooth cotton sheets on a thick mattress was paradise. Yet before I got into that bed, a mystery struck me: a plaque on the drawing room wall celebrating the room as the Duke of Cornwallis Suite.Which lord's room was it: Auckland’s or Cornwallis’s?  


I didn’t know until later that Cornwallis was the general who led the East India Company in 1790 to conquer the city and topping local ruler Tipu Sultan. For British names to linger on any kinds of marker in India is very unusual. In my mind, Britain’s 250-year exploitation of India’s resources are the reason India dropped from being one of the world’s very richest countries to among its poorest. I wondered if Bengaluru/Bangalore, which never was technically British India but stayed part of the princely state of Mysore, held less resentment about colonialism than other parts of India I’ve visited.




 





Just looking at the history of the Windsor Hotel --and the artworks hanging that show horses an colonial people--brings up its own story of Indians, Persians and British, Muslims and Hindus and Christians, all finding ways to make money and gain power. 

The hotel stands in the place where there once was a fine Bangalore estate known as Baqarabad to some and Bedford House to others.  It was built by Aga Aly Asker Shirazi, a Persian horse merchant who emigrated as a 15-year-old alongside two brothers—and their prize property, two hundred horses. The brothers brought the stable to breed and sell, an offer greeted with delight by the British military setting up a cantonment in Bangalore and also selling to the local royal family. The Askers never returned to Persia but settled in Bangalore where they found the wealthy had plenty of business offers for them--not only with horses, but also as contractors for building residences.  Aga Aly Asker rose in stature and built properties for the British while buying land for himself. In late years, he bequeathed Baqarabad and its four acres to a family foundation who could monetize it as they wished. According to an article in the Bangalore Mirror, The foundation leased the property, starting in 1973, for 3100 rupees per month (about $45) to an Indian hotel company that later sold it to another company, ITC. The foundation went on to try to raise the ground rent over the ninety years of its term--but the leases were written in such a clever way that the raises have been miserly in an exclusive area of the city where apartments rent for sums comparable to New York City. I imagine that fifty years ago, the Asker family could not have imagined that there would be such a thing as a teenager with a credit card. But this is the new Bengaluru—the city that leads India for job creation, economic growth and foreign investment. 

 





The first time I visited this city was 1973, the very year the family foundation was making its fateful decision that led a house to become a hotel. The city was still called Bangalore, the British appropriation of its name, which is still hard for me to shake. I mainly remember eating dosa for the first time and staying in a simple university apartment with friendly neighbors in the building and walking through fields nearby in the evenings with my father telling us to look out for snakes. I also remembered how calm and quiet the city was, how cool the weather, and the very tall trees with lush canopies stretching over the streets. Coming here fifty years later, I worried that all that would be gone—but to my delight, 100-year-old-plus trees still arch over streets and shade parks and gardens. 

Later on New Year’s Day, we roused ourselves to go out for dinner at a cute café downtown called Toast and Tonic. I’d emailed many times and had an Instagram live conversation with Harini Nagendra, author of the Bangalore Detective Club mysteries. However, this was the first time we were meeting in person. Harini brought along her husband, Suri Venkatachalam, a biotech pioneer who’s now pursuing conservation research. 

Harini’s day job is as a professor of ecology and sustainability at Azad Premji University. And between her mysteries, she’s just published a nonfiction work: Cities and Canopies, Trees in Indian Cities. Harini gave us great sightseeing recommendations for Bengaluru and Mysore and Coorg, our future destinations within the state of Karnataka. She even told us about Bookworm, a great city bookstore where she’d had events (and they promptly sat me down to sign stock) Tony and I departed back to our hotel that evening with a second wind of energy and excitement. It was undeniable that we had made a quick, but hopefully long-enduring, friendship. 











During January 2 and 3, we set out with a local guide to see some of Bengaluru’s most celebrated sites. The Nandi Temple is the home of a large granite statue with an interesting history. Back in the 1500s, a farmer was frustrated that a particular bull kept eating his groundnut crop. The farmer struck the bull with a stick in the hopes it would go away. But no—instead, the bull transformed to a big granite rock. Not going anywhere!

The farmer and everyone who saw it was amazed. The stone was subsequently carved to look more bullish and a temple was built around it. Now the bull is seen as a protector. Our guide insisted that the bull has grown longer in length over the years and is still growing. It’s a phenomenon nobody can explain and that we were not about to argue with. 









From there we passed on to see the modern Bangalore Legislative Assembly Building, and close to it Tipu Sultan’s summer palace.

Tipu Sultan, the son of King Hyder Ali, assumed rule after his father was killed in battle against the British. Within the state of Mysore (now named Karnataka), Bangalore has an unusually cool microclimate throughout the year. This made the perfect place for a summer palace which Hyder Ali had started, and Tipu Sultan had finished during his own reign.  Walking through graceful arches into dim wooden halls of the modestly sized palace, I could only imagine the medieval sultans and their family and followers flitting through the halls. Some places have a very strong aura; this is one of them.




 

Just outside the palace was a Hindu temple completed in the late 17th century by a during the time Mysore was ruled by a Hindu dynasty. The Kote Venkataramana Hindu temple has many flourishes special to architecture of the Vijayanagar and Dravidian empires of medieval South India. I was struck by the grace of a Hindu temple and Muslim palace to sitting alongside each other without disturbance for so many years. 



 

We rounded off the day with a long walk through Lalbagh Botanical Garden, a vast green space laid out by Sultan Hyder Ali in the 1700s and completed during the British colonial years. There are conservatory structures and topiaries and a stylized design very common to Indian gardens. I experienced a similar formality in the small enclosed garden on an upper storey at the Windsor Hotel. So much greenery around that place! One of the nicest experiences I had on my own was taking a short walk from the hotel past hedges of bouganvellia to Raintree, an old Art Deco villa that now housed upscale shops and a coffee shop where the lattes are dusted in edible gold.





A few weeks later, I found myself amidst the greatest concentration of trees in Bangalore. I was standing in the Kempegowda International Airport, waiting to send off my luggage, and I looked overhead to see ceiling above was filled with live shrubs. From my perspective below, it looked like several hundred of Christmas evergreens, but an airport employee proudly explained that I was seeing just a fraction of 150,000 hanging plants of various species. The terminal also had 450,000 other plants growing on walls and throughout its space. The airport also boasts a plant museum and a plant-lined walking path based on the legend of the Ramayana. 

Such a combination of technical innovation and rain forest habitat is totally unexpected . . . but as I’ve learned, very Bengaluru. 




Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Idea/Flower Tea Buds: Add Time and Hot Water

Ovidia —Every other Tuesday

This came up because I went to the February Space Bar Write In Yesterday.

I wrote about my first visit at the inaugural Space Bar last month, so this was my Second Time. Space Bar is communal writing space for isolated writers. They offer tables, quiet space, power (drinks and books for humans, electricity outlets with multi-plugs for devices).

The January Space Bar came just when I needed it: my editor had just retired and I wasn’t sure what would happen to the history mysteries that had been contracted through her. Ordinarily I would have started work on the next book by now, but I was having a bit of trouble getting down to it. Plus the next Su Lin trilogy is set in the Emergency years, which makes for depressing research.

So I decided to use my first Space Bar session to generate a new series. What did I have to lose, spending a Sunday afternoon in the library? And I came out with a vomit draft of almost 3000 words for my first middle grade fantasy—not bad, I thought.

One month later, we come to what I find the single most useful thing about having a monthly Space Bar check in; it gave me a point of external accountability. I told myself I would turn up for the February Space Bar with a (very, very) rough draft of Lily Lee and the Greedy Ghost to start on editing.

This is where are the flower tea balls come in.



My drawing's not great, but flower tea balls look really drab in real life too.
Flower tea bowls are dried flowers wrapped up in dried tea leaves. They're really more of a gimmick, but you can get some made with really good tea and the flowers are pretty.



This is kind of what they look like when you see them in tins in the Chinese tea shop.

Anyway, I stuck (figurative) flower tea balls all through my draft as place holders, so I didn't spend time expanding/ researching what I wanted to put in right away. Because I had a play target – to make it to the next space bar with something as close to 40,000 words as I could get.

The biggest benefit of having the Space Bar Play Target was the challenge it gave me. I didn't have to worry what someone might think of my writing—I just had to put words down in the draft, export it to Word (I work on Scrivener, but my agent and most editors I’ve encountered prefer documents in Word) and show up.

And I got over 30,000 words, a rough outline full of flower tea balls—



With all the flower tea balls in place, all I needed was time and hot water… and at the space bar I sat down and started stewing my way through it, expanding them as I moved through the text--



It seemd to work too, I got into a comfortable rhythm where I'd write for 50 minutes then walk around for 10 minutes, trying to chalk up at least 250 steps in that time.
Walking around the library looking at Books is one of the best ways of taking breaks from writing!

But then when I got home, there was a minor freak out! I couldn't find any record of any of the work I’d done that afternoon!
It turned out(thankfully) to be just a mixup. When you are kiasu (Singlish term term for being overly Singaporean) like me, you save multiple versions of your precious WIP when working on it anywhere other than home: in iCloud, in OneDrive and on a dongle… I'd spent the whole afternoon working on the OneDrive Copy and went home to look for it on the iCloud where of course it wasn't.

So – happy ending for now.



Flower tea in bloom, seen from above. Doesn't taste too bad either!

In a couple more days I'll have enough to polish up and show to my agent, just to see what she thinks and hope she finds it worth pursuing.

But it's no longer such a desperate case because it turns out, she'd got Happy news for me too – the new Editor at Little, Brown wants to talk about a new contract for the next Su Lin books!

If we get the contract signed, I know what I'll be doing at the March Space Bar write in: brain dump my first vomit draft of the (tentatively titled) Tembusu Tree Mystery!

Please wish me luck and happy reading and writing everybody!!

Sunday, February 23, 2025

On Fascinating Vilains

Annamaria on Monday

Though I have been a world away from the USA since this strange year began - like a lot of the rest of the world, it seems - I have kept in touch with the news from Washington.  I have refused to be totally captivated.  Actually, I have been spending a lot of time playing with my imaginary friends Vera, Tolliver, and Kwai Libazo in East Africa in 1915.  There's a war going on there, and many, many people are suffering.

But, I have to admit that I am very much distracted by the real-life suffering of my fellow Americans who are caught up in the chaos of the first month or so of Trump.2.  I have begun to wonder why Trump makes for such good television.  God knows I do not enjoy seeing his face or hearing his voice.  I am quite sure he is the villain of this story.  Which set me the thinking of villains that I have found fascinating.  Hideous.  Horrifying.  But riveting.  I am not suggesting that that Donald J. Trump has the soul of serial killer, but I do see parallels in his style and behaviors.  Which may be clues to his appeal as a television personality.

Here are my top two villains in crime fiction.  Both are the creation of a novelist writing a crime novel, but both have made it - BIG TIME - to the screen. 


  • Alex, created by the brilliant Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange.

 



  • Hannibal Lecter, brainchild of Thomas Harris in Silence of the Lambs
I confess that these are the kind of characters I would normally avoid.  And while seeing Silence of the Lambs, I did hide under my sweater a few times until David told me it was safe for me to look.  With A Clockwork Orange, however, I saw that film the day it opened, then read the book during the next week, and saw the film again a week later.  

So what do these villains have in common, and what do they have to do with the predicament the world now is in?



Both Alex and Lecter are evil.  Alex is the world's worst juvenile delinquent.  He revels in the violence he creates, enjoys inflicting pain and suffering. Like Alex, Lecter is a serial killer and certainly the most famous cannibal in literary history.  Both of these men, in addition to a blood thirst, has an artistic bent.  Alex has an intense passion for great music, especial that of Ludvig von Beethoven.  Lecter, Harris tells us, can draw  from memory the the panorama of Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo.  Not your run-of-the-mill bad guys.

They both approach the world with absolute confidence.  Not the teeniest whisper of self doubt.  Both have the capacity to charm those around them into giving them what they want.  They see themselves as irresistible.  And often they are.

These evil ones keep ratcheting up the outrages they perpetrate.

I am concentrating here on the film version of the stories, since I am thinking about what leaves the whole world, pretty much regardless of the viewers' politics, wanting to know what comes next from Donald Trump.




Two moths ago, I suggested here that 
what won Trump the election was this strategy of making his candidacy a fascinating TV show. The other side talked about how they would take a sane and useful approach in governing for the good of people.  Talk that was and never will be at all entertaining. 

Like all the best TV series, especially the ones that deal with crime, whether because we love or hate them, we always want to know what the villain is going to do next. Even if this villain is already a convicted felon.  Even if he is continuing to break the law left and right. (Well, mostly RIGHT!)

What about you, when it comes to stories?  What would you write?  What would you want to read?

Either way, whether we like it or not, Trump's behavior is a page-turner.




        PS: there is no right place to say this above, but I want to add that Anthony Burgess made up a futuristic language and wrote his book (in 1962) A Clockwork Orange in that language, which he called Nadsat – a conglomeration of English, Russian, and Cockney rhyming slang.  What with Trump's latest shenanigans with Putin, do you think we might all be speaking Nadsat before long?

"Horrorshow," Alex would say.

In Natsat it means "GOOD" If you're a villain.

    PPS: If you want to read the story of a brilliantly drawn, evil villain - worthy company to the two above.  I highly recommend Deadly Harvest by our own Michael Stanley.  


 

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Zoë Sharp on, "What Not To Say to a Writer"

Jeff––Saturday

As Murder is Everywhere rapidly approaches its seven millionth (7,000,000) site visitor and five thousandth (5000) post, I thought it appropriate to share with you a favorite of mine from MIE’s top-20 all-time most popular posts.  Every time I read it, I can’t help but chuckle at the Oscar Wilde style insights and quips of its author, the inimitable Zoë Sharp. Zoe wrote it nearly eleven years ago, but it’s as applicable today as it undoubtedly will be  tomorrow…and tomorrow…and tomorrow. 

We miss you, Zoe, and it goes without saying you're welcome back any time. But I'll still say it. :)

 

Last week I went to a party. An unusual event in itself for me, but this was doubly unusual because it was a party of non-writers. Over the last few years my few social gatherings have tended to be at writing conventions, so I find myself largely Among My Own Kind, as it were.

However, this was different. I found myself in a group of people, very few of whom I’d met previously, and none of whom were writers. Not only that, but they didn’t quite have a handle on exactly what it was I did for a living.

It is a bit of a peculiar occupation for those not involved in it to grasp, I admit, and I’ve often discovered that when people don’t understand what you do, they are—unintentionally, I’m sure—incredibly rude about it. Now, don’t get me wrong. These were otherwise terribly nice people, but after a while I started to play Writer’s Insult Bingo, and very nearly scored a Full House.



“So, how much do you make from this book writing thing, then?”
Now, I’m sure this was asked with only genuine curiosity in mind, to find out if so nebulous a career was one that could be pursued as a career, and not merely as a hobby. Unfortunately, the Brit in me finds discussing money all rather vulgar, so I contented myself with saying, “I make a living, thank you.”

“Are you likely to have written anything I might have read?”
This is one of those questions that’s impossible to answer unless you happen to know the person and their reading habits very well indeed. In which case, they wouldn’t need to ask, would they? But it’s the implication that, naturally, you’re not famous enough for them to have heard of, because you haven’t written one of those books that everybody seems to have read almost as a matter of course, like THE DA VINCI CODE or FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. Quite what they’d do if you said, “Well, yes, actually. I am Dan Brown, but this evening I’m off duty …” I have no idea.



“Oh, I don’t read.” (usually said with a certain amount of pride)
I struggle not to react to this one. A very good friend came up with the perfect response. After introducing me to a new acquaintance as “ … the well-known crime writer …” he was met with this and without hesitation came back with this straight-face reply: “Oh, we can teach you!” I am also reminded of Mark Twain’s famous quote to the effect that what discernible difference is there between people who don’t read, and those who can’t read? I managed not to come out with this one at the party either. Heroic what restraint I have, isn’t it?

“I only read one book a year—on holiday—and I download that from one of these free sites.”
Lovely. This is like telling someone who owns a clothing boutique that you’d rather walk round naked than  buy clothes, but on the rare occasions when you do happen to need a new jacket, you shoplift it without a hint of shame …



“I’d write a book … if only I had the time.”
Because of course, that’s all you need in order to write a novel—the time. No talent, no persistence, no ability to create believable characters, a salient plot, a meaningful theme or a realistic setting. Nope, all you need is the time. And the implication here is that they have far more important things to do with their time anyway.

“I’m going to write a book, based on my experiences as (cue drum roll) an accountant!”
I’m sure very exciting things happen when you’re an accountant. I recall an old Dick Francis book where the main character was involved in just that profession and I seem to recall that all those books kept me turning the pages until the wee small hours. And while I would never cast doubt on anyone’s literary ambitions, this would need a careful approach in order to work successfully without giving away professional confidences. After all, it worked for a certain country veterinary surgeon some years ago, didn’t it?



“I read one of your books … I haven’t read any of the others, though.”
Now, I know what was behind this remark. It was said because I’d put a relative into the book in question as a cameo character and she wanted to see how he was portrayed, but it came over as meaning that once was more than enough, and the experience put her off wanting to read any of my other work. Although, for all I know that may have been exactly what she meant. In which case I’ll get me coat …

“I haven’t read any of your books, but I just borrowed one from my friend.”
This is a bit of a double-edged one. Yes, it’s nice that the person was prepared to give my work a try, but if they don’t want to take the risk and shell out money when it might be not to their taste, I’d far rather they said they borrowed a copy from their local library. This ensures that the author is paid nearly sixpence in Public Lending Right earnings and—more importantly—keeps the libraries used and funded.



“Oh, here’s an idea for a book for you …”
OK, so I didn’t get this one at the party (part of the reason I failed to be able to call, “House!”) but it happens quite a lot. In truth, I have more ideas for books kicking around than I know what to do with, and even if I hadn’t I’d be very reluctant to use one suggested by someone else. After all, if they tell you the idea and you then write it, perhaps to some success, what kind of a royalty do they expect for their part? A good idea can be totally ruined if it’s badly executed, just as brilliant writing will rescue a so-so idea.

“I wouldn’t mind reading one of your books, if you’ve got one lying around anywhere.”
This has been said too many times for me to count. I am given very few free books to give away, and usually I do so to people who’ve been very helpful in allowing me to pick their brains during the writing process, and are mentioned in the acknowledgements. The idea that I am given a boxful to hand out to people who may do me the honour of giving the book a casual onceover is wearying. Enough people already expect the blood of my labours to be given away for nothing. It implies you think what someone does has no commercial value.



“Where do you get your ideas?”
This also was not one I heard at the party, but it’s so common at writing talks and events that I had to include it here. The truth is, if you have to ask then you are not a writer. Ideas are everywhere. They surround and absorb us. Every news item, documentary, overheard comment or chance remark—all are rich with possibilities. I developed a theory years ago that writers may have some form of mild autism.

After all, the human brain is being constantly bombarded with information, far too much to react to, but we filter out everything we don’t need. The autistic mind lacks that filtering system, which is why people with autism often have photographic memories and the facility with numbers or ability to draw remarkably accurately. In the case of a writer, we pick up threads of ideas that most people miss. With last year’s Charlie Fox novella, ABSENCE OF LIGHT, I sat in a fascinating lecture at the local WI by a senior Home Office pathologist about his work reconciling the bodies from the Christchurch earthquake. All the while I was scribbling furiously in a notebook when just about everyone else listened and enjoyed, I’ve no doubt, but without the urge to take the basic idea and go, “What if …?”

I’m sure everyone must have come across their own favourite insults, not only to writers, but towards any profession. Care to share your favourites?



This week’s Word of the Week is agraphia, meaning an inability to write, although it differs from the usual writer’s block as it is defined as a language disorder resulting from some form of brain damage. It is noted that there’s no direct treatment for agraphia, although some people can learn techniques to help them regain a portion of their previous writing abilities. It is often accompanied by aphasia­ (speechlessness) and alexia (the inability to understand written words).
Thanks, Zoë.  We miss you.  You're welcome anytime.
––Jeff

Jeff’s NOT DEAD YET Events

(Schedule in formation)

2025

All Live Events

Sunday, April 13, 2:00 p.m. MST
The Poisoned Pen Bookstore
Author Speaking and Signing
Scottsdale, AZ

Thursday, May 15- Sunday, May 18 
CrimeFest
Author Panels yet to be assigned
Bristol, UK