Friday, November 6, 2009

Oh, for a story to tell!


Heard of the book "The Rozabal Line"? One in the series of fiction based on 'research' that shows Jesus spent a considerable part of his life in India, Kashmir specifically.


The author, Ashwin Sanghi (pseudonym Shawn Haigins) is an Indian businessman who writes part time. An immense amount of research has gone into the book, 90% of it google searches. (All the links are provided in the glossary.) As I read the book I keep thinking what a person like Dan Brown would have done with this material, or John Grisham, or Ken Follet for that matter. For the material is mind blowing, stuff that best sellers are made of, but the writing swings madly back and forth from BC something to AD 2012. And when I say swings madly back and forth, believe you me, you will be left with a headache at the pendulous madness.

But anyway, Mr Sanghi wrote a book. He probably spent years deciding just what he wanted to google and then made a story out of it. I wish I could tell a story, any story! I do not want to be a poet, nor can I even succeed in it. A poet can see the whole beach in a grain of sand. Me? I see the setting sun and I think- poached eggs.

No, not for me the blank verses and rhymed couplets. I would rather be a story teller. How fortunate are they, how blessed, those who can spin yarns, those who can pluck stories out of co passengers travelling in trains or lonely warehouses on the waterfront. I suppose life itself is full of stories, one has just to look at the right places.

How i wish I had that imagination, to make young boys and girls fly on broomsticks to play ball, or make trees walk and wage wars, to tell the world about a teacher in Afghanistan, or a tribe elder in the African jungles... oh but I cant, I cant. I just cant tell a story.

3 comments:

  1. am sure you will write a story one day and when u do...i want an autographed copy :-)

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  2. You have it all to be a great story-writer....just as you said you need to see it and spin.....your imagination!! Maybe some more years and you would start off in short spurts!!

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  3. i agree with 'mad about ad'
    the first step to writing is wanting to do it..:)

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