The Birth of Maya’s New Husband

by with No Comment Author ProfileThe Birth of Maya's New Husband

The Calling at Calangute

In the pleasantly warm month of August 2014, my family and I went on our annual food, fun and frolic pilgrimage to the wonderful carnival and cashew feni state of Goa. Over the years, this has become almost a ritual for us, a way to unwind from the hectic mores of the routine Mumbai life.

The Calangute Beach Residency where Neil D’Silva’s novel Maya’s New Husband took birth

Now my family consists of me, of course, my wife Anita, and our two lovely angels, Gilmore and Felicia. The kids are quite a handful, but they keep our spirits high. Most of our trips are centered on them, as they should be; there’s precious little that we do for ourselves.

Every year, our trips to Goa turn out to be the annual highlights. We begin looking forward to them from March itself, and the year of 2014 was no different. However, that was only as far as anticipation goes. For, when the trip actually began, we suffered, right from the outset, from a severe case of Murphy’s Law. For the uninitiated, this Law states: If anything has to go wrong, it will.

So, in Goa, this year, everything began going wrong. We decided to go by train this year, which turned out to be a bad idea. Blighted by gregarious co-passengers and facing inordinate delays, we somehow reached Goa. We alighted during a sudden torrential downpour, in which we traveled to our destination — Colva. This was a long and onerous journey because of the rain and a major road accident ahead of us. The next day, we had to go to Calangute, our final destination, and that journey turned out to be misery personified as well. In any case, when we reached Calangute, we were told — horror of horrors — that there was an issue with our booking. Despite having a two-month advance booking, due to an oversight (mea culpa), we had to give up the reservation and then footed it along the beach to another hotel I knew had rooms available.

Finally, we downgraded ourselves, and found ourselves in a passable accommodation, where we would pass our next three days in bliss.

But, alas! Bliss it was not meant to be! For, the very moment that we dumped our bags at our hotel, Anita caught the chills. She ran a temperature, which was brought down by the antipyretics we carried with us, but she was too emaciated to travel anymore. She could only join in the fun from the hotel room.

So, this was the trip in summation. But, what has all of this got to do with Maya’s New Husband?

I’m coming to that.

The one most wonderful thing about our impromptu accommodation was that it gave us a magnificent view of the salty Goan sea. We were right on the beach, and the balcony opened out to the sounds of the lashing waves at every hour of the day.

On the second night there, after the kids had slept, Anita and I sat on this very balcony, close to each other, snuggled in one warm blanket, and looked at the stars. We spoke of general things, mostly about our lives back home, because that ghost never seems to leave us. But, somewhere midway through this conversation, I was reminded of Longfellow’s brilliant phrase: Footprints on the sands of time.

This created a passion in me like no other. I began thinking aloud, with my patiently-listening wife for company. What would happen of me when my journey here is done? Would I be obliterated just like that? Would I be one of those nameless, fameless grains of sand? Or, would I leave a few of my footprints on the sands of time?

What legacy would I leave behind?

I thought aloud, and she listened. And then I told her that I have to follow my dreams. Because, well, ars longa, vita brevis. I decided, then and there, that from that moment on, I will give wings to my fancies. I will leave my footprints in the form of my stories.

I brought my laptop out that night when everyone had slept, and sat through the dead of the night, in that quaint hotel on Calangute Beach, Goa, chipping away at the machine. It was around 3 in the morning that the initial words of Maya’s New Husband began to take shape.

The Inspiration

The story of Maya’s New Husband chose me. I did not choose it.

Horror had always fascinated me, but, for me, horror isn’t just about spirits and ghosts and vampires. It is much more. Real horror is that which you can feel. Real horror needs to have its element grounded in reality. Horror stories that play out in our real world are the ones that are the scariest.

Here, again, my marriage with Anita became an inspiration for the story. Ours was a so-called ‘arranged’ marriage. We knew each other just for a little less than a year before we got married. This is too short a time to understand each other, their likes and dislikes, their pet peeves and fond fancies, or anything for that matter. Despite that, we took the plunge.

From that first day of marriage itself, I had an awareness of how much harder the marriage must have been on her than on me. She was the one who had left everything behind and made a home with me. I was still in the same house I lived in. Her stakes were undoubtedly higher.

Millions of women marry in this manner in India each year. Knowing practically nothing about their husbands, they aspire to make their homes with them. And, a lot of times, they face unspeakable horrors at the homes of these unknown husbands.

What if, a woman married someone who held the most terrifying secret within him? Won’t each moment with such a man be present a new horror for the poor woman?

This was the basic grain of the horror element of Maya’s New Husband. The horror is not because of the themes; it is because of this desolation that Maya surrounds herself with in her new house.

My inspiration took form from my personal observations, and Maya took shape.

View from balcony of Calangute Beach Residency that inspired D’Silva to write MNH

 

The Process

I could not have written the story if I hadn’t been introduced to National Novel Writing Month in 2014. Towards this end, many things had been instrumental. My brother, Roy, helped me in creating an author website. As the website was created, I saw how my short stories got a concrete platform. My interest was piqued, and I started sharing my stories with people, and got a heartening response.

This was what made me confident of writing a full-fledged novel. It was time to give Maya’s New Husband a shape too. During the NaNoWriMo month, I started writing right from November 1, 2014. I wrote all through this month, religiously clocking in several hours every day. Finally, the manuscript was finished on November 21, 2014.

I won the certificate as a NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner. I proudly shared it with everyone I knew.

When we were a week into December, I sat with the editing of the novel. Anita sat next to me all through those hours, and as she read it, I saw the expressions on her face and realized this was something that could hold people’s interest. I shared the story with a few other people and found similar reactions. I knew I had something monumental in my hands; now all I had to do was to edit it thoroughly and share it with the world.

Maya’s New Husband underwent three complete revisions. I added scenes, deleted fluff and when the third version was done, I got the feeling that this was ready to go.

Around this time, I did some research on self-publishing. This is really an amazing thing! Writers no longer have to grovel at the feet of traditional publishers; they can hold out on their own. The Internet is a wonderful place.

On January 1, 2015, I put forth the eBook to the world. It earned strong reviews right from day 1. Maya’s New Husband had taken off.

On January 18, 2015, I was ready with the print version. This was launched at a happening online event, where some of the best self-published Indian authors attended. The event was buzzing through the night, and the book arrived in its print form.

Today, as I see the print version of Maya’s New Husband, I get a feeling that cannot be described in words. Yet, I am only humbly reminded of the beautiful words of another masterful poet, Robert Frost:

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

Read the entire success story of Maya’s New Husband here.

The Icy Hand

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The icy hand comes and it spares none

Its grip is a vice, steely cold as ice,

That cannot even be melted by the searing sun

And cannot be corrupted by any price.

In the damp and dark room where I sit on the floor, a million thoughts run through my head. None of these thoughts give me any pleasure; but like unwanted ghosts haunting a prized estate, they refuse to leave me at peace. I think of the people in my life I have lost, people whom I had been born to love and people whom I had learnt to love.

All through my life, they have fallen dead like flies. Helpless, unreasonable deaths. Unavoidable deaths. Deaths that left gaping voids behind.

I knew this faceless brute called death even before I knew what life was. It began with the people who had birthed me—good god-fearing, churchgoing folk—who were snuffed away when the car we were in collided headlong with a tanker. The baby seat saved me, I was told later when I could understand.

Caretakers of orphanages are usually shady criminals, I have heard, who mutilate those they are entrusted to protect. But my folk were kindred souls. They fed me, clothed me, trained me and educated me. I grew to love them—the fat generous matron and her strict husband who had a merry heart of gold. I made friends too, boys of my age who were just as unfortunate as I was. Our individual tragedies bound us together. And then the fire happened. Everything and everyone I knew burned to cinder. I don’t even remember their faces now; I only remember the inferno blazing into the night. But I survived. They had sent me out in the garden to walk the dogs.

Then he took me in as a waiter. A lowly waiter in shabby clothes in a grubby bar serving stale wine. But it was a job, and it fed me. And he was a nice man too. He held my hand when I had no hand to hold. I graduated from boyhood to manhood at his bar. I understood what hardship means. I got beaten by irate customers and I learned to fight back. However, that was not meant to last either. Such a noble man, such a compassionate person—but he was destined to die by a bandit’s bullet. While I crouched under the bar table, I saw him collapsing to the floor, his outstretched hand pleading to me to save him. But I could not.

A little down the lane, I met her. Beautiful as the earliest drop of morning dew was her face—spotless, without a feature out of place. Sparkling as the water of the clearest spring was her heart—blameless, without a shred of sin. She gave me love. She taught me to love. We vowed to share our joys and sorrows till death do us part. And death did do us apart. The sickness came over her when I was at my happiest, and consumed her entirely, leaving behind her rotting self in my trembling hands.

 

*

 

And that is not all the death I have seen.

I have seen corpses of people I hardly know. People dying in front of me, pleading with me for that elusive one more day to live. But they won’t get it, will they? Is there anything as unsympathetic as death is?

The young fresh-faced college boy, rife with the hope of a budding career, died in my hands last week. I was beside him as he winced in pain, clutching his torn abdomen. I cried for him, but death forgives no one. He should have known that, shouldn’t he?

The new mother who had just kept her baby in the crib collapsed and died in her house three days ago. Stabbed in the back. Right in front of my eyes. There was nothing to save her. Her baby cried, I cried, but death spares no one. The baby will learn that as he grows.

And now, here, the teenage girl lies lifeless in front of me. How innocent she looks! Even in death, she has the face of an angel, regardless of the fact that her throat is slit in the most gruesome way.

When I had no respite from death, how could they have had?

But I won’t see any more deaths now, I think.

They have been investigating, probably even following me; and, as I wipe the poor girl’s blood off the butcher’s knife in my hands, I hear the angry law-keepers banging at the door.

 

END