Index page of 'Detective Raghu'

1: Dead man talking

A man dies at the doorstep of Raghu’s office. He has died without leaving any evidence except ten reddish crisp notes he has pushed beneath the closed door as a gesture of payment. The hunt for identification of the body will take Raghu to the murky world of real estate builders

                           

2: Missing Investment banker

An Investment banker drops out of the planet, on a pleasant morning. His wife is worried is an understatement. Raghu is approached to locate him. He might have done a huge fraud or run up a huge loss. There is no trail. Where does one begin?

3: Doctors plotting wife.

A young doctor informs Raghu that his newly wedded wife is plotting to kill him and he is embarrassed to approach anyone to find out the truth or investigate. Raghu takes on his case, little realising the doctor might die soon.

4: Major’s abduction

A wealthy businessman with old wealth finds his dog is kidnapped. The terrier dog is light of his life. He wants to kill the kidnappers. Raghu doesn’t do animal cases but is compelled because of his love for dogs. He has not factored the kidnappers are vicious and it might be a life losing proposition.

5: Switched gun

A scrap dealer is nearly killed in the heist that takes place in his shed one evening. His estranged nephew, a motorcycle workshop owner is accused. He has been set-up. He happens to be Raghu’s friend. Raghu not sure if his friend is innocent takes up the case. It takes him to a clutch if characters where each one has an agenda.

6: The Jeweller’s wife

A Jeweller's wife approaches Raghu to get her wayward husband back on track. Raghu tells her he doesn’t do divorce cases. He later on accepts a small mission to see if he can offer some counselling for an amicable settlement. But a preliminary attempt leads him to a bizarre world of blackmail and a mad house. Shaken and stirred he tries to make sense of it.

7: The last request

A letter arrives with not much information of a man who met an accident. The letter is addressed to an old school teacher whose son had wandered away twenty years ago. The school teacher approaches Raghu to go to the place where the letter was posted from to track his son. It is a journey of surprise for Raghu.

The cover story

What makes sense to package a product if the cover does not tell a story? This was what was thrown on my face at the various places I worked. Hence the cover of the book tells the story in some elements what the book is about. If it doesn’t to a Bangalorite then I have to revisit it.

Adjushtu city:Raghu The Detective

As I mentioned earlier the location was not rational. Having decided Bangalore I recalled many of its quaint place of colonial time it had which made life for its resident a relaxed planet. Not to mention its balmy weather helped in that relaxation. All that changed dramatically in the last twenty years. But most of all I like the accommodative nature of Bangalore's resident.

Like most Indian cites which are developing, it looks like a Picasso painting. Yet a few remnants of the past do exist and one may miss them if one did not go looking for it. So Raghu gripes of the changes like every other old timer, once in a while. The only other place he might like to move is Tibet as he says. A place is where one has friends and good food available. Everything else is for the travel magazine.

Occasionally, Raghu rides out of the city to other place to seek a change of Vista and give his second love, bull, 'The Royal Enfield' motorcycle a spin. Most owners of that motorcycle call it a 'Bull' a colloquial term. A shortened term for its brand name 'Bullet'. 

Evolution of the book ‘Detective Raghu’ the book.

There were 12 short stories I had thought of over a couple of days. It was meant for a comprehensive graphic novel. Each of those short stories would occupy a set of twelve odd pages. The time and cost were not the challenges. The fear was the nascent readership of Graphic Novel in India. It just didn’t make sense though I and a close friend of mine, Gopi, had begun working on the look and feel of the book.

So we abandoned it. It lay on the hard disk for a year. It was then I was motivated by another friend to write a book. It was a political thriller I had in mind. Since its premise lay on actual events of the Sir Lanka civil war it needed a substantial amount of research and trawling. I gave it a pause and decided to get Raghu the break to test the waters of publishing.

There was this sadness of having abandoned the original idea for me. especially for Gopi as he is a fine artist and illustrator.

Detective Raghu.The Book

‘Raghu the Detective’ is a book comprising of seven short stories.

When I commenced writing the detective book ‘Detective Raghu’, I had a vague idea of where it should be based. Having lived in Bombay I was clear it would be beyond me to place the character in that Metropolis. It is too grim and dark in many ways. And my stories would lurch to the ubiquitous ‘noir’ genre. I wanted a mild flavour of the darkness and Bangalore did raise that feeling in me.

The book comprises of short stories. It was to keep the attentions span of the present day reader under no stress. I write so people will read it. I have to take that factor into consideration. I have no other consideration. 

I took generous help from the Mr Google, is an understatement. Others whose help and reference I have accessed, their sites or their blog are as listed below.

I would like to thank many folks out there whose blogs and article I have accessed in my reference to writing. Some I have managed to write to personally to thanks and some I will when I get their lawyers notice.

Those whom I did write were generous in their help and considerate. I would want to tip my hat to you all.

I am in the process of short listing the offer I have from the few publishers I have approached. In case they consent I would like to offer one of the short stories for download.

Gopal loaf’s the streets of city, and does he loaf, the url will give you an indication. He records them in a documentary sort of view.

http://mainsandcrosses.blogspot.in/

Somesh does fine illustrating and gives a perspective of the city from a watched world in slow motion.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/somsesh/page9/

Paul Fernandes is someone I would have been if I was an illustrator and living in Bangalore.

http://blog.travelnride.com/journey-of-bangalores-bygone-days-with-paul-fernandes

A visitor from overseas who has done a bit of street walking and provides an architecture reference of old Bangalore

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haynes/410896112/in/photostream/

Since I have my central character a foodie it became important to get some close look at the food available in Bangalore street.

http://lotsafood.blogspot.in/2011/06/breakfasting-in-bangalore.html

bangalorefoodreview.com

Ron provides a world of how Bangalore lived in the sixties, during the Beatles and pot smoking world of the west.

http://www.children-of-bangalore.com/1920.htm

http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/once-upon-a-time-in-bangalore-on-route-no-11/

A very useful resource for looking at Bangalore. It is I guess a emagazine.

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/500-bangalore-chickpete-shopping

As my detective travels I need to look at other place for reference.

http://www.ourhyderabadcity.com/search/label/Secunderabad

Sankara lives the good life of a true traveller, following his path itself would make life fun for a true wanderer.

http://www.beontheroad.com/2009/09/about-me.html

Manmadhan writes a blog that would do justice to a doctorate or a dean of history. Great place to find out about Kerala, in terms of its history, without much fret. Not to mention many other things apart from Kerala are there and make interesting read.

http://historicalleys.blogspot.in/

In case you desire to get a quick colloquial Kanada on the go curse word or other wise. Spend a few days and sound like a native.

http://bengaloorubanter.blogspot.in/2007/06/bengalooru-slonguaze-dictionary.html

Marketing

We had a teacher who thought us Hindi in the eighth grade. Ours being an English medium school Hindi was one of the subjects in our school which everyone disliked. Though we spoke Hindi, reading and writing called for a set of brain cancer inducing effort. The Hindi teacher had become an author of late. He had written a fiction novel on dacoits of north India, where he came from. We all thought he was an escaped dacoit. It was sort of the western genre. We had read English ones in private. Books of those sorts were banned in our school and at most homes. The Hindi teacher read excerpts of his books in our class. No one had any idea what the story was because he would get overexcited reading it and froth in the mouth. We dozed off and wouldnt have brought the book to wrap even a rotten fish. Yet, a few smart kids brought the book. For some strange reason they scored very high in the Hindi test and exams later on. I think he made a killing, selling his books in our school. Parents of the kids who gave them the money to buy the book were glad that their children were taking interest in reading Hindi. There was an off side of this book buying, a complete glut in the second hand market of that book. The students wanted to maximise their investment and offered them for sale or trade them for a comic or a tennis ball to play cricket, they had no offer and were left holding the pulp. Similar to the Crash of Tulips market, situation prevailed.  Later some of my classmates became bankers and hedge fund managers. That some were accused for insider trading and maximising profit and so on, it not their fault at all, it was their childhood exposure, pun implied..

None the less I have also learnt it is important for a person to market ones book. Willy-nilly or whoever permitting selling is the more important part of the process. Selling has a bad word so Marketing is what I shall use in this conversation. Euphemism helps

Detectives in India:

It is a country where the term detective is well understood there are few enduring detective novels. Though of late there are a few authors venturing into it. Indian movies had detective stories since early 1950’s. Hindi detective novels have or rather had a long history. Truckloads of detective fiction got written in the neighbourhood of Delhi. The market leader was a guy called Om Prakash Sharma. He had more than 450 Hindi detective novels to his credit.

Meerut was the Mecca of pulp fiction writers, very strangely, as that ancient city is not known for anything else. The city had authors like Ved Prakash Sharma and Surender Mohan Pathak and a street full of cover designer artist. None of that survives anymore

They were rip-offs popular English detective books. Much of it embellished with local sex and mayhem and language. We would read a few pages and roll on the floor laughing at the lurid expression they had.

Later I was to learn that much of this detective story written in Hindi sold in lakhs. Comparative to them books written in english by Indian authors, whatever the genre, barley sold a few thousand, and if they did, they were called best sellers. A classmate of ours who came in from Delhi called them ‘Gopichand Jasoos books’

That one day I would attempt to write a detective story based in Bangalore was like writing, science fiction. There are no detectives in Bangalore. If they are, they must be as hard to fond as seeking a Christian evangelist in Kabul.

It is a bit like the conversation in the movie Casablanca.

Claude Rains: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Humphrey Bogart: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain.

Claude Rains: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Humphrey Bogart: I was misinformed

I don’t live in Bangalore. I have visited the place many a time. I would right way seek forgiveness from all those legions of people who will find, assuming they read my book, error and other such goof-ups of location and local customs.

So why did I choose Bangalore, I think I need to ask that to my shrink, it must be to do with something that happened in my childhood.

Fiction allows us to write the implausible and improbable as long as one can keep the reader engaged. Or one can always turn to science research writing.