Deviant tales of the unexpected

The publishing house behind Meet Moriarty, Inde Press, has taken upon itself the job of unearthing writing talent hidden in people in mainstream professions.

They plan to identify talent, act as a midwife to allow the book to emerge in the real world and distribute and market it using more than just bookshops as points of sale.

A noble attempt, but here's a small recommendation to The Inde Press. Great writing or the ability to tell stories, thus, should be seen as aspirational, almost unattainable.

Of course, judging the merits of somebody's work is tough, especially when there are few potential authors to be chosen from numerous writers.

Here is what Mohammed Khan, founder of that brilliant ad agency Enterprise, had to say about judging whether an advertisement would be an award-winning one, back in the 1990s. His parameter was to answer a basic question: Do I wish I had done that? In books, however, the judgement has to go further. It is: How I wish I could do it.

Meet Moriarty is a double debut. It's the first book from The Inde Press, and is the first published work of Gautam S Shiknis. Shiknis has worked with Saatchi & Saatchi and has since founded a creative and marketing consultancy catering for the entertainment industry. He has also written two screenplays that are heading towards production.

Don't be surprised if you see Meet Moriarty the next time you go to watch a movie at a multiplex near you. Why, you might even end up picking up a book while waiting to be seated at a restaurant. Penned by an advertising/marketing professional and published by a firm that thinks differently the book is obviously also being marketed in unconventional ways.

The title of the book, of course, comes from Sherlock Holmes's famed nemesis, Professor Moriarty, who sits like a spider at the centre of his web, strands of which run deep inside the city of London and beyond, feeding him with vital information, all of which is stored in that great brain of his.

Moriarty is the archetypal evil genius; even Holmes respects him. Shiknis's theory is that there is a Moriarty inside all of us, our resident evil persona that emerges from time to time on provocation.

For instance, Alley Cat is the tale of a deviant senior nun who preaches to people to beg for forgiveness for their sins during the day and is a fairly popular prostitute in the night""it's her method of taking revenge on the world that was unkind to her.

The influence for this story comes from a newspaper report published in July 2002 in the US about how the Roman Catholic church has been shielding its priests and other church workers accused of sexual abuse.

The report was based on a study that found that in spite of confessions from priests and also fully aware of their sexual misconduct, the guilty have been sheltered. There are other such real-life influences that have provided material for Shiknis to weave a story around it. Any more examples would be giving the game away.

So all the 11 stories are short tales of people in whom their Moriarties have taken over. A majority of them have their genesis in real life events around which Shiknis has extrapolated and tried to build a chilling story.

By the second or third story, you have realised this clever trick and try to second-guess the author. Is that good? Maybe not, since your mind is "deviated" towards guessing the origin rather than following Shiknis towards the build-up to his sometimes surprising finales.

I say sometimes surprising, because some of the stories, likeMaxwell's Silver Coffee, Vibgyor, The Piano, and My Father's Son have predictable endings. But where the second-guessing doesn't work, like in Hatch!, A Stranger in the House, and Point Blank, the book is a decent read.

Also, when you are mentally fast-forwarding, you tend to miss out on nuggets of good writing or neat insights scattered around. For example: "Dust ... A regularly unwelcome visitor, fended off in varying manners by different people.

An unseen battle that provided glimpses into temperament. You could tell the valiant challengers who fought it regularly off their sparkling, cheering books ... Then there were the timid brushers, who removed it less frequently, only from obvious places, frightened that a visible presence of their enemy would bear testimony to their fatiguing selves""they fought it on behalf of the others who came to their abodes, and not really for themselves. Lastly, of course, there were those who had given up this fight""silently aware of the unchallengable claim." And book design and graphics by Vikas Gaitonde, one of India's finest advertising professionals, provide visual relief.

Shiknis has made the effort to flesh out the resident evil in us, how it manifests itself sometimes, and what effect it has when unchecked. His first attempt is commendable. Yet, with its dark subject, it perhaps does not chill enough""considering we are exposed to many instances of Moriarty's handiwork in real life and nothing seems ghastly any more.

Perhaps it's a reflection of the times we live in ""yes, real life seems more scary than fiction. What's left is the twist in the tale and the language, both of which shine throughout this collection of stories""though not all the time. Meet Moriarty is a promising debut; maybe the next book from Shiknis will be even better.

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MEET MORIARTY: ELEVEN TALES OF DEVIANCE

GAUTAM S SHIKNIS
The Inde Press
Price: Rs 240
Pages: 152