Inspired by
notes offering bio fragments from a photo prompt (see examples here and here), our Worthing IRL writing group did this last week:15 mins - select a random person from a bunch of face-down pics taken from stock images. Give your person a bio - any format you like, but we need to know something substantial about this person by the end of 15 mins.
Here’s mine. 15 mins of handwritten scribble, no edits, raw and messy.
Yes, I write quite a lot in 15 mins. I write fast. I also read fast and think fast. Blessing & curse, yup.
The image that I picked up from the random unseen selection was tiny and low-res printing; it’s only now that I’ve tracked it down online that I can see that it is clearly a scene in East Asia. Given the years I’ve spent living in South Asia, it’s not surprising that my mind, under pressure with just fifteen mins, did a fast scan of the storefront-situation and whisked me back to Kerala.
Anil
Anil runs the shop at the corner of Macdonald Street and Victoria Street (or, if you follow official state naming conventions, Muthulingam Vazhi and Pallicaud Road).
He stocks cigarettes, paan, chocolate, hair oil, toothpaste, talcum powder, pens, tiny vials of perfume and - only to those who know, and ask - herbal potency and aphrodisiac powders.
Anil wasn’t always a shopkeeper. Once, he was a college boy, studying English Literature. That was back when the syllabus consisted of colonial texts: novels like Wuthering Heights, the poetry of Wordsworth - and a carefully bowdlerised and censored edition of Shakespeare’s greatest hits.
But after the regime shift, English Literature was one of the first subjects to be decolonised, and Anil found his degree useless on the job market. Students who were just two or three years younger than him, with far less experience of teaching, were walking straight out of university with fresh degrees in hand, and expertise in the works of authors like Ramanujan, Parthasarathy - and, of course, Tagore. Nobody wanted Anil’s Wuthering Heights - much less his insipid and emasculated Shakespeare.
Anil’s ammavan [maternal uncle] ran a string of petty shops around town, and after the sixth month of unemployment, Anil’s mother (hard-pressed as she was to feed her family of four without a husband’s wage coming in) told Anil that he’d have to go to work for his uncle - degree or no degree.
Anil’s youngest brother - the tearaway - was jubilant at the long-overdue come-down dealt to his bossy and haughty older brother.
Anil spent his first three months at the shop in a kind of shock-state; serving people, listening to their woes and joys, hearing their stories as they gossiped about the latest neighbourhood scandals.
After three months, Anil bought himself a set of fine pens and two notebooks: one tiny one - discreet enough to hide under the counter and make scratch notes of important details as he overheard them, or fancy phrases that he admired, or intimate revelations as they were given to his trustworthy face; and one large enough to write it all up in, during his quiet moments.
Caro, this is fucking brilliant. It's like you've mastered improv in writing form.
hell yeah! love this