Mining the archives for book ideas - by Harini

Where do you get your ideas? No but seriously what do you use for inspiration: art, music, landscape, the news, dreams, family stories . . . ? 

Whenever I'm stumped for ideas, I go to my favourite place - the archives, where I stumble across the strangest things. 

For example, the case of William Edward James, a Mysore surveyor who only wanted to do his job. But in 1873, he had to contend with farmers who threw stones at him, absentee bullock cart drivers who preferred to drive their bullocks into the jungle rather than work for him, and a recalcitrant employer - the British Government. Although James managed to complete his surveys at considerable cost to his own health, the government refused to reimburse him for the money he paid to support his employees' wives and children who accompanied them- the only way, James claimed, that he could induce 'respectable natives' to work with him. The poor man died young, immortalized by a memorial stone in the gorgeous Trinity Church in Bangalore, but people who go into the church rarely see this - and even if they do, they will never know how hard he worked on what seemed like a pointless, thankless task. Here is a short article that I and my colleagues wrote about his life - but I'd love to write him into a story some day.

A Window Into the Lives of Colonial India's People, in the Trials of a Surveyor (thewire.in)

In 1876, another set of archival documents told us of the dark dangers that lurked within the Bangalore Museum. The visitors were 'remarkably well behaved and orderly' - but one curator drowned while out for a swim, and the next died after a short illness. The next person who filled this position was the Head Clerk, but he didn't know much and wasn't very useful. In a museum filled with rare and valuable objects, a series of unfortunate events that lead to the loss of its curators... can you see where I'm going with this?    

I haven't (yet) used either of these as plots. But in my first historical mystery, The Bangalore Detectives Club, Kaveri Murthy - my 19 year old sari-wearing, maths-loving detective in 1920s Bangalore - goes to the Lal Bagh zoo and sees a tiger cub being suckled and reared by a street dog. That story is true too - it doesn't have anything to do with the mystery at the heart of the book, but the ecologist in me had to put it in, as soon as I read it. 

And book 2 in the series, Murder Under A Red Moon, opens with an animal show (a prominent feature of the British colonial social scene in the city) - and concludes with the Ugliest Dog award. The Ugliest Dog competition, an adorable, very large and exuberant chappal-chewing puppy whom Kaveri eventually adopts (to the horror of her ever-so-propah mother-in-law), was inspired by an account of another Ugliest Dog competition in Bangalore, that I stumbled across in a newspaper archive. 

Now that I'm writing book 4 in the series, I'm back to scanning newspapers and gazettes, and trawling through obscure ledger files and letters written in spidery handwriting, seeking inspiration. 

What sparks your imagination? A story, a poem, a visit to a new place? Or a dusty document redolent with history? Some of the weirdest incidents I have read have come from the archives. Seriously. You can't make up this stuff.