Ace Varkey's Blog: Cat got my tongue

A close friend is going through a medically challenging time and now worries that she will soon be unable to afford health coverage. Things are never so real as when they touch us, or someone close to us. While she does her bit to fight for Obamacare, I told her to balance that out with.....,reading. She's one of those outdoorsy types, more comfortable with a bike than a book, but I pressed. I explained that books exist for many reasons and I reminded her of our old friend Aristotle and his take on Catharsis. It's all very well, I told her, to watch a tragedy, think it might happen to you, and thereby cleanse yourself. Somehow it never works for me. I would rather read a book and be taken elsewhere, in her case, out of the house, or I would love to be shown another way of living, in her case, let her see how characters overcome challenges so she can be inspired. It's also how we can learn to right wrongs.
She surprised me by downloading my mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing," and telling me that for several hours she was transported to India and other problems. I told her to keep reading...
Meanwhile, I'm happy that Kitty O doesn't have to worry about losing his vet care.
The times we live in...when sometimes, the best of times are clearly behind us ....except for Kitty O who is always here....a vet making sure he stays healthy.
You know how people raise their glasses and say "Good Health?" They should now add, "Good Health care!"

To paraphrase the great Aristotle, "Drama is more probable than history," which means that there is a huge burden on writers to convey what could happen, even though history every now and then shows us the inexplicable and unimaginable. Witness what is going on today, for example. But I don't want to start up on the state of the White House, I want to talk about a very sad piece I recently read, and which I copy below:
Police in the south Indian state of Karnataka have arrested three people in connection with the "human sacrifice" of a 10-year-old girl .
Police told BBC Hindi that the child was killed on the instructions of a "sorcerer" to "cure" a paralysed man.
In my yet-to-be published second mystery, "While the children slept," there is a scene where the police rush to stop what they believe is a child sacrifice. The piece above proves that it clearly happens, which is why I have that scene, but to read of an actual account is heartbreakingly terrifying.
It is only by constantly putting such goings-on in front of people that we can effect change. That's why, as I have noted time and again, I made human trafficking central to my first mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing."
I realize I have been remiss and not mentioned Kitty O who is my sometime muse. He's asleep after a hard night out, curled up and safely snoring. I recall reading an account years ago of a restaurant raid where the police discovered the chicken was really cat meat. Apparently the sauces cloaked the different meat and the bones, being similar, didn't alert most patrons...until a zoologist strolled in. The horrific practice stopped immediately.
I wish the same for all the other horrific practices that are going on in the world. We must all be vigilant, both writers, readers...and eaters.

Kitty O didn't not watch the Oscars, as the man in the White House claimed, my cat slept through them, snoring softly from his curled up position. I marveled at the insanity of wearing millions of dollars worth of jewelry around one's neck, or an $80,000 dress.
But beneath all the glitter and long trains, what struck me is the sheer consistency of the Oscars. There is always great pressure on the host to make it one of the greatest shows on TV, always the fashion police who poke and laud, and always the same boring questions such as "Who are you hoping will win?"
Turns out the choices are never that many, because, as always -- and this blows my mind -- there are just a handful of movies that qualify -- in EVERY category. Hundreds of movies are released and yet just a few are deemed worthy to be put up for the entire assortment of "the best." How does that happen? I think it's good advertising, at least in part. One of the women from "Hidden Figures" noted it was a good story, had known actors, but what made it go this far was the monied backing of the studio.
It's like books. Someone up there in the publishing world will decide on the 'it' book. Like "The girl on the train" a few years ago. Once the decision is made, the author gets lucky, just like the movies.
This year "La La Land" got lucky and then, in a reverse that would not translate well on the pages of a novel, the movie got unlucky, though I admit it was the most human part of the show. We all make mistakes.
There is the other kind of lucky, when a small movie gets picked up, dusted, and displayed. I love it when that happens. Not as much as I would love someone taking notice of my mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing," but it's great fun to cheer for the under dogs.
Kitty O will have nothing to do with any form of dogs. But then he's a cat, and by definition, it's all about him. Sort of like the man in the White House. Now there's a story for some brave writer to bravely pen.

As we all know, Kitty was the name Anne Frank awarded her diary. I went to the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam and looked at the pictures of the then-Princess Elizabeth pasted on the wall. For some reason it was easier to imagine Anne cutting up that paper and figuring out where to put it, rather than writing "Dear Kitty."
I'm the sort of writer who believes that any writing is complete only when it is read. Did Anne think about who would read her diary? She could never have imagined its effect. But then again, she was living through an unimaginable time, going from happy-go-lucky to lucky-to-be-alive -- but only if hidden.
There are people who don't believe in "Dear Kitty" or the Holocaust. They are the ones who dub the 'time that was consumed by fire' as fake facts.
I read Anne's diary years and years ago. It chilled me such that I could not bring myself to read the unexpurgated edition. Sometimes once is enough to mark you for life.
Human trafficking, the subject of my first mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing" marks millions of humans every year. It's not fake fact. It's a hard, horrible, gut wrenching fact. And I wish there was more I could do.
Meanwhile my own Kitty, Kitty O, styled after a certain Jackie O (I am not one to bend to gender), considers the human traffic in the house from his perch on the piano. If it's too noisy, he hides. If he wants something, he meows, and we are there for him.
If only life were that simple.
If someone says it is that simple, I would say that might be a fake fact.

not sure if Kitty O is an immigrant, legal, illegal....after all, we got him from a shelter where he was in a cage, looking piteous. But he is here now, and though we can't declare him as a dependent on our income taxes, he is part of the family and I would hate to think of anyone taking him away.
It's the same with words. As a writer, I use words that have migrated into the English language. English, of all the languages I know, is the greatest vacuum cleaner of all, sucking in words from German, Greek and Latin, of course, but also French, Spanish, Hindi, Norwegian, the list goes on and on. Indeed, vacuum is from Latin!
So here we all are, living in various states such as Montana (Spanish for mountain), Florida (flowery), or better yet, New Mexico, in cities like Monterey (king's mountain), the western ranch, rodeo and ten gallon hat are all from down under the good ole USA, heck, even the word embargo is taken from Spanish.
I'm I grant you, not political, I'm just a writer, amazed at what happens over time, when borders get blurry.
I get to write "The Girl Who Went Missing," a book set in India, on the horrific topic of human trafficking which knows no borders, and I do that using words from many languages.
Amazing, isn't it, to live in such a world?
Ask where the word comes from, you might be very surprised.
Perhaps as surprised as Kitty O learning he is not human.

Many people I know don't think there's much to crow about this Year of the Rooster. Kitty O, for one, thinks it should always be the Year of the Cat. When I explained that there is a Tiger year, not a Cat year, he thought I was giving him alternate facts. Sigh. I can't blame him, really. He's a cat, he's narcissistic. It's all about him.
Perhaps other people feel the same way as Kitty O because I keep reading about an event that took place in 2011, the Year of the Rabbit. An Alaska Airline flight attendant spotted a young girl with a much older man. She signaled that the girl use the restroom, where she had left a note asking if she was okay. "I need help," the girl wrote back and, the pen being mightier than the sword, the plane was met by law enforcement and the man arrested for human trafficking.
As many articles have noted, human trafficking is all around us. We simply have to be aware, and like the flight attendant, we need to do something about it.
I'm never sure how to feel when I read the myriad articles about human trafficking. On the one hand, it proves that my first mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing," is spot on; yet on the other hand, it's devastating to know that the fictional world I created is happening everywhere and all the time.
If a note in a bathroom can save one person, perhaps my mystery can also, somehow, save people. Now that would be something. Not something to crow about, just something.

When I lived in Mumbai, I never managed to learn any Marathi. Instead I'd get along with my bits of Hindi, a sentence often cobbled together with English and a word or two of Hindi. Favorite Hindi word? Billi, which means cat. Of course I first had to get over it not being Billy, as in the cute form of William, or billy goat, which always brings to mind the time I was in Ireland and met one such goat defiantly named Margaret Thatcher.
But no, it's billi, as in feline, graceful, and unpredictable. With a little tweak I found I could sneak the Hindi for cat into the word itself: unpredicta-billi-ty. Voila!
I discovered lots of unpredictability during my stay in Mumbai. The buses that might appear, or not; the fisher women I write about in "The Girl Who Went Missing" who might yell at you or not; the rains that might flood the street or not. One thing that remained constant? The constant ogling and whispering that men do so openly to women. My novel deals with some of the awful stuff women have to put up with.
And in these times of unpredictability, when women are standing up in millions, they might want to take a lesson from the billi. Always be on alert, even when asleep. Always be ready to do something.
As for me? I will continue to champion the rights of all people. My second novel deals with the fate of poor children.

Kitty O would have joined in the march last Saturday if he wasn't so afraid of crowds. I'm sure he was pleased that so many women wore pink pussy hats, since pink complements his grey furs and he is a pussy, after all. Well, not the kind that was meant, but he is puss in grey boots.
Kitty O is a cat without a real voice. I know I pretend to understand him, but I do not speak meow. Instead I hazard a guess as to what he means, and every now and then I get bitten or clawed because I guessed erroneously.
The women, however, had voices. Such power, such determination, joined by so many men, o brave new world that has such people in it!
Like Kitty O, I could not add to the swell of people, and stayed home and wrote. The pen is as mighty as the voices marching, or so I hope.
We must all fight for the rights of humans, for the rights of women. I like to think that I have long been such a fighter. After all, my first mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing," is a fight against human trafficking. Young boys do get bought and sold, but it is overwhelmingly women who are the victims. It doesn't help when high-powered people speak of women as objects who can be touched at will.
Kitty O has been known to lash out when he wishes to be left alone.
Last week women spoke up about their wises.
Let us all band together, whether it is by marching, or shouting, or writing.
I know one thing: I will keep on writing novels that urge readers to fight for the rights of others.

As I wrote last week, Kitty O lost part of his ear in a fight. I'm sure it was to purr-tect his territory, his home, our castle.
Kitty O must have fluffed out his furs and meowed and scratched and bitten. That his ear was taken off was just part of the dreadful encounter.
How do writers protect that which we hold dear?
I, for one, want to be writer who highlights social problems, for as corny as it sounds, I hold dear the entire world. And while I can't take on every painful subject, I can, at the very least, make one, or two, or three problems, the most important part of my mysteries.
So when I wrote "The Girl Who Went Missing," I kept the ugly topic of human trafficking front and center as I went about creating a story that I hoped would lure readers, because let's face it, how many people out there really want to spend hours reading about girls being tricked and then abused? I made the deliberate choice of picking an American protagonist who goes to India to visit her sister. Right there, I felt, I had covered both sides of the globe, east and west. I also decided that Indian and foreign women would go missing, not just because that happens, but because that brings it closer to readers on either side of the world.
I lost sleep, I lost my nerve, I lost confidence....but like Kitty O of the missing ear, I did finish and I put it out there to bring attention to human trafficking. Kitty O still has to run his protection detail, and I still have to contend with readers who don't like aspects of the story. But I am very proud that the central theme in my mystery is the horrible, painful, life-changing issue of rampant female abuse, all for the sake of money. Kitty O, I am sure, is also proud that for one night at least, he drove away the other cats.
And there's the rub: for I want to bring readers in....while he wants the other cats out.
Final thought? I chose the genre of a mystery because they are very popular. If more people read about human trafficking, then more people can join the fight. For in the end, it is about ALL of us. No man is an island, Donne wrote so famously. And I boldly add, No woman should suffer on her own.....

Kitty O got into a fight the other night. This despite my many cautions that it's better he be a lover than a fighter. For one, even though he is clearly protecting his territory, I know he will lose out to the street-wise street cats. Two,he's essentially a kind fellow who doesn't need to do much to get by (in his case he barely purrs) so fluffing out his furs and bringing out those claws would be an anomaly that would lead to...failure. And that is exactly what happened. He returned home minus part of one ear. Vincere? Not quite. Vincent van Gogh? More along that line, though the painter lost the entire ear and Kitty O has most of his.
It's a nasty way to lose anything.
I, as a writer, often have to lose text. It's always difficult and quite often a fight. One part of me claims, I love this section, with another part, protective claws out, wants to keep it. Then the internal dialogue: You may love it, but does the story love it? Does it push forward the plot? I can't tell you how many cute scenes I had to cut from "The Girl Who Went Missing."
I wonder if Kitty O will miss the missing part of his ear? I wonder if he remembers the cat he fought? And I wonder if that cat will stop meandering into our backyard? But Kitty O fought the good fight, he paid for it, and now he will be, forever, Vincent.
I cut and cut and what remains is "The Girl Who Went Missing," whole, despite being cut. Just like Kitty O.