Primalsoup

Aka, how my novel is 0 words long but my browser history is a national threat

[Representative Image generated using AI]

Let’s be honest: writers love research not because it makes the writing better, but because it delays the writing altogether.

Also, I imagine once you win the Booker or get invited to some random lit fest (and there are so many now – I’m pretty sure my neighbourhood A Block, 4th Cross, 6th Street, 7th Lane has one brewing), you’ll be asked about your ahem, “writing process.” And you’ll need to respond with something suitably lofty about method-writing or urban ethnography.

So really, this is a long-term strategy, you guys.

Here’s the thing. Some people do the decent thing and read books. Histories. Memoirs. Academic texts they can actually cite.
Others binge Netflix, nothing like watching a regency romance with absurdly hot people or yet another true crime doc about a woman being murdered by her partner to “get into the mood.”

I, on the other hand, am a seeker of truth.
So I fall headfirst into Wikipedia.

Did I need to know the exact street layout of 1950s Bangalore?
No.
Did it make me feel like I was doing something novel-adjacent while avoiding the actual novel?
Absolutely.

At its core, research is just socially sanctioned snooping.
It’s eavesdropping with footnotes. Gossip with a bibliography.

It’s the only time you can Google things like:

• “Can you get typhoid from water in a brass pot?”
• “Is it still considered ‘stormy weather’ if it’s just emotional?”
• “What did Tamilians wear to sleep in 1971?”
• “Cycle gap la vandi — translation but make it literary?”

And the best part? Nobody questions it.
It’s research.

Exhibit A: My Not-So-Essential Research Deep Dives

• What was the fashion of our mothers in the 1950s?
  For a scene that contains a fleeting reference—half a sentence, maybe less. I could’ve just asked my mother, but then she’d ask me why I was wasting time on this when I clearly had a job and taxes to file.
• A deep dive into the origin story of Chennai’s Great Water Crisis,
  which we experience every summer—and every pretend-winter. (Let’s be real, Chennai doesn’t have winter. We have marginally less humid hope.)
• The weather on a very specific day in 2006,
  because “atmosphere.” Also because I was trying to emotionally justify a thunderstorm breakup.
• Whether eating too much papaya can actually induce menstruation.
  A tale passed down from grandmother to mother to me, with the sort of grave urgency usually reserved for all things that cannot be corroborated using science. This single piece of “medical” advice created a lifelong aversion to papaya in my head—because hello, periods in one’s twenties were already a horror show without the fruit salad fear factor.
• An appropriate translation for the phrase “cycle gap la vandi.”
  AKA being that person who wedges their SUV into a lane clearly meant for cycles. Happens daily on Indian roads—but it also lives rent-free in my brain as a metaphor for how people behave in relationships, workplaces, and arranged marriage WhatsApp groups.
• My all-time favourite rabbit hole: Chennai vs. Bangalore.
  The weather, the dosas, Mylapore vs. Malleshwaram. Because once, a writing professor told me that every story needs a central conflict—and what better than this? The filter coffee’s the same, but the existential dread tastes different.

The Spiral

Here’s what always happens:

I open a tab to confirm a simple fact.
That tab gives birth to six more tabs.
I read about something completely unrelated but fascinating.
Then I get distracted by a WhatsApp group message arguing over how Banana Republic A is better than Banana Republic B.
Somehow, I’m on YouTube watching a banana bread recipe by now.

The writing session is over, but I now know how silk is harvested in Kanchipuram, and how to get that perfect gooey centre in your loaf.

Both of these, I decide, must now become critical plot arcs. Maybe there’s also a WhatsApp feud in the mix. I convince myself the book is going to be brilliant.

We tell ourselves it’s worldbuilding. Immersion. Process.
But sometimes, it’s just procrastination wearing spectacles

And that, dear readers, is reason no. 127862817 for how not to write a novel.

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P.S. I’m getting my wisdom teeth extracted tomorrow. So if this post feels slightly unhinged, it is just the pre-anxiety. Next week’s post may be brought to you by mashed potatoes and ice cream induced headaches.