An Interesting (Hopefully) Conversational Post
I'm not Ekta!
I've noticed that after Geet's past was revealed to Maan, every time Brij is mentioned, there are a few readers who always seemed to be worried about his reappearance. Let me reassure you that he will not be coming back. I am not Ekta, and I never will be. I do not bring people back from the dead. Believe me, Brij is dead. He reaped the karma of his actions and his body was burned to a crisp, along with Geet's dad and Daarji. He only continues to be mentioned, because it will not be easy for Geet to put what has happened behind her. It is something that will always linger in her unconscious mind, even when she has such a wonderful man like Maan to take care of her.
JD's inspiration
For the most part, JD is a creation entirely of my own making. However, there are a few traits that are based on a little boy that I used to know. A few years ago I worked in a summer school program for elementary children with disabilities. One of the little boys became quite attached to me, and I confess that whenever JD does something cute, this is the little boy that comes into my mind. He had the cutest little smile that he would give when he was doing something mischievous. He is also the reason that JD is so attached to lions. It was something else that this little boy liked, (and I won't mention what it was) but he was just as gaga over it as JD is about lions.
The mystery unfolds
I thought that you might be interested to know how the mystery element of the story came to shape. It was always going to be a murder mystery, with Vicky and Meera having been killed, and their killer attempting to do away with other Khurana family members. What changed over time was who was doing the killing, and who were they after.
Originally, I intended to have Dadi poisoned to death, with Geet coming to know of this, but no one believing her. The killer was also going to be after all of the Khuranas, and Geet was going to put her life in danger by trying to save them. However, shortly after I began writing, I became too attached to Dadi, and felt like I would have too much trouble coming up with plausible ways of poisoning her.
That is when I decided to shift the target to be JD. Since his parents were already dead in a car accident, and he was so little when it happened, it was reasonable for the killer to assume he would be killed with his parents. This misconception on the killer's part created a situation where knowledge of JD still living could act as a trigger. Geet, being JD's caregiver, would naturally stand in the way of the killer reaching their goal, so she would also become a target.
The most obvious suspect was always Sameera, and since she was a villain in Maan's life, I did consider her in the beginning. However, mysteries always need red herring villains, so I tried to think where could I come up with another woman who could be the real villain. I had already decided that both Dev and Naintara were going to be good, so I couldn't use Naintara. However, there was no problem in using her mother, so that is where the whole money motive came from. None of this really began to come together in my mind until I started to put in my first clues.
Chapter 22 is the first time that Naintara's mother is distinctly told who GT and JD are. Before that point, they are just random people that she has no knowledge of. That chapter is also the first time that I introduced "Someone, somewhere" in the story. Interestingly, that was a last minute addition that just popped into my brain right before I was ready to post the update. It worked out really good later when I decided to make Armita Rathore insane. It gave me the opportunity to create confusion about how many people were involved in the plot, without giving away the identity of the perpetrator.
What helped the most was that I kept the mystery elements until later, focussing only on Maan and Geet's relationship and interactions in the beginning. It gave me a chance to really nail down some of the trickier plot points, but still keep up with the updates. I've only written down a few of my thought processes here, but I thought you guys might like reading about it. It's interesting to think how different the story might have been if I had gone with any of my original ideas.
Book Talk
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