Mars and Saturn as Characters

Some writing advice.

The other day, I phoned my brother just to chat. He said he was thinking of going to the movies to watch Monkey Man, and I launched into a rant about how I don’t want to watch the movie because I know it will be mediocre but everyone will call it brave and trailblazing because a brown guy is playing a superhero. Representation is not progress; I bet it’ll have weird Hindu nationalist undertones too!!! I realised my brother was laughing.

‘It’s not that deep!’

Which made me laugh, because he is correct. It is not that deep. Also, I was wrong: It is not a superhero movie, and seems to be a critique of Hindu nationalism.

I was reminded of an anecdote my aunt always tells about my uncle: Once, while he was shopping for clothes at a Canadian department store, an attendant came up to him to ask if he’d be interested in looking at the cashmere sweaters. ‘Kashmir?!’ He responded, and launched into a rant about the conflict. Per my aunt, the attendant was like a deer in headlights, nodding politely in response to my uncle’s rhetorical questions. (‘Voice rising, BP through the roof, poor girl looked so scared!’)

All of which is to say, sometimes, we just want an audience, and if an opportunity arises – however small the window – it will be seized. So I am taking this opportunity of your eyes on this Substack to try something different, which to give some insight into my writing process. I started off writing nonfiction, and found fiction writing extremely awkward at first. My novel started as autobiographical fiction, but as I got more comfortable writing, the lies just flowed and I did multiple rewrites in order to accommodate those lies, which just made a better book, and one that was much more enjoyable to write because I wasn’t so precious about preserving little details (darlings) as if they were souvenirs.

As I work on new fiction projects, I’m working the other way around: Lies first, then reaching truth. And the tool I am finding most helpful is astrology and the mythologies associated with it. It’s easier to show rather than tell what I mean here, so:

Depictions of Shani (left) and Hanuman (right) (Wikimedia Commons)

I became interested in a particular Vedic astrology myth about Shani, the deity representing the planet Saturn, and ‘Monkey Man’ Hanuman, who is associated with the planet Mars, because it helped me put together an astrological puzzle that intrigued me: Mars being exalted in the Saturn-ruled sign of Capricorn. The energies of Mars (brash, fiery) is very different from the energies of Saturn (deliberate, calculating); it seems like Saturn would hate Mars’ guts. So why is Mars blessed when it’s in Saturn’s remit? I am sure there is a proper, well-informed, technical answer to this question, but for the purposes of storytelling, I have just stitched together different versions of this myth of Shani and Hanuman and added my own spin below.

Nobody likes Shani Dev (the deity of Saturn), who is responsible for doling out difficult life lessons that make you humble. He is a bubble burster, a killjoy, the grim reaper, a strict and cold teacher, the balancer of karma, a real asshole sometimes (most times). This is why people dread their Saturn returns. In mythology, Shani’s drishti, or ‘focused gaze’, is deadly, not because it actually kills you, but because you’d rather it did. You cannot run away from Saturn and you’d be foolish to try.

Ravana, the ten-headed king of Lanka, tried. He wanted an auspicious birth for his son, and asked all the planetary deities to arrange their planets favourably for the occasion. Because divine beings and mortals alike feared him, they all agreed – except Shani, whose planet of Saturn spares absolutely no one. You can have the luckiest alignments ever but if Saturn is badly placed, then it will drag the rest down with it. (Think of a really privileged person absolutely tortured by the smallest slights.) As a ‘fuck you’ to Shani’s refusal, Ravana decided to throw all the planetary deities under his throne, crushing their backs. If his son can’t have good astrology, then he will have no astrology. Nobody can have any astrology if his son can’t have good astrology.

Ravana in Lanka (Wikimedia Commons)

One day, a wandering sage stops by Lanka and tells Ravana that he is doing it all wrong. If he really wants to subdue astrology, he needs to crush the planetary deities on their chests, not their backs. So Ravana – too drunk on power to apply any critical thinking – turns them around, just in time for Shani to cast that deadly stare, and punish him for being so afraid of uncertainty. Because Shani never said he’d make the astrology during Ravana’s son’s birth unfavourable; just that he would not game the system just because some guy wants it. Livid at being hoodwinked like this, Ravana locks Shani up in a windowless cell, where he is stuck for several years.

Eventually, Hanuman – connected with Mars – comes to Lanka to search for Sita, whom Ravana had kidnapped. While he’s there, he hears Shani whimpering in his cell. Shani’s been missing for many years at this point, and nobody has come to save him. Probably because they are still pissed off that he refused to hold back his whole ‘teach a lesson’ thing, just once, for a single astrology chart, for the good of them all; their backs still ache from Ravana’s throne and it’s Shani’s fault. But Mars-ruled Hanuman just senses someone in pain, and he is confident enough to risk his own life in order to save someone else’s. So he finds a way to break in to the well-guarded vault, wraps his tail around Shani, and – with enormous strength – flings the deity far away from Lanka.

In this light, Mars’ exaltation in Saturn-ruled Capricorn fits a satisfying narrative: Hanuman (Mars) helped Shani (Saturn) out of a tight spot, and that’s why Saturn has this soft spot for Mars, despite their very different energies. Swap those planet names for character names, and you have the base of a great story. Character 1 has a puzzling, mysterious connection with Character 2; why? And/or, how will that loyalty be tested?

Breaking down astrology / mythology in this way has been a great way out of writer’s block for me, or that paralysing feeling when I sit down to write and worry that I have nothing to say, or when I have impostor syndrome and I think ‘I am bad at fiction because I have no imagination’. But the thing with stories is that there are only a handful of structures available to use, and once you zero in on the structure you want, the other stuff can just grow around it. Mythology is great for this because the plots are very bare bones. (A lot of writers much cooler than me will say plot is passé and they are probably right, but I like to write the kind of books that I like to read, and I love a good plot.)

If you’re interested in astrology as a storytelling tool, subscribe to Cameron Steele’s newsletter interruptions and Jessica Dore’s Offerings. If you’re interested if finding out more about your Mars sign, Alice Sparkly Kat has an excellent series called ‘Mars in X Power’.

Book Promo

• I am so so excited to be part of a panel with author Amy Twigg for the Women’s Prize Live festival in London on 12 June, hosted by Elif Shafak. We’ll be talking all things debut novels. I’m 100 pages through Amy’s stunning book, Spoilt Creatures, which I have to force myself to put down so I can properly digest the language, imagery, and characters. Elif’s Substack is an incredible resource for writers and one of my favourites to read.

• Buy tickets for my talk with Lucie Elven at Burley Fisher bookshop here.