Demons and Angels of Ambition (A Play)
Tragic Play, Self Exploration
Date Published: 05-05-2024
The Unraveling is a play about an ambitious little girl with a demonic presence inside her who goes through an year long journey of enlightenment in the woods, that helps her vanquish her demons, escape her past and restore her faith in the Gods, who have given her a short lived but powerful destiny.
Interview with Yashika Vahi
Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?
I know this might come across as a most basic answer but it was actually Shakespeare’s Othello that made me change my mind about what themes I could include in fiction books. It’s not like I can read Shakespeare’s language easily or that it’s a fast paced play but just the fact that even with such silly language and random metaphors, he is able to bring out such impactful images and powerful themes, that really appeals me to his writing. His plots are always on point, revealing some form of bitter or evil traits of humans and their tragic consequences at the end. He uses realistic characteristics of humans in fantasy worlds to bring out deep truths about the nature of our species and where humanity is heading if we continue on this selfish path. That’s what changed my mind about what literature truly stands for.
How do you select the names of your characters?
I don’t really have character names in The Unraveling. It’s a more philosophical exploration of characters like “a little girl”, “a shy boy”, “A demon”, “A fool”, “Soul”, talking animals etc. My choice for these names was simply to make the play come off as a broader representation of girls and boys, their inner demons, and a path for healing. The thing about names is that once you know a name and read about it a lot, you form a sort of attachment with it, so what you read about that name, you always sort of connect it to that personality, but by using terms like “a little girl” and “a shy boy”, I wanted people to see their own childhood selves in the characters and to the past that led them to birthing demons within themselves. Once they realise their demons through the conversations in the play, the rest of the story is a much more enlightening path to healing, or at least detaching from these demons.
Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
I’m not sure if this counts as a secret but I guess only people who personally know me could figure this out but with every fiction book I’ve ever written — whether it be Sparked, Reina: The Beginning of War or The Unraveling, i’ve always begun writing them with a scene that actually happened to me in real life (this is not necessarily the first scene, it’s just how I start forming an idea of a book), and then the strange thing about the rest of the story is that somehow in the future, some of the things I write often happen with me. I experience something in reality and it reminds me of an exact scene or description I wrote and it always make me smile. It’s like my own written story unfolding before my eyes.
What was your hardest scene to write?
In The Unraveling, there was scene 5 in act 3 where the little girl writes a letter to her family and friends which starts like ‘I am a sickness. My heart, my mind, is a sickness. When I am gone, you should not have any pity as this is the decay and destruction that I have willingly chosen.’ I’m pretty sure I was crying as I wrote this scene and it wasn’t just because of how personal it was to me but also because I was truly sick and fighting an addiction during that time. My head was too chaotic to think about only one thing and I was sure that I would not be able to heal without substances. I was sure that I was going to kill myself at one point and the thing is, I did not care about my family or friends or how that would impact them, the battle with addiction was making me hurt so much and because I had to keep that pain within myself, I was being cruel to everyone I loved and this letter was definitely the hardest one to write because it wasn’t just words, it was my actual sickness and grief given out to the paper.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
All my books are standalones except Reina: The Beginning of War (I’m currently working on writing the next parts) but even then, if someone reads all my books in order of their publication time, they’ll find important connections between each of them. It starts with Sparked- about seven teenagers suffering intense and painful emotions in high school, then there’s a few poetry books about love, grief, heartbreak, loss and healing. In Reina: TBOW, an insecure princess turns into a ruthless queen after being degraded for too long. Afterwards, there are poetry books that talk of the inner demons in human souls, how they are born and why people allow themselves to get consumed and destroyed by them. Then there’s the Unraveling and after it are the poetry books, Silly Little Lover Silly Little Demon and The Writer’s Mansion of Words, which talk of a human soul having contradictory presences within them. One is of a rebel (a slave to the nature of earth — beauty and terror of a wild and free soul) and the other is of a demon (a slave to the nature of humanity — ambitions and desires of a possessive and desperate rage). As I said, my books, if read in order of their publication, do show a serious connection between a child’s development of emotions — from innocence, grief, loss, heartbreak to rage, possession, cruelty, understanding and eventually healing.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
I don’t usually have any endpoint in sight when I begin writing a book and I feel like The Unraveling started on a random unknown note as well. I was sitting in a cafĂ© in Vancouver and I had done a Shakespeare course last term in my university so I had read a lot of his plays so I was thinking, ‘maybe I should start writing a play, see how it goes’. I started writing pages of conversations between a little girl and a demon and instead of focusing on a personal experience, I tried to focus on broader philosophical concepts like ambitions, desires, passion, love, rage etc. I knew that if I pursued this play, the end had to be the end or at least, diminishing of this demon but I wasn’t sure how to provide this path of healing, for readers, and myself. But I feel like the story I wrote turned out to be silly, philosophical, a little humorous, a little dark and a short exploration of a little girl’s journey to finding her identity and it is more than I could have imagined it to be.
What inspired you to write The Unraveling: Demons and Angels of Ambition?
I sometimes feel cut into two personalities – a demon and a fool. When I am focusing on my work, I feel increasingly possessed by a desire to achieve all my ambitions, no matter what lines I cross. This often makes me distant from my friends and family but the thing is, I don’t feel lonely, I simply feel at peace with the chaos within myself. This is my demon and I think everyone has a demon like this. But then there’s this other soft part of me, that is susceptible to the charms and vulnerabilities of love and it might seem like a disaster and like too much work at first but to have someone who loves you and wants to take care of you no matter how crazy you are or how much you push them away, that’s like having an angel in your life. I wanted to help myself, and in the process, my readers, get to the realisation that love, in the end, always wins over rage. As the little girl says in the play, “there is nothing little about love, now is there? It is not just a word but a vast feeling and an even wider and broader emotion through which we start observing the world. The one who perceives the world through darkness and one who looks at it through love is different. It is different and it makes all the difference in the world.”
Can you tell us a little bit about the next books in The Unraveling: Demons and Angels of Ambition or what you have planned for the future?
The Unraveling is a short play whose point was made precisely in its 50 pages and I don’t think there will be any sequels or prequels to it. For the future, I do have a finished draft of a dark academia book called ‘The Devil’s Underground’ but I am still hesitant on whether to release it or not. I’m simultaneously working on the next parts of the Reina series and the second novel should be released early next year.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in The Unraveling: Demons and Angels of Ambition?
The characters include a “little girl”, who is an ambitious writer, willing to go to any lengths to write the most tragic story of all time. Her childhood was painful and to escape her grief, she birthed a “demon” within herself who transforms her grief to rage that helps her dedicate her mind to her ambitions. She has regular conversations with this “demon” and one day, she meets a “shy boy” with a deceiving mind of his own. They both try to trick each other at first but they end up fooling each other by falling hopelessly in love. This love makes the mind of the ambitious “little girl” very confused and she talks to a “fool” within her mind. The “fool” tells her to have an year long journey in the woods alone to learn more about herself. And so begins her exploration of her self identity with the wisdom of wild animals and the comfort of silent and dark truths about life.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
The most wholesome part of writing this book was the fact that I could give a voice to animals. I’m a regular hiker and I really enjoy the silence of mountains but I’m also always secretly waiting to see some animal on my hikes. So far, I’ve seen a bear, a cougar, deers, turtles but I know that they rarely come out of their places in the forest. So whenever I see them, it feels like an intentional sign and I feel like they’re conveying some wisdom to me, and I wanted to give out that wisdom that they’ve made me realise through their own speaking voices. In this way, I was able to treat the Unraveling like a children’s story as well. Even though the play would be too philosophical and dark for them, I remember smiling writing the animal conversations because they reminded me of the innocent enthusiasm of a child’s love for wild animals.
About the Author
Yashika Vahi is an author, poet, content writer and creator. She loves travelling and making sudden plans whenever she’s not writing and has an unhealthy obsession with coffee. She’s vegan and passionate about talking on subjects like mental health, philosophy and literature. She’s also obsessed with the idea of romanticising the darkness in life.
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