infusing character with personality

Character is difficult. Life presents itself to amazing conclusions when you decide to show up; seize the day and work on another end. I believe characters gather up our life, we're fascinated and afraid; characters take that away: they're courageous and strong, witty and beautiful. They're everything you are not. To create a beautiful character is to play God; to create a flawed character is to be human. Indian characters always represent eternal goodness. God-forgiven young men; doe-eyed ready to die at a moment's notice. They carry the world in their arms. Even when the world doesn't agree they have a point to prove which they do with their persistence. I'm different. I like characters who carry the world on their shoulders; with guilt, with drive ridden with secrets. Everything the world offers them weighs them down further. But they continue to push back. Against gravity. Against everything natural to bring about their sense of justice not just in the world; but To It. 

I like characters who are giving their all to be good; but their past has made their reputation as a bad person so apparent that they have no choice but to be bad. I'm concerned about the pathology of the character. How they view themselves, how they view the world around them but a lot of this is done before. How do you come up with a character who can captivate an audience without feeling repetitive with its POV. I wish to create that original character; perpetually flawed, vain, grieving, worried about themselves and their future than those around them. Than those that care about them. 

I made a character a pervert. Roshan I said his name is; where do we go from here? What does Roshan believe in? Let's find out. Roshan believes he's destined to die in his 20s. He feels out of time. That the best is gone and he's living in the excess or the remains of what once was there. His worldview is mostly shaped by an interaction he'd had years prior where someone informed him that he wouldn't live that long. So he crams up everything, he devours books, films, stories, anything that he can. His quest for knowledge is not a momentous one. He wishes to create meaning before it's his time to die. He's like me like that.

I don't believe in being obsolete or forgotten. Time takes its time. Everything is forgotten. Nothing really remains forever. Monuments break down. Love dies. People come and go. It's all a part of the grand scheme of the universe. I'm here thinking about what does an uneducated person see when they see the moon? Previously, they saw gods in celestial objects. Now they know about the Sun and the Moon; the stars alike. Do they know about dinosaurs? Evolution? I think if a tribal came to know that they came from an ape they wouldn't be surprised. They'd understand. 

I remember watching Paar (The Crossing); in it, Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah play a couple from a village in Bihar who've come to try their luck in Kolkata. They visit the museum and see the animals from history. What do they see in it? Nothing. No history. No heritage. They're afraid because they don't understand. Its human tendency. Recently, I saw my mom trying to explain to my Nani that we're part of a larger universe. My Nani was educated only till the 2nd grade. In Konkani medium. She knows Tullu and Kannada. She writes in Kannada. What good does it bring to her to know that we're all alone in a giant gap in space? That humanity is nothing but an anomaly in the grand scheme of things. One which will rectify itself. The human race is a footnote to a footnote to a footnote, like what a grain of sand is to the ocean.