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[fishandclips]

Name: Sara
DW username: lady_sarai
E-Mail: ladysarai55@gmail.com
IM: Discord: ladysarai#0594
Plurk: ladysarai

Other Characters: Cissie King-Jones (notarrowette)

Character Name: Mahir Gowda
Series: Newsflesh by Mira Grant
Timeline: July 24, 2041; chapter 22 of Deadline, (the end of Book III), as Mahir, Shaun and Becks are driving through the storm back to California.
Canon Resource Link: Newsflesh series page on the author’s website; also a Wikipedia link on Feed, and Deadline.

Character History:

Mahir Suresh Gowda is an Indian citizen who was born and raised in London, England and would have happily stayed there for the entirety of his life, thank you very much, if it hadn't been for one Georgia Mason.

Mahir was born in London after The Rising, the zombie apocalypse that changed the world in the summer of 2014. The Kellis-Amberlee virus caused the dead to rise, and is spread through bodily fluids, which means bites or scratches can kill. During the initial outbreaks, heavily populated areas like cities were lost very quickly, but it didn’t discriminate based on location. The world lost a lot of places that summer, but the entire country of India was lost thanks to the combination of heavily populated areas, lots of rural farmland with large zombified animals and polluted water supplies.

Dr. Kiran Patel invented the first handheld testing device using his diabetic testing supplies, but died from a Diabetic coma as he and his family were being evacuated from Mumbai. These blood tests are used to determine if a person has the active or dormant version of Kellis-Amberlee. If a person tests positive for the virus, they will die and reanimate as a zombie, and killing them before this happens can save many lives. His wife gave over his notes for this device to the UN, but not before demanding refuge for all Indian evacuees and survivors. As a result, Indian citizens were able to settle in any country in the world while retaining their citizenship to a country that no longer exists, in hopes that someday they will take India back from the zombies and be able to go “home.” This also applies to their children, including Mahir, who was born and raised in London, but retains an Indian passport and citizenship. His journalism license was even issued by the Indian consulate.

Mahir may be an Indian citizen, with all of the freedoms and privileges of a government that spans the globe and exists as consulates, but he considers London his home. He drinks tea and lives in an apartment with a view of the Thames from his balcony. He grew up with very traditional parents who support his career choice as a journalist. They’re so supportive that they send care packages to the After the End Times offices all the way overseas in America.

Mahir wanted to be a sport reporter, until he met Georgia Mason online. She saw through him and knew that he would never be happy reporting on athletes and cricket matches, and convinced him to try the news. He followed her suggestion, and never looked back. Mahir is a “newsie” through and through; he is intellectual, driven and is good at finding a story and explaining it to his readers. When Georgia and Shaun Mason signed onto the Ryman presidential campaign and formed After the End Times, Mahir was one of the first people Georgia hired.

Mahir was Georgia’s second in the factual news division, and one of the few people she trusted; he was her best friend after Shaun. For Mahir, it was a little more. She was his best friend, despite the distance between them, and he was even in love with her. He worried about her and Shaun as the campaign became more dangerous, but he had no idea what they would uncover, or how it would change all of their lives.

When Georgia Mason was killed, Shaun Mason went crazy. Literally. He began hearing Georgia’s voice in his mind, and having conversations with her. Mahir became the head of the newsies, and the unofficial head of the site. When Shaun got difficult to work with, it was Mahir the newsies went to for help. He became “boss,” leading the site, working with Maggie Garcia, the head of the fictional department to keeping it running and successful.

Mahir may have been in love with Georgia, but the physical distance between London and California (not to mention the fact that Georgia was definitely not available) meant that Mahir, being practical and reasonable and a good son, went along with his parents’ traditional wishes for an arranged marriage. As he later told Shaun, Nandini was “not the first and not even the fifteenth” woman his family offered him, but she was the first one to interest him. She looks a lot like Georgia, and has a fierce temper and sharp tongue. Their marriage pleased both of their families, and despite Shaun’s insistence that he shouldn’t have married her, Mahir is happy with Nan. He loves her, and doesn’t mind how angry she gets at phone calls in the middle of the night, as long as she puts up with him and his strange hours.

A year after Georgia’s death, Shaun called Mahir in the middle of the night. He asked him to look into data concerning Kellis-Amberlee. Mahir knew it was a risk, but did what Shaun asked. The first scientist he sent the data to stopped taking his calls and left without leaving a forwarding address. The second scientist was deported back to Australia on charges of tax evasion and the third scientist gave Mahir all of his data, and then killed himself.

The data Mahir uncovered, thanks to Dr. Abbey and the late Dr. Brannen, implies that new strains of Kellis-Amberlee have been engineered, and that people with reservoir conditions are killed around the time a new strain is “discovered.” Mahir told his wife to divorce him, to protect herself, and began making a long, illicit journey to America to deliver his research in person to Shaun and the rest of their team at Maggie Garcia’s home in California.

Mahir accompanied Shaun, Becks and Dr. Kelly Connelly on a road trip to the Memphis CDC to confront Dr. Joseph Wynne with the data. Dr. Wynne confirms that the data is correct; the CDC has been creating and releasing new strains of Kellis-Amberlee, and arranging the deaths of citizens with reservoir conditions, in an effort to let them create a virus that works the way they want it to. It’s the opposite of what they’ve told the world they’ve been working on: creating a cure. Dr. Connelly is killed, and Shaun, Becks and Mahir barely escape with their lives.

They get in the van, and begin driving back to California, hoping to escape without being named terrorists or being bombed into oblivion. They encounter a terrible storm during their trip, and lose all of their internet and cell signals, effectively driving blind, on the run from a government organization intent on killing them and preventing them from sharing what they’ve learned from the world. It is during this desperate road trip that Mahir wakes up in Wonderland.

Abilities/Special Powers: Mahir is a normal 20-something human male. He wears glasses, is in decent shape for someone who spends the majority of his time on the internet, and like all humans in his world, is infected with the dormant form of the Kellis-Amberlee virus. If the virus ever enters its active state (spontaneously, by fluid contact, or simply by dying), Mahir will go into amplification and literally become a zombie.

Third-Person Sample:

It’s taken Mahir a while to accept the reality of Wonderland. He’s a newsie. He deals with facts, and reason. He’s not a scientist, although lately it has certainly felt like one. The realities of the things they’ve uncovered make it hard for him to sleep at night. He closes his eyes, and he sees graphs and data tables, and thinks of all of the people who have been killed in the name of “science.” He thinks of Dr. Christopher, deported back to Australia, and he thinks of Dr. Brannen, who killed himself after studying the research that he brought to his attention.

Mahir gives up eventually, leaving his room to head to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Stereotypically British, perhaps, but it’s what he needs. He needs to stop thinking of how many friends he’s lost, and how many people are depending on him.

He needs to stop thinking of Nandini, and whether she listened to him and is in the process of divorcing him at this very moment. Then again, it’s possible that he, Shaun and Becks will be killed before they even reach Maggie’s house again, and it won’t matter if he’s divorced or not.

He sighs into his tea, and reaches up to rub at his eyes under his glasses. Hearing footsteps, he looks up and offers a polite smile to the person entering the kitchen. His life may be falling apart around him, he has no idea what he’s going to return home to, but there’s no reason for him to be rude.

First-Person Sample:

[A very tired twenty-something Indian male appears on camera. His hair is a mess, disheveled as if from sleep and having shoved his hands through it a few too many times, and his clothes appear to have been slept in. Because they have. Mahir sighs and pushes his glasses up his nose before he addresses the camera.]

Hello. Wonderland, is it? As in Alice and, I presume. I’m afraid to say that kind of fantasy literature has never been my particular cup of tea. My name is Mahir Gowda. I am the head of the factual news division of the After the End Times news site, although I doubt that means much here. Perhaps it’s a sign of exhaustion, or stress, or my colleague’s particular brand of insanity has suddenly mutated and become contagious, but if this is a delusion, it’s a very convincing one.

I don’t suppose anyone would be so kind as to point me to a very strong cup of tea? If I’ve truly been kidnapped to an alternate dimension, I assume that calling my wife is out of the question. If she hasn’t divorced me yet, she certainly will be after this.