The Lost One

This was an interesting story and well written. However, I too found it rather puzzling and incomplete. Also, Shonali, this is something I`ve started examining in my own writing, especially since I started running my critique group.

If you have to explain your writing, the motivations of the characters, why things happened, etc....then perhaps the story is not yet complete. No one does this perfectly I think, but it is something to think about. All the things you talk about in your last post make sense but those are nuances and issues that should have come through in the writing itself. For example, if Priya was generally uncomfortable with infidelity but could not help herself when it came to Angad that should come through in the story itself. The background of the characters should come alive in the story, they should not have to be explained to readers later.

Hope that makes sense. This is a story with a lot of promise and you are a really good writer. Keep writing :-)

What catches a writer`s fancy are things which are just a little different than the normal. A fairly everyday situation that becomes extra-ordinary due to reasons like a single unusual/unexpected event or one of the character`s unexpected/heightened reaction.

I do not think that infidelity is ever easy. Guilt and shame aren`t very easy bed partners.

In my thoughts, Priya isn`t someone who can compartmentalise extra marital affair as a norm. In the case of Angad though, she has regressed somewhere - to a place where the world had only the two of them, she and Angad.

There is no way she would even have considered a fling with any man before - also not as if some ice maybe be broken due to her having had this episode with Angad so that now she would become a `serial philanderer`.

I wonder if anyone caught on the two completely opposing expectations the two protagonists have here. Angad is clearly seeking a closure. He also has an enormous sense of curiosity as to what has become of his lover and f himself.

Let me try and elaborate a bit. For most of us, these sort of grand passions are restricted to our teenage years, early adulthood.. Then after that , the storm of emotions settles down to something manageable. One can keep attractions under check, one is supposed to learn to do so.

And then when one is comfortably in charge of one`s romantic feelings, then the grand passions of past seem like a dream, a fantasy.

Maybe Angad`s life is now materially comfortable, he loves his family, wife and children. He is very much in control. Then one day he sees Priya`s face on the net and it all comes back. Would he still feel the same for her? What would he feel? He has to find out.

Priya on the other hand, goes along. She is not particularly pro-active here. She is being led by emotions. From a confident, in-control woman, she changes overnight when Angad`s mail arrives. For her, meeting him is not a choice - it is a necessity. A hunger, a thirst. She is working on an instinct. And like an animal working on an instinct, she hasn`t thought it through.

She hasn`t asked what ~then?~

Wonder how many of you know the story from the Mahabharata, that of Ashwathama - (the son of Guru Drona, I think), who due to some curse, had a wound on his forehead. A wound that he was cursed would never heal - his punishment is go begging for oil to soothe it. The myth goes that Ashwathama, condemned to a deathless and wounded existence wanders around begging people for oil.

Maybe in a tiny way, for whatever reason, Priya is cursed with her wounds.

Excessive emotions? Maybe - but due to whatever mutation in the genes, some are condemned to it.

I guess, this is how I see her thoughts.

Sashayub
Mubakr
Mrinal
Rahulmal
AmericanFOB
Summaiya
Saminasha

Thank you all very much for ploughing through the story and your reactions.

As someone once said, ``I don`t know nothing of wrong or right, I only know I told my story from the heart.``

Do feel free to write to me at shonalisarin@yahoo.co.uk

As a few interactors have pointed out, this piece has a definite trajectory. It also has some excellent moments-the Priya`s confusion, her woundedness, her dazedness-this is conveyed through a lot of the language and action of the characters. It is quite possible for the reader to understand why Priya made the decisions she did-and how she sees Angad and her life more clearly after this event. So, good work for pulling all of this off!

Lets hear some more of Priya`s thoughts/mind/intellect?

Excellent writing! The images kept coming in my mind as if i was watching a movie.

But, it does make me wonder, is it so easy to be disloyal to your spouse? it seems being unfaithful invokes no moral arguments in Priya at all. Is she really too innocent or too wicked to want to ``compartmentalise `` things like this.
I wonder if she would be able to stand it if her own spouse, Nikhil wanted to compartmentalise things to such a great extent ????

just a thought!!!

more of a romance novel, less of an article...needs more elaboration on other elements of the plot especially their past...would probably be a good romance novel

I like the phrases, the situations, the scenes passing as if one is travelling on a moving vehicle…

``fields of yellow sarason, all the way to the far off hills. Narrow red pathway cross here or there. A clamour from green parakeets clinging to the rocky walls``.

Ah!! Good observation, terrific connecting power...the prose is fast paced and racy. The storyline leaves a lot to be desired, the religious angle is clichéd and Angad coming to Delhi is not very logical. Did he just come to Delhi for making love to his sweet-heart of 20 years? This really shows both the leads in bad light.

The starting was really classy, emotions were captured very well

``For a long while, a keen buzzing in her ears, eyes clouding in shock`` the kind of reaction you would expect if one were to come across a long lost love.

But, the flashback is not good, too libidinous, totally missing out on subtler feelings of love, makes it look two young people meeting and their hormones taking over…

``the ice cream cone shared lick by lick and finally when it was finished, him putting her sweet vanilla scented fingers in his mouth, cool and soft``

... it doesn`t look like a love story, more like a passionate sexual attraction, people making it in a house left to themselves.

Whatever my `moral` principles, the story were well written and language is exotic. With a better control of characters and situation, and less of sensationalism, it would have been top quality.

Keep writing!!

# 1 sashayub:

ya ``being there`` and getting entered by a lover...!

simply wonderful!!!...............so many emotions, so close to the heart, its almost like being there.............

o boy...it`s good to have separated from your sweetheart when you still can make love after twenty years. how unrealistic it is!

i dont think it was a great piece by any count rather a very shallow write up with predictable twists and turns like the british dossier just ``sexed up.``

maybe my friend shonali sarin should start writing on the lines of nancy friday...a perfect sexual fantasizer!

cutting short...it`s a good precis of ``women on top`` that i read some 15 years ago in the whims of my teenage...

Another `SilSila`. Matter of fact, most of the times `The Woman looses`