Originally posted by: sashashyam
My dear Avantika,
I was so engulfed ' I cannot think of a more apt term - by this latest episode that I cannot really analyse it. It is, so to speak, a matter of mehsoos karna, not of describing or dissecting. There is such an all enveloping mood of loss never got over, and of pain that lingers in some hidden corner of the mind but never, ever, goes away, that I was sucked into it before I knew where I was.
It is not so much a question of the case at hand, which I cannot really make out, and which in any case seems a side issue.
It is not even a question of what is going to happen, now and in the future. It is almost wholly a matter of what has happened, and how this has affected each of your core trio ' Arjun, Aisha, and Rosanna ' and made them the vulnerable creatures they are now, however much they might pretend the contrary.
It is revealing ' the very different ways in which each of the three faces, and deals with her/his individual trauma.
Rosanna, my fey spirit, does not hide from loss and pain and grief, or run away from them. She absorbs it all, and hugs it to her innermost being, drawing strength and sustenance from that very loss and the sense of desolation it brings. Strength to venture where she now has to venture, and strength to do what she now has to do. Without the memory of her father to steel her spine, she could not have done it. She is the strongest and most focussed of them all.
Aisha has buried the pain somewhere deep inside herself, for she is not up to internalizing it and using it as her strength, the way Rosanna does. But when fate brings her back to the scene of her worst nightmares, she has the courage not to run away. She is perhaps stronger than Rosanna takes her to be, and she seeks the catharsis of facing her old demons and, perhaps, overcoming them.
What happened to them on that fateful day was a horror that neither she nor Arjun can readily exorcise ' you have conjured up its sheer awfulness in one brief sentence: Her parents charred bodies, her uncle's tortured one and her cousin's white, lifeless face flashed in front of her shut eyes.. It is like something out of a Nazi concentration camp, a nightmare scene from Auschwitz or Dachau.
I do not know how Rosanna's past is linked to this horror, but she is obviously in the know of it. Plus she has had a deep, wrenching loss and a grief of her own.
Of the three, Arjun seems to be the least able to cope, and I am not surprised, for it is a fact that if men have more strength, women have more stamina, including emotional stamina. Arjun seeks to protect himself from his overpowering sense of loss, coupled with an as yet unexplained sense of guilt, by shutting the past out. Until it appears out of the blue, right in his face, when they have to go to Khopoli. That he does not share his suffering with the one human being best able to understand it and empathise with it,and with him - Aisha - but instead shuts her out along with the past, is perhaps typical of how most men react to such situations. He is like a wounded wild animal, which lets no one come near it, not even the vet who can heal it and end its suffering. Instead, it snarls and lashes out at him. As Arjun does.
Well, we shall see what happens before they leave Khopoli.
Avantika, my take on the trio may or may not jell with what you had and have in mind for them. But you know, my dear, characters belong as much to the reader as to the author. So these are my versions of your Rosanna, Arjun and Aisha. It does not really matter if the way they speak to me is not the way you have visualized them. I have made them my own, and I intend to hold fast to them!
Wishing you a pleasant and rejuvenating break over the next week,
Shyamala Aunty
PS: I enjoy your opening quotations a lot. As for the latest, it is generally held by psychologists that the memory of pain does not last as long as does the memory of pleasure, which I think is true, going by personal experience. But perhaps Cameron Dokey is right too, for unhappiness is more corroding that pain, and perhaps lasts much longer. Then again, there a subconscious masochism in all of us, we at times positively enjoy wallowing in misery.
Thank you, Aunty...
To tell you the truth, you've left me speechless with those words.. 😊 I can't tell you how happy I am..
To reply to your review, I'm quoting it again and adding a note, so that the other readers can view my reply as well..
Coz the character-sketches that you've provided are valuable and to the tee & also coz I've added my own bits to them..
About the opening quotes, I'm personally not a very insightful and poetic person.. Hence I try and draw inspiration from them, even in real life..
An besides, I wanted to add those, coz sometimes just a couple of lines can convey what an entire book fails to..
And yes, it is true that we tend to push the unhappy ones at the back of our minds.. But they're always there, lingering..
Thank you.. 😃
Anupamaa
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