Originally posted by: sashashyam
My dear Lashykanna,
I am afraid that despite my brave statements of not being too late with my comments on these 2 chapters, I am well and truly in the suds!😉 This was due, to a considerable extent, to my having to do that post on Kabir resurrected in the Naagin forum, which took me full three days. It is not my wrist, my dear, as I had written to you some time back. It is the rheumatoid arthritis, which has affected my right hand, the fingers especially, most of all.
What is worse, you seem to as regular as a fine tuned clock, turning up promptly with another chapter come the weekend ! Chapter 7 already, and what I am going to do to catch up with you I do not know.
Take your time periyamma... but, take rest ...
Wanton horror: Anyhow, now back to your tale, and these chapters. At the outset, I was so upset about one thing in particular that it took me a while to get over it. Even today, as I write this, I have the same sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, coupled with exasperation with you for having let me in for this. If you had been here, I would have walloped you good and proper for indulging in such gratuitous, creepy nastiness.
The fact that you write so very well, exceptionally so, actually makes it worse. The section about Durga , her mind striving hard to control the panic flooding thru her whole being, creeping along the haveli corridors, trying to ascertain what was wrong after the dogs fell silent, all the while knowing instinctively that it was something horrible, keeps your reader's nerves on edge, strung taut like a violin string about to break under the tension.
It is like a remix of Wait until Dark, except that there is no happy ending. Only I did not know that right then. At least I did not know how bad the ending would be.
You had given away right at the beginning that Durga was to be your first casualty. So I was not taken aback when she was killed by those brutes, nor even by the farmaan having been seized by the attackers. Neither kept me from rejoicing in the raw courage, the grit, and the cool intelligence that she could marshal even under when caught in such a deadly trap. Rejoicing in her ability to summon up all that she had been taught about self-defence even in such a horrendous situation, and put it to the best possible use to salvage whatever could be salvaged. That passage about her with her back literally to the wall, using up every ounce of her courage and her skill in a doomed fight, turns one's heart inside out.
OK, so she had to die. But did it have to be so degrading, Lashykanna? Those three sentences were like hammer blows on the reader's mind, and the second was the worst. Durga could have stabbed herself to death - she did have a dagger after all - or she could have managed to jump to her death from the window. Why have her beg and plead in front of that monster, and that to no purpose? It is sadistic, my dear, I have no other word for it. And to say, as someone did on this thread, that such things happen all the time is hardly an explanation. A whole lot of very horrible things happen in real life, from the Nirbhaya case to gross child abuse. Does that mean that one has to read about all that in a tale like this one?
Morever, I do not see how Heera can ever get over what actually happened to her sister. This is not the 21st century when the crippling impact of such a thing can, with enough care and affectionate support, be toned down and ultimately wiped out of one's mind. This is the 17th century, and this was, for all women then, and for those who cared for them, the ultimate horror and degradation. As they used to say till recently, it was a fate worse than death.
How can you make Heera recover from this? Not just that her Jiji was murdered - a Rajput is no stranger to death on the battlefield, and this was but another battlefield - but that before Durga died, she was stripped of every shred of her pride and her astitva by a monster, and left lying there like a slaughtered animal, a warning for those still left alive.
It was horrible. And totally unnecessary. It is not as though it adds any extra weight to any aspect of the narrative. As for Khalil, how can you make a monster more of one, and why should you, anyway?
I am afraid I sound far too vehement about all this, but it is all your fault, my pet, for drawing me so deep into your tale and making me care so much for your dramatis personae!
Emerging strength and shades: Anyhow, enough of that. The rest of the narrative is as eloquent and evocative as I have grown to expect from you. You have started building up your leading lady with sure, strong brush strokes, and I love the way in which Heera is taking shape as the narrative advances.
Thank you... 😳
Not just the usual virtues - like her being a skilled physician and herbalist (shades of Jodha Begum and her ubiquitous leps?), or a very caring mistress for her loyal servitors, able to set aside her bitter grief and tend to her wounded with a show of calm reassurance masking her inner fears - but other traits. Such as the intelligence she displays in counting the number of hooves and making out that it was only a solitary horseman, thus quelling the rising panic in her entourage.
I am glad you have taken in to the character... it is very difficult to etch a female protagonists that women would love... (just my observation) but I find women more forgiving of male characters and men in books and TV shows...
so, I hope I manage to keep her just as likeable as she has been so far...
No wonder Durga says to her: Your mind is a weapon stronger than my sword! I am sure that as the tale proceeds, we will have many more examples of Heera's quiet strength and resilience, buttressed by a sharp, logical and balanced mind.
Unbearable agony: Her moments of weakness and emotional collapse have been beautifully drawn, with a degree of perceptiveness that is very striking. For example, very few writers would have had the imagination to think of the following scene to bring out what was going on in Heera's innermost being. For this is no Amazon, this is a vulnerable young girl who has had to grow up overnight, and both cope with unbearable grief and fight against almost insuperable odds to save her land and her people.
Thank you periyamma... this paragraph stayed with me for long...
Try as she might, Heera couldn't recreate her favourite soft echos of 'slap... slap... slap... slap...'. She wasn't able to get the pebbles to hop on the surface, or carve the water into beautiful ripples, like she always did. How could she? When the waters were not still. When its currents were uncontrollably raging ahead - much like the uncontrollable turbulence raging within her own body and mind.
And then: Even the gentle breeze that'd displaced her veil and thrown her hair back didn't calm her - it only served to remind how vehement her own breath was. The light spray from the stream drizzling upon her features didn't cool her temper - it only showed her how warm her own tears were...
Burying her face into her lap, she wrapped her hands around her knees, cocooning herself from the unknown, as she waged a few fights of her own. A fight with tears. A fight with fate. A fight with God himself.
And once she'd exhausted all her energy fighting, once she'd come to terms with the fact that she might never really find the peace she so sought, Heera decided to end her tempestuous affair with nature for the night.
I loved "cocooning herself from the unknown" and "tempestuous affair with nature".
Thank you so much ... 🤗
When I see Heera as she is now, my heart melts in empathy. I am reminded of the famous quotation from Aeschylus in Robert F. Kennedy's eulogy to Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968, after Dr. King's assassination, words that could have been equally well applied a few months later when RFK himself was assassinated:
'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'
I hope you will bring this "awful grace of God" soon to the poor child.
Slowly but steadily..
Light amidst the gloom: In fact I can see that you are already trying to do this.
And this not just with Heera's sotto voce description of a Persian(?) piece of masculine perfection: "skin that was fairer than fair, the bronzed locks that fell above his shoulders put even the richest shades of brown to shame. With features so sharp and eyes so piercing.."
I presume that for all his rough and tough exterior at present, our hero will soon be revealed to have other Persian traits, in the first place a flair for exquisite poetry a la Omar Khayyam and Rumi! 😉
But also, and even more so, with the aforesaid rough and tough Greek (oops! Persian!) god getting thoroughly distracted by Heera's beautiful eyes. "Hazel - the colour of her eyes. Blacks, he'd seen. Blues and greens he'd seen. Even browns he'd seen. But such an exquisite tint of hazel.."
Thank you... I am glad that this scene has not taken away from the story telling experience for you..
I shall not play spoilsport by pointing out that in that darkness, it would have been impossible for him to see anything more than that she had a pair of eyes! 😉
Never mind. We needed a break after what happened at the Parnagarh haveli.
Saraswathi periyamma pointed out the same point...😆 but, it was the dramatic in me bringing that out... I will reply here what I'd said there... 'what could be more beautiful than having to unveil the face of one so intriguing under the light of nature'
besides, on a stretch of beach with no street lights whatsoever.. if one can see the other's features... then in an open canal under moon and stars... I was guessing the same should be possible when one's eyes have become acclimatised to the darkness! Like our eyes do, after a few minutes in a dark room... and this place still had the moon-light and starlight.
Pot pourri: I loved the descriptions of the unswerving loyalty of the Parnagarh servitors towards their only surviving baisa. This is of course a common trait in feudal societies, and in Rajasthan in particular, it was visible till the last century.
Yes... periyamma... and thank you... 😳
But the way in which Gauri shields her mistress and her need for some privacy from Bajrang's officious protectiveness is due more to her personal attachment to her mistress, rooted in affection, than to feudal loyalty. That it was a mistaken reaction- for Heera could very easily have been swept away by the current and drowned - is something else again.
Of course... in fact the very idea that Heera would have strolled away so far is something that neither Gauri... nor Heera herself would have imagined happening...
Lastly, the illustration you have chosen for the teaser for Chapter 4 is stunning. It seems to be straight out of The Lord of the Rings; I would have taken those shadowy riders for two of the Nine Dark Riders, the Nazgul who are the servants of the Dark Lord, Sauron.
OMG... 😆
OK, Lashykanna, this is it for today. Lord, it has become so long! That too is something to be laid at your door; if you will write such an entrancing tale, you must expect to have a lot written about it as well!
Thank you so so much 🤗
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