NOVEL~*Hiding behind a Stranger*~ Thread 3- CHAPTERS 5 & 6 - Page 113

OH MY GOD...

And here I was scolding myself, all the while...

Originally posted by: lashy

OH MY GOD...

I just realised I was the one on the right lane... the guy who came opposite me was the one coming in the wrong lane🤣no wonder he immediately & quietly moved out... without even honking!

And here I was scolding myself, all the while...

Mr. Lashy had a good time laughing at my 'innocence'

The return of Lashy's "innocence"? 😉 Where is Anji? 😆

Originally posted by: lashy

OH MY GOD...

I just realised I was the one on the right lane... the guy who came opposite me was the one coming in the wrong lane 🤣 no wonder he immediately & quietly moved out... without even honking!

And here I was scolding myself, all the while...

Mr. Lashy had a good time laughing at my 'innocence'

Originally posted by: Kalgi22

WTH?😲😲😲

🤣

omg lash u r truly epitome of innocence 🤣

Dear Lashy!
You have left-side or right-side traffic on the road?
In Russia have left-side. And steering wheel is also left. But also are cars and wiith right steering wheel on our the left-side roads. 😛

Originally posted by: lashy

OH MY GOD...

I just realised I was the one on the right lane... the guy who came opposite me was the one coming in the wrong lane 🤣 no wonder he immediately & quietly moved out... without even honking!

And here I was scolding myself, all the while...

Mr. Lashy had a good time laughing at my 'innocence'

Chalo.. at least my kaarnaame managed to bring a giggle on all of your faces.. 😆

Dear Lashykanna,

I have read thru these 2 chapters not once, not twice, but fully three times.

This is a tribute, firstly, to your unobtrusive skill in creating precisely the ambience that is needed. As during the rope ladder-knife throwing sequence. During the part ruminating, part evasive conversations between Heera and her maids - especially her shrewd maternal surrogate Gauri - while the incense swirls all around and Heera's tangled strands of hair are straightened out amidst chatter that resembles the chahakna of a bunch of birds. And most of all during the encounter between the lord of the manor and Heera's recklessly foolish stand-in, while Ibrahim and the rest of the troika, plus chachajaan, furnish a part startled, part irritated audience.

I loved the reference to a reading glass, a convex lens set in a chased frame. And Heera treating her sister's diamond ring as a stand in for Durga herself. Her long conversations with the sister she misses acutely, which are both an emotional release and a source of the mental strength she now needs so badly.

Emerging character traits: However, even more appealing than this pleasing mis en scene is the way in which you have been filling in the portraits of our lead pair, mostly Heera, with sure but almost throwaway strokes/ segments scattered all thru these 2 chapters.

Each of these bits is illuminating, in that it casts into bold relief traits that might otherwise remain hidden for much longer. Let me pick out some of them, and if this makes it sound as though I have fallen in love with your heroine, so be it!

Striking intelligence: Heera has been shown early on to be a remarkably shrewd cookie. Thus, even at the horse auction, she makes out exactly what mischief Durga is up to, so much so that even her elder sister is taken aback.

A little later, she displays another shade of the same astuteness, coupled with a flair for diplomacy, when she defuses the sudden, and potentially dangerous clash between the Khan Sahib's man, the horse trader, and her servitors with a smooth mixture of praise and condescending kindness.

She demonstrates her practical intelligence when she quiets her fearful servants by carefully listening to the sounds of the horse hooves in the forest, and thus making out that there is only one horse, and thus only one rider.

The mark of a leader: She realises that there were almost sure to be enemies on their trail, but with calm good sense, she avoids speculating aloud about this and thus driving her already jittery entourage into blind panic. Instead, she quietly instructs Ratan Kaka to adopt evasive tactics about themselves, and to report any unusual happenings within this property and outside it. She thus spares her subordinates worry by taking it upon herself.

She has the gentle but inexorable firmness of one born to lead. This is seen both when she silently reproves her staff after averting their clash with the horse trader, and again in the way in which she handles a much chastened Bindiya.

A logical mind: Heera is not prone to snap judgements, nor does she theorize without data. She makes deductions from carefully gathered facts, with a sure grasp of logic that would have pleased Sherlock Holmes. Thus, before accepting that the Khan Sahib has been there for some years, as stated by his staff, she has Bindiya check and confirm to her that the barns and stables and outhouses on the property are not new.

To this datum she adds what Bajrangi has gathered about the Persian mystery man, plus odd bits like his returning the 4 dams to her, and produces a dispassionate, favourable mental character sketch of him. There are still unanswered questions about him that flit thru her mind, but she will seek the answers to those too in the same logical fashion.

Perceptive and kind, sensible and strong: She is not so self-absorbed that she cannot make out what others are thinking and feeling, something which can at times be a very dangerous trait. She can sense Gauri's skepticism about her account of what she had done in the canal just by the way in which Gauri handles and plaits her hair. Similarly, even with her dimmer than usual vision that evening, she can make out from the stoop of Ratan Kaka's shoulders that something is bothering him.

There is no foolish indulgence towards Bindiya, but there is also the instinctive kindness that makes her gift her silk dress to the maid who craves it, and earlier, make an extra effort to soothe the fretting Ratan Kaka. To make an unprecedented apology to her maids for her having wandered off without informing anyone and made them worry so much.

She has her priorities right even in a crunch situation. Thus, when the stranger is exasperated by her clinging to him in the canal instead of making for the rope ladder, such a sheltered young woman must have surely hesitated before telling a man she has encountered just then about her defective eyesight. But she does not hesitate even for a moment since, for her, it is far more important to make him understand that she is no flirtatious maid eager to get up close and personal with a handsome young man, than to hide this very personal matter from him.

She has, by now, managed to dredge up the mental and emotional strength to overcome such a crippling personal loss, and write not just a warm message of empathy and condolences to Kunwar Mahendra, but all the other necessary messages as well, to check them, and only then send them off for sealing and dispatch.

Extraordinary maturity: In short, Heera not only takes her physical handicap in her stride - having, as Saraswathi Akka had once advised me to try to do with my rheumatoid arthritis, managed to make friends with it - but she throughout displays a tehraav, a gravitas, and a degree of wisdom and maturity that would have done a 36 year old proud, and which, in a 16 year old devastated by a crippling blow, are nothing short of amazing.

I do not like comparisons between this tale and Jodha Akbar, or between the obviously deliberately named Heera/Harka Baisa and Jodha Begum, but I could not help noting that Heera has so many qualities that I had hoped to find in Jodha, but had, sadly, drawn a blank.

Sole objection: I have only one reservation about the way in which Heera is depicted, as a wide-eyed Jodha look alike. I know why this has been done, but I personally would rather not have it. Jodha's features are not those that one would think of for Heera Baisa, whom I see as a delicate, almost fey creature, seeming at times to be not quite of this world.

And her eyes should be, as the poet wrote of the blind eyes of the Greek princess Nausicaa, more beautiful than eyes that could see. Not Jodha Begum's eyes. They are lovely, but they are not my Heera's eyes.

Still an enigma: There is nothing like nearly as much about Akbar, not as yet. This is as it should be, for a mystery should never be unveiled all at once, nor too soon.

But the little scene where he holds his oval topaz ring against the light of the lamp, and looks at the glowing hazel-brown of the stone, was as delicate and subtle as I could have wished.

There is the instant throwback to the hazel-brown eyes he had glimpsed in the dusk over the canal. The girl and the topaz - both unique, elegant, clear-cut, subtle. But he is not yet ready for such distractions, and so he shuts the topaz away in a drawer. He will find it much harder to shut away the memory of those hazel-brown eyes.

For now, there is only the bitterness of his as yet unrevealed past, a bitterness that is reflected in his slow crushing of the wick of the night lamp, burning his fingers in the process, instead of simply blowing it out.

OK, Lashykanna, that is it, and count your blessings that this is shorter than the last one! 😉 Your tale is coming along beautifully, and I am looking forward to Chapter 8.

Shyamala Periyamma