Wow! My fingers are limp and my feet feel drained as I type this. Even as I was going through part 1, I was filled with a feeling of foreboding. Loved the description and the visuals. It made it feel all the more real. Felt a sense of relief run through me when I read Chintan came back home only for another shock.....what a roller-coaster ride of emotions, Geeta! Fabulous. I can also imagine that kind of party, since I know many of BH's colleagues who could very well fit into that description. Very realistically written.
Read it one go, simple story narrated very well. My first nit pick is Jamun and Carrot Halwa desserts don’t go well with Bisibele Bhat . Plus for people in their 60s, this menu for dinner is too heavy especially since next day is working day My second nit pick is servant is leaving the house after all cleaning up after 11:15 in the night? There is no concern for her long hours and her safety ?
Dear Shravs, thanks a million. Sihi mattu Kahi anubhava jeevanada avibhajya angagalu.(Sweet and bitter experiences are inseparable parts of life.) I have left the end inconclusive. There are all possibilities; son is dead and he returned as a spirit to meet his mother or she hallucinated and fainted, and later they found Chinu badly wounded in the hospital AND he is alive! (Dwarki is coming over anyway to handle that.)
Thanks for the feedback, dear Satchi. I started this story with a couple of agendas: showcasing the Karnataka culture and inconclusive/open end with an anticlimax. Good, you enjoyed the rollercoaster ride.
Dear GB, thanks for the nit-picking feedback. I liked it. Think of a hyper-excited mom planning a menu. (Some mismatch in the menu was by design and I created it keeping her excited state in mind.) She wants to squeeze in many items which Chinu likes. The jolly seniors may or may not eat or relish all. They are more than happy licking the remnants of Bisibele Bhaat off their plates! Moreover, they are oldtimers, who enjoy a good food+good laugh, they cannot be counting calories. The added advantage is that the Dr couple is their friends who will offer a free consultation if needed! I forgot to mention that their cook, Meena stays in their outhouse! On special occasions, it happens and I couldn't have possibly deviated from the main storyline adding details like where Meenu stayed or that her son had come to pick her up and so on. Some creative freedom and space should be there, Sir.
What a gripping story! Very well narrated. But wish the ending was a happy one. PS: i realize that the reader can draw his/her own conclusion, and the son's visit could just be the mother's intuition making her clairvoyant, but the first tohught that comes to the mind of an average- drunk on dramatic fiction- reader like me is that the son is dead lol! I hope there will be a sequel of sorts.
Thank you so much, @zales. I appreciate your viewpoint. As you said, the first assumption is of Chinu's death and that shocks the reader. This was my primary goal-creating a shock/anti-climax. But the purpose of inconclusiveness is to open the other possibilities. This technique is used in many movies too! Yeah! If I write a sequel, I can take it from here and bore the readers with another winding tale.