Another Lakshmi, Another World, Another Story!

Dear Kamal,

I will answer your last question first. I don't drink. Then how could I come up with stories like this?
You are my dear friend. I will make a confession to you.Don't tell that to any one.
I am a drunkard. I am hopelessly drunk with this world. With this people. With love. With human craftiness.
Even an alcoholic is drunk for only a few hours a day. I am drunk 24 by 7. That's why I don't go near liquids conventionally classified as intoxicants.
What many men do not understand is that when a woman wants to have an affair, she can do so just like that without even spending money. But a man if he has to sleep around has to spend a lot of money.
What your friend's wife did was right. My sympathies are for their children. May God save them and give them a good life.
thanks once again for the fb, Kamal.
You seem to have the knack of digging up old posts and sending nice fb.
love,
sridhar

 

dear pooja,
In fact my major mission in this site is to make the wonderful ladies realise that they are equal to men in terms of the morality code and ethics. Of course they are constitutionally different and as my good writer friend from Bangalore tells me often, we should celebrate the differences.

Pooja, if you had read SHE you might have noticed that many women were shocked by the behaviour of the heroine Shalini when she seeks pleasure from various men.
But when Kushwantsingh wrote about a man in a similar position they just praised him and dismissed the character as "these things do happen."

When in Aasai Prakashraj lusts after his sil, nobody was shocked. But in Uyir when Sangeetha lusts after her bil, they shout, "our movies have destroyed our culture."
Culture was destroyed long back when men decided that they would have a separate morality code for them and a stricter one for ladies.

thanks for the fb, Pooja.
love,
sridhar

 

Dear Devika Mol,
This story was written when IL had a membership of less than a hundred women. At that time I wrote the Ashtalakshmi Series - women in 8 different situations, in some of which they were victimised, and in some other cases they were at fault, but in all the cases they had some sense of identity.

I am happy to see this post revived after three long years.

Only gifted poets like my Mol can manage that kind of an expression.

I remember this scene in a very poignant Tamil movie where the central character is a prostitute (Tamilnadu's ex-chief minister Jeyalalitha had done that role!) She comes into a house as a friend of the man's son. But later that family discovers her profession - because one of the guests who visits the house happens to be the lady's customer. Now the lady of the house is keen on driving the lady out of the house. Whereupon another family friend tells her that both the man and the lady have done the sin. So why do you welcome the man and drive out the woman? Well, the question has been in my mind ever since. Out of it came my story The Scandal. And this story as well.

Stories might come. But the answer has not come out still.

In the same movie there is another powerful dialogue. Cho (the political observer-cum-actor-cum-writer) would say "So long as we have double standards of morality for men and women, we won't be able to enforce them on either of them."

I am happy to see that you like this post.
love,
sridhar

 

Dear Bhuvana,
thanks a lot for your kind words. I am proud and happy to know that you are fully endorsing Lakshmi's views.

Many times women do not want to rock the smooth-sailing boat either for their children or for any other cause. This makes them eventually lose their identity. Somebody like Lakshmi's husband take them for granted and walk all over them.

If only women could stand up for themselves, if only they could assert their identity and demand equal application of the morality code, men would think twice before hurting them.

Our poet Bharathi roared, "If at all we speak of chastity, let it be common and exactly equal for both the sexes."

To talk of morality code for women alone .. well to put it mildly there can't be a more stinking ******** than that.

A few years ago one of my friends told me that he had visited a famous call girl. I told him on his face, that if at all he saw his wife in a compromising position with a famous Actor, what would be his response? His face became red and he started shouting at me.

And then I told him that his wife would have the same kind of feelings if she knows about his visit to the call girl. The man fell silent never to speak again.

thanks, Bhuvana, for the fb.
love,
sridhar

 

Dear Meenakshi,
A senior writer advised me long back that the basic function of a story is to disturb people. It should haunt them, make them think this way, think that way and whether they are for or against the author, they should never forget the author.
Actually all the 8 Lakshmi stories I have posted here (Chitvish calls them as Ashtalakshmies in the index of my writings) are just story plots which I wanted to develop someday.
Lakshmi is in a classical dilemma. Many women first think themselves as mothers and sacrifice their identity, their honour for their children. But the modern women are not like that.
But you can't say who is right and who's wrong.
Thanks for comparing my writings to the raga hamsanandhi. That's also a haunting raga. Once you hear that raga early in the morning, it'll haunt you the whole day. I think it's our super star's movie thanga mahan. There is a song, "rathiriyil poothirukkum" which is set to chaste hamsanandhi.
love,
sridhar