The Beauty And The Brain - Episode 6 - Serial With Weekly Episodes

You have driven out some!

Dear Chitra,
You have driven out most of the butterflies and dragonflies. Like Sethu, I am basically an accountant. Or accounting is in my genes. In fact casting this character is to give vent to my feelings that most accountants are not favourably portrayed (most times, not portrayed at all) in novels and movies.
I don't know why you are connecting Sethu and Sharada everytime. They are just professionals and may be friends. Nothing more is there between them. For Sharada is not the heroine.
That reminds me for the umpteenth time that I have to change the names of heros and heroines.
Thanks for sending a list of heroines' names. Please do send a list of hero's names as well.
I am very happy that you appreciated Sharada finding Sethu handsome even in those distressed circumstances.
One thing I can't understand is your 'woman's desire' to make men 'little lambs'. My Sethu, though bound by love and affection from these two women, is going to roar like a lion and not bleat like a lamb.
Ha ha ha
Thanks for the nice words. I am sure now that I have cleared my exams. Let me now see what other valuers have to say on this.
sridhar

 

Will Discharge my hero and heroine soon!

Hello Meena,
thanks for the nice words. There are two story telling techniques. One is to make your readers expect something and give something else. The other is to give what your readers expect but do it well that the reader is happy even though the story is predictable. I am adopting both of these techniques. In this episode I have taken the second one.
Sethu's life teaches many lessons for the modern men - especially the high flying executives who don't have any time for their family.
As you said rightly the work starts from now on. I have now passed the CA Inter Exams and am anxiously preparing for the Final.
regards,
sridhar

 

Did Not Promise Anything Racy, Purnima!

Dear Purnima,
Thanks for those nice words. If you read the curtain raiser for this serial you will find that I specifically warned that this serial can't be as racy as the earlier one, as that was a thriller and this isn't.
You got the point and hit the nail right on its head. I just want to supplement your views. It is not for men (or for that matter women, (see the Evil Daughter-in-law Thread)) to choose between career and family, but to balance them both. Balancing is the key word. Sethu being an accountant, ought to have known that. But he didn't.
That Infosys self-rating news should have a sobering effect on many ambitious men. A life in which work occupies more than 90% of waking hours is not worth living at all.
You have captured my point very well and have brilliantly answered another reader that I use suicide to take my characters to the hospital. Your analysis is excellent. Had Sethu not gone for the trip and then his family members died, he would not have committed suicide.
Because he realised their value, because he realised their mistake and decided to mend his ways, the accident appears even more cruel and more than justifies Sethu's decision to kill himself.
I have to be cinematic at times as the serial is happening mostly in cine-world. But kidding apart, Sethu, preoccupied in his grief, feels that he has done his part by donating all his wealth to charity. When Sharada shatters that belief Sethu is shocked.
People in grief will be absorbed in self-pity. The best way to attack them is to make them realise that even they do not deserve their own pity. The best way to wake a person up from his psychological slumber.
Thanks for the nice words, Purnima.
regards,
sridhar

 

In real grief people don't cry!

Dear Minu,
thanks for the nice words. Sordid, graphical scenes actually reduce the effect of grief. In real grief one doesn't cry at all. There is an impotent anger, there's a deep frustration that builds from within but there are no tears.
I took this idea from a poem which I read when I was a school boy. The poem was entitled "Home They Brought The Warrior Dead". A soldier is dead and his body is being brought home. Everybody in the town is crying but not the soldier's young widow. People are now afraid that unless the lady cries she migth also die. But the young widow is like a stone statue devoid of any emotions whatsoever. Then she sees her young child playing. She is now reminded of her responsibilities to bring up that boy. She bursts into crying only now. Because now she has found a reason to live.
I wanted Sharada character to be the ideal character, combining professional skills and the human passion and compassion. There she is. I don't know whether we can find somebody like that in real life. Let's at least see those people in our books. She is an ideal worth living upto.
As to the very interesting questions you have posed my answer (which you might have predicted by now) is to just keep your fingers crossed and wait for the future episode.
thanks once again,
Varalotti

 

Sharada is my favourite character too!

Dear Sudha,
Thanks for the nice words. Sharada is my favourite character too. I have many lawyer friends and I am myself a half (baked) lawyer. Those lawyer friends have told me - lawyer with a heart, my God, sridhar, that's an oxymoron. But I am not for such sweeping generalisations. Many of those friends who told me that are not only great lawyers but also good human beings. I borrowed a good trait from each of them and created Sharada's character.
Just as a mother would be proud if people praise her child, so a writer will be when people praise his character.
Though she is not the heroine she is the prime mover in the story and but for her intervention none of the good things would have happened.
Whenver the world needs ideal characters, such characters are first born in the imagination of people and then only in real life. Now that Sharada has entered our imagination if we just tune it to be more powerful then real-life Sharadas will be born.
Thanks for the nice words and like you, I am also eagerly waiting for the drama to unfold.
sridhar

 

Thanks Varloo

Dear Varloo,
thanks for those nice words. I am really happy that I have made the story interesting enough for you.
Grief like its twin sister happiness has strange and varied effects on human beings. I have seen tough people softened by grief and soft people hardened by it.
We don't know what is it going to do to our Sethu. Let's just wait and see.
Varalotti

 

Relief At Last!

Dear Sharada,
Those days great musicians (Carnatic) will heave a sigh of relief when the great critic Subbudu just writes that their performance is so so. They never wanted to be praised by Subbudu. But not to have any comments, to them is a good comment. I am happy, relieved and proud that the Subbudu of IL has cleared me, at least this episode. May God be with me for the other episodes as well.

Well, Sethu could have hit the bottle. But I want to portray my hero as a brilliant accountnt throughout the novel. If he hits the bottle now to that extent his professional brilliance might be affected.

He has not been used to drinking in the past. When a person is not used to it, bottle is not taken as an escape route. That's why most of the women of our country, though they have so much problems do not resort to bottle.
I am happy that you like your namesake. As I have been repeatedly telling she is the character I like the most.
Whether this episode is "a precursor of portending doom" or "an auspicious omen of good things to come", only future episodes can tell.
Thanks for the words of candour.
Varalotti

 

Thanks For Standing Apart!

Dear Kamla,
I admire your candour in standing apart from others and saying that this episode lacks in substance. Yes, the serial is very much your baby as it is mine. I am just a surrogate mother who has been hired to deliver the baby after which it is yours.
Only to recognise that right I have revived the practice of individually answering each of your comments.
Honestly Kamla I don't know how to pack this episode with 'substance'.
Sethu is the hero of the serial (and not an anti-hero) and being so in a serial that is published in all-ladies forum it is quite natural that he has the qualities to melt down any heart, especially ladies'.
Yes, the developments in this episode were predictable. As I said in the curtain raiser this is not a thriller like the earlier serial. And to expect a fun ride in a river that's gently minding its business of running towards the sea is asking for the impossible.
But even that gentle river may raise up, flood its banks at some places before resuming its calm and gentle journey. So let's all just wait and watch the course of the river.
Thanks for the candid comments, Kamla.
sridhar