HOW DO I DO? ASHA IYER KUMAR
How does the
memory of a dream return to an old man, a memory of a “reverie that had once
set his youth on fire?”
“Why did the
dream materialise again after years in hibernation?”
In the story
‘Calendar Girl’, Madhavan Nair reminisces over his life with his inelegant
wife, Rajam, a woman he has never been in love with. Over the decades, he has
learnt to live his mundane life with his wife and children, but with the recurrence
of the dream, he is forced to linger on the thoughts of the woman of his
dreams, and the “vestiges of an old, gnawing sense of deprivation” begin to
pierce his heart all over again.
“Chandrika
soon became an obsession swathed in mystery.”
When his obsession
goes beyond limits, his parents get him married to Rajam, the daughter of a
relative. How does Madhavan Nair reconcile between the woman of his dreams and
the woman in his hearth?
Do separation
and unfamiliarity lead to apprehension in a marriage? How do long-distance
marriages survive? After three years of being apart, does a marriage turn
incompatible? Or dos the fire get rekindled? These are the questions that worry
Nirmal, the protagonist of the second story titled ‘Something In Between’.
ashaiyerkumar.com
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