April 23, 2019

Dear Reader, 

I started writing this out once I had started writing Chapter 19 - Underhandedness for I had hoped to post it as soon as I had updated the final chapter. Unfortunately, it is four hours later that I would be posting this. I have a vague idea of the comments I have received on the last chapter, but I will read it only after this is posted.

I hope you are on this page after travelling through my world of Deception, a world where everyone had a secret, some small, some huge, some insignificant and some that turned lives upside down. And if so, I am grateful to you for doing that, though I can imagine you would be a trifle unhappy over the fact that it does not have a 'SwaSan Happily Ever After' ending, despite my warning in the preface itself. 

Why did I write a tale where, as one reader put it so succinctly, SwaSan were doomed from the start? It might sound a little confusing, but it is the truth; I did not write Sanskaar as a paraplegic hero, yet once I framed out my hero, I could not imagine anyone else but Sanskaar.

This story was originally started off as a twisted re-telling of Beauty and the Beast (the tag was 'A twisted retelling, of an oft told tale') where there would be a paraplegic male lead who was still a fighter, who did not give up but one who did not come out into society. Then there is this female lead, a reporter, a hard nosed reporter, without a single bone of empathy or consideration; who agrees to smoke out the man only to further her ambitions. She befriends him and then exposes him, her regret starting only after the public denouement, the change  being triggered by the mature and understanding way he deals with the aftermath. It did not have either of them falling in love, till the last page, where, after his death, she acknowledges to herself that she had fallen in  love with him. 

Sounds interesting? It did for me, enough to write out the ending (which is what I always write out - the first thing - even if it is a rough one, and I have rarely changed it). This time, it was then that I got stuck, primarily by my own inability to find a way to redeem the female lead.  I just could not see how I could justify her actions and show her remorseful enough to reach the ending I wrote.

But I did not or rather could not abandon my idea so I kept revising the options - a strong ML who has his moments of weakness; a man who loses everything, momentarily gives into depression and then bounces back. A man whose body is ravaged but his mind is still agile and sharp, a man who determined to the extent of being ruthless yet who can execute a complete turnabout when confronted with the necessity to do so;  a true hero who fights a battle in the face of all adversities. 

There was another prime reason why I wanted a tale where there would not be an expected happily ever after ending. I am a romantic at heart, I adore love stories but there are times when I feel that the romantic love is over rated. Love is beautiful, it is powerful but is only the love between two individuals, romantic love in its finest form, the only love that is powerful? I have often read stories, where an individual who faces adversities and hurdles, manages to overcome all of them just because he / she has the love of a good man / woman. It often led me to wonder, what about his family, friends, co-workers, the other empathetic people who must have contributed to his / her well being, do they not count? Most of the cases, all of them are extremely downplayed and the love interest highlighted excessively.

I wanted to read a story, where the hero battles and wins, with the support of the family and friends, who had always been with him. That was why I picked paraplegia, a debilitating and mostly incurable condition and put in a fourteen year age gap too. (it makes it difficult for a romantic tale, though not impossible). 

As I started sketching out the plot lines, I edited the ending, close to the one you have read, though I did build on it and in which I used the name Veer instead of Kabir. And once the ending (around 800 words was done) my plot lines started falling in place, though my initial draft had only 18 chapters and I estimated around 35,000 to 40,000 word story, which is the outer limit for a novella. My finished story is at 22 chapters and around 80,000 words, my estimating capability seems to have misjudged my propensity to write, though I have enjoyed writing this out.

And once I fleshed out the hero's character, I could not visualise anyone but Varun Kapoor as Sanskaar Maheshwari for my male lead, which meant that the FL would have to be Swara, despite there being no chance of a SwaSan HEA. Hence this was written as a SwaSan Novel.

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It was fun, sketching my characters to be so different from the serial canon, I did retain a few of their original traits, but in this story, they were mostly different. It was difficult and exhausting at times, but now, once this tale has been done, I am one satisfied soul. I have tried my best to flesh each one out, as distinctly and as detailed as possible, though it was not enough in some cases, mostly because they were incidental to the secondary characters and had a limited role to play, so it did not matter if there was a bare skeleton of that character. I do not have much regrets doing so, except for Siddharth, I would have liked to flesh him out and give him a few more scenes, but somehow could not do so. 

Another facet which I wanted to cover was how love, albeit a different type, plays such a major role in a person's life, the role of a parent / parental figure in the life of a child. There were three characters in my story who did not have their upbringing by their biological parents - Sahil, Laksh and Kabir (partly) yet the role of their adoptive parents played a significant part in how they shaped up, all the three were basically good human beings but their upbringing determined how they made their decisions and how they handled their mistakes. 

There is one other small point which I would like to address here, it did end up with you taking firm sides, the incident of Dr Barnali and Devina's pregnancy. Ignoring my personal opinions (which for those interested are 'pro-choice') and irrespective of the role played by her in carrying the story forward, Dr Barnali was wrong. There are no two ways about it. Devina was sixteen years old, who might not even had a clue as to what she was getting into, the idea of sex is enticing and exciting at that age. Further, even if the age to consent in India was 16 (it was raised from 12 to 16 in 1983 and 16 to 18 only in 2012), there were no circumstances given as to what caused her to get pregnant, even if willing, she really would not know what it meant, maybe she just did not say a loud 'No'(consent is when the girl says YES, not when she does not say NO), or maybe it was a case of a date rape. Dr Barnali did not bother finding out anything, she just took advantage of the discretion and secrecy that Devina and her mother sought for, to give her friend what she wanted, a baby.  Her actions only fitted the theme of the story, for it was deception, plain and simple. 

It would also be appropriate to mention it here, in the passing, and one that you might want to know (not that I am going to be stopped if you do not want to know) - Did Sanskaar fall in love with Swara at the same time that she did? The answer is No, he meant everything he said to her and which I wrote in the story. It was later, as their familiarity grew that he started to love her. It was also because he was free to do so, wait- do not get the cudgels to throw at me, 'how could he love someone else's, or rather his brother's wife?' He was free to love her for she had moved on. The knowledge that she was happily and blissfully married, that she no longer loved him, had him relaxing around her and he simply grew to love her, in much the same way as he always said, 'you could love you could love different people, in different ways, for each love is different.' He would always love Nikita and could never forget her, but he had grown to love Swara too. And he would have never told her either, it was just that when she spoke out aloud that he let it out, he was already on the verge of dying at that moment.

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Before I wind up with this rambling note, I want to tell why this tale was also a little difficult for me to write, in a way, for the distinction I made among the protagonist, the main character and the hero. I never realised what I was doing till a query from a reader made me research the literary terms and I understood what exactly I was doing.

Every story has a hero, a main character and a protagonist, usually the three are the same, though in some cases, the main character and the hero are the same and distinct from the protagonist. In this story, all the three are different.

A protagonist (from Ancient Greek πρωταγωνιστής (protagonistes), meaning 'one who plays the first part, chief actor') is the leading character of a story. The protagonist is at the center of the story, makes the key decisions, and experiences the consequences of those decisions. The protagonist is the primary agent propelling the story forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles and is the character whose fate is most closely followed by the reader or audience. ~ Wikipedia~

Swara here is the protagonist, the twenty three year old who wants to be a woman like her sister but who needs to grow into a mature woman, brilliant in her own independent way. She transforms from a child like adult, one who has always been adored and loved to a person who understands  and accepts that love can come in different forms. This story, as the blurb says, is her journey.

A hero (masculine) or heroine (feminine) (also known as the "good guy" or "white hat") is a real person or a main fictional character of a literary work who, in the face of danger,combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, bravery or strength; the original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory and honor. ~ Wikipedia~

There can never be a doubt here, Sanskaar is the hero of this tale, the one who was bent but not broken, who went from that moment of desperation where he tried to kill himself to a stage where he turned to be a true inspiration. He is my hero, my way to telling the world and myself, to an extent, that bravery and courage come in different ways, the toughest battles are those between heart and mind and the true victor is the one who is able to conquer one's own limitations and rise above the adversities of fate. A hero, who dies yet is remembered by many. 

And also to certain extent, Kabir is also a hero, though an unsung hero, always in Sanskaar's shadow yet able to cast his own light. 

The last is the main character. The story that revolves around the main character is the plot) or climax (Ex. ... A main character is: the central character of the story, the one that the reader follows through the story or account. The main character is usually involved in the problems of the tale, the climax, and its resolution.

This caused a bit of confusion to me, who is the main character, till I realised I had given it in the blurb, the main character is SNLRS - not merely the acronym but what it stands for, friendship, one that is not bruised but not broken, a friendship that survived death and destruction, to emerge stronger than before. It was SNLRS that started the tale and it was the company of friends that brought it to a close.

And now I have a small request of you, my dear reader - 'Which character walked away with your heart, apart from Swara and Sanskaar (they always have our hearts, so maybe we should give someone else the chance.)? ' Do let me know, if you could, and I would love to know the reasons too. 

If there are any thing you would like to know, do drop in a comment and I shall include the same here. And that was my long winding note, which I am going to stop here, though it will not be the last thing I say. It will be in the next chapter though, so for now I end with  

love,
Nyna