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Discussion
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After the long train journey and the water buffalo/auto rickshaw collision our two heroines (!!) Lucy and Nita- are finally at the temple. Nita abandons Lucy at the entrance. Lucy goes inside alone. Meanwhile, we don’t know what’s going on with Nita ( where did she run off to?) until the section that’s here for you to read.
thank you for reading!
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Replies
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“While adjusting the sacred Brahmin thread over his shoulder, the priest made a smacking sound with his lips and belched with such a depth that his mouth filled with the tamarind taste of his lunch.”
You do this so well! I am there and I don’t want to be! Yuuk – this is so great, the smacking sound and the belching, UGG and the tamarind taste of his lunch. Great choice of tastes because tamarind is so pretty and delicate and here has yuck overtones. Also that he has a sacred fabric over his shoulder!
“You cannot be Shiva’s bride, you’re too old,” he said. Intriguing line.
Nita had just turned thirty.
Great because we get the “You’re too old” line first and we are wondering what her age is.
“She slipped her arms through the sari top and worked the tiny buttons deftly with her long fingers. Off went the long trident wedged into Shiva’s hand, and into her skin ”
(whereabouts in her skin, am trying to imagine where tip in going, in her hand?)the sharp tip of it slid, until the blood trickled out in a little stream of red making everything better. Yes like the red making everything better
“The endorphin relief pulled all feeling out of her with the strength of an enormous receding wave.”
Both great images but endorphin is a surge – but draws all feeling out of her, tripped on this a wee bit as one is filling and one is drawing out.
The futility of whatever progress she had once made towards abstention
(this felt be a little convoluted, tripped up on it a bit)“Parvati’s face who would discover the dark drops treading all over the delicate silk fabric like muddy footprints on a clear blue sky.”
(yes because dark red does go muddy)Exciting, descriptive and the cutting really dramatic, love the delicate silks contrasted by the seering rage. Incredibly painful way to respond to anger and for most of us imcomprehensible but you have expressed it so well here. By the way have you read the first novel by Gillian Flett (the Gone Girl author) about cutting?
Yes! Julie, The end of this piece, where Nita takes action, shows us everything you tell us in the paragraphs before, and we experience it. It’s much stronger. Her anger, her revenge, her despair all come through. We are right there with her. I love the situation—her being “fired” from this role for her age. I love her need. It’s great that you wrote through it so it was so clear that it drove the action perfectly. Now you do not need the explanation.
I am humbling reversing my position on putting everything in the comments. I’ve just pasted my many, many notes into three people’s comments and it’s just too time consuming. I am going to upload the doc. I’ve put my comments right in the text in editorial parenthesis, underlining the lines I’m discussing. Next week I will simply track changes in the document. It doesn’t seem hard to open docs anyway . . . Thanks!
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