Death by water

This is a unique story. I was so happy to write that. Anil gave the idea. It was a very simple narration by him. He told the story takes place in an island. Then I remembered about a few islands in Uttara Kannada/Dakshina Kannada. One name I could remember reading in a magazine, Mavina Kurve.

So, with this basis I started the story of possessiveness, sacrifice, bewilderment, loneliness, what people do to overcome loneliness etc.,

The story was quite long. I sent it to Sudha, the famous weekly in Kannada.

The story had elements like Split personality, Multiple personality disorder – without these fancy names, of course.

I remember Jayanti’s stunning and mind blowing performance in the Kannada Movie ‘EraDu mukha’ meaning two faces. It was based on a famous novel in Kannada by Ms. Aryamba Pattabhi. A girl who is not well off and working to look after her family, with a lot of desires, finds herself looking at the dead body of her mother. She is totally stunned and she is vertically split.

She is actually Ramaa, a demure, even pallu not moving out of place, without any makeup, taking care of her siblings and father.

The split image is Umaa, carefree, sleeveless, full of makeup and not caring about her family.

The story takes a turn when Ramaa discovers the existence of Umaa in herself. How the psychiatrist makes her one is the rest of the story.

Nargis acted in the Hindi version – Raat aur Din. – Dil ki girah khol do... do you remember the song. I believe Nargis has put on record that she felt Jayanti has put in a better performance.

Oh, I am totally digressing. Sorry!

Here the daughter of the heroine becomes possessive of her mother and starts killing the men who try to befriend her mother. The mother of course has no bad intension. Due to her husband’s death she has become lonely and wanted some platonic company. The daughter doesn’t realise it and she takes law into her hands, without knowing what is happening.

I called it JalaganDa. Anil was laughing at the title.

Sudha people had kept it for some days. So, I went to enquire. As luck would have it, it was appearing within the next two weeks!

I was so thrilled since Sudha doesn’t entertain more than 3 pages to a story and mine was 5 pages long!

I even love the story since movies like Anniyan were made on Multiple personality disorder. Sidney Sheldon wrote ‘Tell me your dreams’ which gets mentioned in Anniyan. Mine was little earlier than bothJ