The bus lurched forward. It had been trapped in a traffic jam for the last fifteen minutes.
“The girl mismatched the heads with the torsos. Tell me why she did it? Give me the correct answer or I am going to tell you another story.”
She thought hard. She wasn’t concentrating. She had been practicing the aahs and ahas for long and had learned to do it without actually listening. There was a girl, there were two guys… Then what?
(Continue..)
I did miss the connection with the two pieces, until your comment. I was thinking she chopped some body part into two pieces, but didn't know why.
It's dark, I like it. You have so many echoes from the stories that were complex mythologicals, open to many interpretations. Hayavadana's transposed heads, Ganga. Like a subterranean river flowing underneath this woman's life, the memories of ancestral women and their dilemmas.
At one point, I wondered if you were going for the King Vikram and Betal reference, where the Betal (vampire) tells stories and asks questions, failing to answer which will explode Vikram's head.
Lots of possibilities here. I think the ending was in a way a little modern, Bobbitt-like banal. Would be fun if you thought of a way to align the ending with all those story references.
Aparna
