Talk:Amrusha Dalvi

Dear Amrusha, I really enjoyed reading your story- it moves over a lot of things, and still, I stay interested, that is GReat!! Now, I think you need to go over it line by line, and think- do you like exactly how each line is written, or how each paragraph sounds? You could then do a spell check and a grammar check, from 'Word' itself, and see if you want to make the suggested changes. I have done some basic spelling/grammar corrections( that happen often with careless typing that all of us do}- I have put them in the text itself, in square brackets. Go over them and put in the changes you feel comfortable with.

The beginning is lovely. It makes the place very vivid, but Ihave one doubt- does it feel like a incomplete thought? Could the reader later ask- why are you describing that one morning in Karachi? Do the other events- the attack etc, happen on that morning? in that case, the story shoudl say so. Or is it like a memory- that comes to you sometimes, of one random happy morning in Karachi? in that case- write it like that- how one morning comes back to you? What do you think?

then, I felt a bit unconvinced when they decided to shift to Bombay from Kohlapur. If they did not have money to stay in Bombay before, how did they decide to do it now? You give a clue- that the mother feels she cannot stay in Kohlapur any more- but I think you could stress it a bit more- so it seems convincing.

Then in bombay- a little more about the difficulty of being there, or the good luck of almost immediately finding a job with the painter.

You make your character enter jj. Then you say how after a month his results came. THEN you describe the masters, and the other boy. Maybe you could change the order. If he notices the masters, he would have noticed them earlier only, no? Soon after he joined?

I like the way the ending comes- how they discover who the other person is, that is lovely. and of course there are many many - many small small lovely details scattered all over the story. which make it more real. And help me to picture it- the descriptions of karachi, the suffocating train journey- I like the detail of the name of the street in Karachi-

The V.T. meeting is a good scene, it needs a little cleaning up of language and sequence. Imagine it precisely and then check your words- are they telling it exactly as you imagine it?

The fathers death made me feel very sad, it is very well written.

Work on jj. Clean up the language, imagine things clearly lke in karachi. the image of the bird is very lovely.

Best of luck and get back with some chages soon- also write and tell if you agree/disagree with the suggestions, or if you want to discuss something

affly hansa ps. I had to return and correct many mistakes I had made in this letter! same- simple spelling, capitals, grammatical mistakes. I think somehow computer writing makes us lazy in these aspects.