KGAF FF Contest - My Entry
on
Monday, February 06, 2006
Posted by
Rajesh J Advani
I got my entry into the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival's Flash Fiction contest late on Saturday night (or early on Sunday morning, depending on your point of view). Since it seems to be permitted by the rules to post my entry on my own blog, I thought I'd do so without further ado. So here it is. The theme/trigger was Black Horse.
Joyride
"I can have my lawyer draw up the papers," he told her as the horse trotted away with their daughter.
"Whatever," she replied. For months she'd stopped looking at him when she spoke to him. But now she looked him straight in the eye. He looked away.
"Do you think she'll understand?" he asked as he looked at the child. They could hear her laughter tinkle through the air as she rode. "Black Beauty!" she'd called the horse, when she first saw it.
"No," was the reply. He could feel her eyes bore into him as she spoke. "But she'll learn to accept."
"I'll visit her on weekends," he said. He hoped she wouldn't refuse.
"She won't stop being your daughter," his wife said. But in a short while she'd stop being his wife. Would she find someone else? Would she get married again? He felt his knees go weak.
He couldn't bring himself to say anything more. So they stared silently at their daughter who was riding slowly back towards them. She'd stopped laughing and looked more scared than excited.
The joyride was over.The End
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7 comments:
Hmm .. sad. But nice.
Creative piece!
-Me
I read it a some time back but when I tried to submit my comment, blogger said the servers were down for maintainance. How rude.
Touching post. Nicely written.
nice one BUT the last line
'the joy ride was over'
seems out of place. isn't it implied.
think abt it and scrap me back
Just now read (ok ok.... tried to read) the selcted stories in Kala ghoda.....
None of them made any sense to me.... none of them could bind me to read them till the end.....
Don't understand why your story was not selected... seems the jury memebers were looking for some complex stroy with lots of heavy english words... looks like the simplicity of your story didn't appeal them... poor taste....
-Me
Megha: Thanks! Nice to see you commenting after a long time.
Lovely Dolly: Nice to know. Hope you don't mind the long and not-very-sweet ones too much :)
AiB: Interesting point. Maybe from the perspective of the competition, it should have been about the girl and the horse. But that would have been another story, don't you think? The one I didn't write :)
Thanks!
SmartOxymoron: Thank you. And yes, Blogger can be quite rude sometimes.
Prahalathan: In fact I rather think it underlines the whole point of the story. That the word "joyride" doesn't apply to only what the child just experienced.
But if you like it better without, ignore the last line :)
Anonymous: Aww :) Nice of you to say that! If only the judges had thought the same! But honestly, I think a number of the stories were really nice. I personally loved 57 the most. And it won first prize too! I'm not decided yet on whether 90 ties for first place, or comes second. Next in line were 30, 77 and 87 at second place (or third). (In fact, the more I read 87, the more I think I like it as much as 90). And in third place (or fourth), I would hold 20, 51 and 79.
Coming back to your blog after months, I really found this intresting.
I had been away from Net and Blogging for quite a while. While waiting for the team to give the much awaited release, I wandered to your blog :-)
The old theme was good, it was cool. The new one is representing the current Chennai temperature.
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