ATBF - A CLARIFICATION

From the time my debut novel 'A Thing Beyond Forever' came out I have been receiving mails in which people have put forward their feedback...but one question that continues to remain common in those feedback is why did I kill Radhika? Well, I never gave a genuine reason to anybody for that but deep inside hoped they cultivated it themselves...but now I guess its high time I present the clarification...

Here it goes:

The issue arises when we take Radhika's suicide in a literal sense. I only want to ask one thing: Can't it be a metaphorical suicide...? Can't it simply signify the death of Radhika's resolve (bordering on idealism) to love Raen forever and not substitute him with anybody?

What if I tell you from the point she thought of jumping from the terrace the story takes a 'delusional' turn where Radhika is only imagining what will happen if she 'really' jumps ... and the last scene where she hallucinates making love with Raen for one last time is her farewell to Raen and all his emotional gifts to her. She imagines it all while standing on the terrace perhaps realizing for the first time that her life deserved a second chance with Sunil and thus, may be ... just may be she didn't ACTUALLY jump off the terrace ... Now, what did she do afterwards if she really didn't jump?

I deliberately kept the ending a little vague and open because I wanted my readers to interpret the ending on the basis of their own cognition and not thrust something concrete on them from my side...hence I didn't dig into 'what Radhika did afterwards' in the novel.

And with the Epilogue I am not saying Radhika is born again - sorry, no 'Bollywood' here - it just-simply-only signifies that a 'story' is born somewhere in the form of Elizabeth Heather Ferguson and that she too would have to, at some point of time, swim in this mysterious ocean of Love and Attraction the way Radhika did ... the way we all do in our own lives...

Whether one agrees or not with this explanation is not the point here. I have presented my real thoughts behind the ending that happened to me while I was writing it. Everybody has the right to agree or disagree. And my regards for both. The point here is sometimes in stories, like in life, there's MORE than our eyes tell us and MUCH MORE than the words frame. Of course you might ask where have I written all that in the book but I would humbly confess I, as an author, don't like to spoon-feed my readers for I respect them.

Thank you for your time.

NOTE: This is only for people who have read the novel. Comments for this post WON'T be published. My apologies. Also, I love questions :) ... so in case of any residual query please feel free to email me: novosphere@gmail.com