First round feedback - CS

Deciding the Winners

C. Suresh

I hate judging! I hate judging! I hate judging!

There is something about this exercise of weighing the merits and demerits of creative output and deciding that the one is better than the other which strikes me as totally artificial. Reading, for me, is a perceptive experience and what I am left with at the end of a piece is an emotional experience of varying intensity. I can make out when a piece has not moved me at all, when a piece has touched me and when a piece has moved me intensely. The problem, however, arises when I feel roughly the same intensity of emotion in more than one piece and I am expected to determine which moved me a shade more than the other. And I have not even started talking about how odd it feels to act as though my own perceptions have some sort of universal validity!

Be that as it may, now that I am saddled with the job of doing the judging, I shall do it to the best of my admittedly limited abilities. Before I get on to the actual process of weighing the merits of each piece, I would like to say something about what constitutes a good story for me in the context of this exercise.

The plot given by TF had enough flexibility to build varying stories around it. A good story, in my opinion, should either (a) be a conflict/dilemma and a resolution/potentiality of resolution within the story or (b) be a voyage of discovery of a person’s mind or better still, an exploration of the change in a person’s mind over the course of the story or (c) a capturing of a mood so vividly that it resonates in the mind of the reader. The most popular stories are of the conflict/resolution type and the most difficult to achieve successfully are the ones that seek to capture and communicate a mood.

In the context of the given plot, the ideal person who ought to have the conflict or dilemma or need would be Arup, since he is the character more likely to find sympathy with the reader. On the other hand, if it were to be a voyage of discovery or the capturing of a mood, Meghana is the more likely candidate since she has the more dramatic emotions and is the one who is to undergo an epiphany.

Thus, if the intent is to write a conflict/resolution type of story, the best way – in my opinion – would be to make Arup’s need for some action by Meghana apparent to the reader and then have Meghana give it to him upon her realization of the Strider identity. If, on the other hand, it was intended to explore Meghana’s mind-set, to unfold her realization of the character of Arup over the course of the story – instead of in one dollop – which slowly changes her own attitudes would have made a better story. If, again, the intent was to communicate a mood then the emotional state of Meghana – passionless, ruthless, arrogant and contemptuous – should show a change, given the plot.

The latter two types of stories are best written from the concerned character’s perspective rather than as a third party narrative – since that would invariably lead to the assumption of a conflict/resolution story. The last type of story should normally be set at the time of realization and all incidents of the past ought to come in as recollections that contribute to the mood of the moment. This last was not tried in any of the entries.

In the event, most stories seem to have fallen between two stools. The narration promises a conflict/resolution type of story but the end of the story gives a resolution to a conflict that did not exist – to be concrete, Meghana gives Arup something that he has not been shown to either need or want. Where the end of the story has been the change in attitude it is more of an intellectual realization and not an emotional change – good for mathematical theorems but not gripping in a story. The problem, of course, lay in the assumption that since the plot was laid out in intellectual terms, the same had necessarily to be adopted.

Now on to the entries – from the winners down, in my view:

Sandeep Nair: Sandy’s entry – Games People Play – fits in with my own idea of a story that explores the mind-set and change in it of Meghana. He does an interesting double-reversion here. First, his is probably the only story centered on the Game aspect and shows a change in Meghana’s Game character due to the realizations of the real life Meghana. Second, where it was almost automatic to assume that if Meghana disliked Arup and liked Strider, the realization that Arup was Strider would make her like Arup – Sandy makes her hate Strider, instead!!

Deepa Duraisamy: Again a story where Meghana’s mind-set and change is explored – this time in real life. Deepa does put in place the emotional aspects of the initial contemptuous reactions and the guilt that goes with the final realization. The only issue for me was that the contempt of the beginning could have been stronger and the final end of the story could have been a mention of an emotional change as well (as in feeling guilty and ashamed at the arrogance of her behavior of the past) and not purely intellectual. Had she done both, I would have had a headache deciding between her and Sandy!

The next four were at par as far as I was concerned. The narration was interesting but the story felt incomplete because it did not seem clear as to whether they had chosen the conflict/resolution route or the mind-set exploration route. Since I had to select one more winner, Indolent Insomniac gets that place for the reasons that I have stated while describing the other entries. The other entries are given in the order in which I received the entries.

Indolent Insomniac: The moment you get two characters interacting on a series of incidents, you set the stage for a conflict/resolution type of story. The only way it can become a tale of mind-set exploration is when one of the characters’ mind-set is shown to change incrementally after each incident. Indolent Insomniac etches his characters very well over the series of incidents, narrates the game portions well but narrates as though it would be a conflict/resolution story and fails to deliver it!

Nabanita Dhar: The same issue of whether it is a conflict/resolution story or a mind-set exploration story! The mind-set swing is not strong enough or emotional enough to give the reader a sense of completion. The character of Arup is mainly explored by narration rather than incidents – which is the only straw I can clutch for classifying her after Indolent Insomniac!

Jayashree Srivatsan: Again we have a story that seems to promise conflict/resolution – romantic, probably – and ends up as a mindset change. The mind-set change is also intellectual more than emotional. Too many varying strands – the marriage beginning, romantic dream and all promise romance in the story; MBA training is also introduced in between – make for lesser clarity of what is getting communicated, which is the straw I clutch to class her below Indolent Insomniac.

Medha Kapoor: Same issue of not clearly deciding which of the two types of stories she was writing. It could have stood as a conflict/resolution story had she made Arup want to join the task force for strong reasons of his own. She does attempt an emotional end but fails to explain the emotions in Meghana’s mind – so it does not pass muster as a mind-set exploration either. Since she failed to maintain clarity in her point-of-view character across the story, she provided me the straw to clutch to classify her below Indolent Insomniac.

The next two are at par with each other and would have been at par with the previous four but for the fact that the story ended rather abruptly. Needless to say, they are also presented in the order of receipt of entries.

Rajrupa Gupta: She tells her story starting with Arup’s point of view and switches to Meghana’s point of view. Alternating points of view are unlikely to let the reader assume a mind-set change sort of tale. The story also does not make much of the change of mind-set. At the same time, there is neither a conflict nor a resolution.

Leo: A very lyrical start and descriptions. There is not much, however, about any conflict or resolution. The mind-set change also seems almost irrelevant – in the sense that there is not much importance attached to it in Meghana’s mind. She could almost be changing her mind about a movie for all the importance she gives to not judging the book by the cover.

The next two entries have major deviations from the plot. They are good in their way but cannot be considered as legitimate parts of the contest.

Asteria: She tells a proper conflict/resolution story with a tragic end. The problem is that the conflict is not about the laid out conflict in the plot. Others could legitimately claim that they could have done as good if not better had they felt free to deviate from the plot.

Arvind Passey: He had an interestingly different way of bringing the characters to life. The problem was two-fold, however. The first was that the characters and their actions were not in line with the plot. There was no real story, as such, given that his plotline had Meghana respecting Arup from the start and, thus, the revelation of the Strider identity really did not change anything in her mind.

I am dealing with all the other entries in the order of their receipt.

Yatin Khurana: Yatin re-narrated the plot put up by The Fool in his own words. Probably, being inventive means that the creative juices do not flow in other people’s plots!

Harshal Gupta: He narrated both the game portion and real life portion competently. Adopting the chat to move the story along was an interesting style of writing short stories.

Shrijit Nair: Interesting narrative. If he had taken more care in making the incidents more believable of the characters that enacted them, it would have been a far better effort.

Pradip Biswas: Good narration of the game part. Mixing up the tenses confused the narration a bit and, like Arvind Passey, made the relationship between Meghana and Arup too cordial for there to be any punch in Meghana’s change of mind.

Mahesh: Descriptions, particularly the real life portions, are very good. The story, however, lacked the punch required of the change of heart and there was no attempt at conflict/resolution either.

Pramod Lohia: He has given a good outline of a story. We are all waiting for the full story to get written!!

There are some alternative tales for the same plot that I would have loved to see. I am outlining them below:

Option-1: Meghana startes suspecting the Arup is Strider (typical phrase?); She gets curious to learn about him; Finds he was an office boy before; Starts thinking of how little she knew about the people around her and starts noticing her immediate staff also as people; Discovers that he had to quit education due to family reasons; Realizes that her own rise was partly due to good fortune and not entirely ability; Confirms with him that he is Strider; finds that the process of discovery had made the office a more friendly place for her; Game interludes as appropriate!

Option-2: Meghana is arrogant and contemptuous but does not realize it herself. She thinks that she is not popular as a boss either because she is young or a woman or both. So, from her point of view, the tale starts as though that is the truth. She has floated a project that is approved but her rival is being considered to head it since she does not have a good 360 report. The CEO says that in the year which it will take for the project to get off ground if her 360 improves markedly, she may head the project. Realizing the Strider identity makes her realize that she was behaving arrogantly and that was creating problems for her. She is now confident that the change in her mindset will ensure that she will get to head the project.

Option-3: Humorous take. Arup wants to be the IT man on Meghana’s task-force for the new project (So that he can get married to his love??) There is a qualified opponent who keeps pulling him down and treats him contemptuously. Meghana is inclined to the opponent since he is qualified. At the end, in a bid to tilt the scales towards him the opponent tells Meghana that Arup plays games in office and lets out the Strider identity. Upon which Meghana decides that it is the strategic capability of Strider that she wants on the project!

Option-4: Humorous take. Arup wants in on Meghana’s task force and Meghana does not respect him. He tries his best to impress her in various ways and fails. At the last, he tells her that he might as well get back to leading his clan to war on the game than sit around her office trying to impress her. Whereupon Meghana puts him in her task-force because she needs Strider’s capabilities!

Any takers? Just for the fun of it!