Dreamy Red

Author's Note

As the saying goes, "a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles", I start by thanking you for taking your time to read this piece of work. This is no ordinary tale, it is not real, it is not fake, it stands somewhere in the middle. This is a thriller with elements of fantasy, imagination, adventure, teensy bits of horror and tons of emotion. I hope that this would baffle your mind.

Before beginning with the story, let me brief a little bit on how I came up with it and some tidbits about the story that you really ought to know. I'm a pretty good dreamer. So, whenever I see a movie or read a book, the story comes into my dreams in entirely new forms with abrupt endings. Then I end them with my vivid imagination. So this is one such compilation of so many such thoughts.

During my summer holidays in school, I began writing this story as a small play in my diary in the form of conversations and scenes. As I was writing them, I realised that the scenes were much bigger than the dialogue and there was a lot of action. So I converted it into a paragraph-style novel-like story with a lot of episodes. I use the word episodes instead of chapters because I like it that way like in a television series. And I was not confident enough to call my story a novel because I was afraid I couldn't make up that much story or add as many words.

When it came to naming the story, I had to be precautious because it is the title which entices a reader to pick it up. It wasn't supposed to be vague or be too much complicated. After a lot of thinking, I named it red because the colour was used a lot in the initial story and I figured that it would attract any reader as it is an emotionally intense colour being the colour of fire and blood. Later I had to prefix dreamy to it because red was a more common title and since the story was associated with a lot of dreams, it felt sensible.

I didn't have to ponder much about the location of the story. My mind out of nowhere thought of the place Ajmer in Rajasthan. To be honest, I kind of did a write-up on Rajasthan for my social project when I was in secondary school. I do not remember the year exactly, but maybe that's what made me choose Ajmer. But I wanted it to be a cosmopolitan and big city, so I chose a city closer to it, Jaipur. Believe me, I have never ever been to Jaipur. Though I have used many places from the real map of Jaipur, I have used a few unrealistic descriptions of the place as well. So people who know or are actually dwelling in Jaipur, kindly forgive me for those blunders. I couldn't find any real place in the world that matched my imaginary land and I didn't want it to be fake either.

After the initial draft in my diary, it took me a much longer time to rewrite the story on my computer. I added more enthralling twists and characters to the story. I took more wacky words from the dictionary and kept writing and writing. Every time I wanted to end it, I ended up elongating the plot. Before I knew it, there were more than 60k words, somewhat worthy of being called a novel. Then I edited the draft numerous, countless times before even completing the entire story and every time, I tweaked either a few sentences or sometimes even whole paragraphs. By the time I was satisfied with my work and was publish-ready, I had gotten married and had a four-year-old son.

Since it is an Indian story, there are too many characters and thereby I have added an extra part with the list of characters so that you can refer to it whenever you are confused about who that character might be. I'm sure you will use it rarely or never at all. But I would feel guilty if I hadn't added that part because of all the thinking I had to do for naming so many characters. I haven't described their external features much so that you can imagine them the way you want them to be. I have used some Hindi words here and there but I have also given their meanings in parentheses or I would have explained what they meant.

The Prologue is written in a different style and is lighter than the rest of the episodes. So please don't assume that the story will be the same throughout. I wanted Dreamy Red to contain onomatopoeia (words that depict sound effects) like 'Boing' just for fun. So I have used some of them in the Prologue and rarely within the inner episodes. Happy Reading.

Disclaimer: The story is purely imaginative and original. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. © All rights reserved.