Dreamy Red

Author's Note

As the saying goes, a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles, I begin by thanking you for choosing to read Dreamy Red, a mystery/thriller with elements of fantasy, adventure as well as teensy bits of horror and tons of emotion. I can assure you that this is not any normal fictitious tale of solving a murder nor has an obvious ending.

Set in the background of Jaipur, a cosmopolitan city in India, Dreamy Red is a narrative by a private detective, Bibbitha Chatterjee (of course, fictional). The story revolves around her trying to solve the murder of a rich beautiful lady. She uncovers many secrets from her own past while she unravels the royal mystery. Her dreams find their way into her real life in unexpected ways. She also travels to a mysterious cave to fulfil a promise. One after another, her long-forgotten loves return complicating her already messed up life. Murder after murder takes place in the silent town of Shipra path right under her nose. Will she be successful in finding the killer or will she be entangled in her own life matters? Is there a connection between the brutal murders? Read on to find out.

Before beginning with the story, let me brief a little bit on how I came up with it and some tidbits about the story which 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 cautious. It wasn't supposed to be vague or too much complicated. After a lot of thinking, I named it red because the colour was used a lot in the initial story. I figured that it would entice 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 since I wanted it to be a cosmopolitan and big city, I choose a city closer to it, which was Jaipur. Believe me, I have never even been to Jaipur. Though I have used many places in my story from the real map of Jaipur, I have used a few unreal descriptions of the places as well. So people who know or are actually dwelling in Jaipur, kindly forgive me for those blunders. Sorry, 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 in my computer system. 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 three-year-old son. Ridiculous yet true.

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 could imagine them the way you want them to be.

Also, I would like to warn you that I have used a few random telephone numbers within the story. These could be in fact someone real's phone number. So don't try to ring em up. And 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. There was no need to point it out, but I had to because of an opinion I had received.

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.