The Sky and the Earth - my entry to the GetPublished contest

The story is about college love. But the boy and the girl are not at the same college. They are miles away – the boy at a premium engineering college in Chennai and the girl at a medical college in Kerala. Still a most unlikely romance blooms between the two young hearts, separated by miles in a world where internet is yet to make an impact. It was probably the last decade when romance still expressed itself on paper by the scratch of a pen and was carried to its destination faithfully by the postman .If things had just worked out fine between them, there would have been no love story to tell. After all what is a romance with no resistance or a story with no conflict! A serious resistance the romance does face. The story focuses on this bone of contention between them and how they resolve it finally with the tale of romance itself more in the background makings its appearance through recollections by the protagonists. The title is a metaphor to represent the magnitude of the differences between them. It is based on the myth of the unrequited love between the sky and the earth.

Well, there are real things and then there are manufactured things. Real things are real because they are real. Manufactured things are the ones that need to prove that they are ‘real like’. Paradoxically a popular juice in the market brands itself as 100% real, when it evident to everyone that is anything but real. My story like all real things is real because it is based entirely on real life incidents. I have used my imagination however to construct appropriate scenes to bring out the story and the ending has been dramatized for greater impact.

Below are a couple of extracts from the story.

Reba: I did not get along too well with my hostel mates at that time. It was the first time I was away from my home and I was feeling very lonely. Even you were busy with your own college, Susan. There was no one to listen to my problems. I found in him a willing pair of ears. He would patiently read my long letters and offer me his counsel as well as try to keep my spirits up. I can’t imagine how I would have survived my first year at medical college without him.

Phani: I can’t imagine how I can live without her. I have spent most part of the last one year entirely in her thoughts. You know how much effort I used to put in writing every one of those letters to her. If I had put that much efforts into my studies, I would have easily been the branch topper rather than wallowing close to the bottom of the class. Sure this is going to hurt a lot and in all probability the scars in my mind will remain for life.

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.