From Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve : DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED ?

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED ?:

THE ART OF MATRIMONY PERFECT MARITAL COMPATIBILITY IDEAL MARRIAGE - HOW TO FIND YOUR PERFECT COMPATIBLE MATCH ANCIENT WISDOM

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED ?

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From Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

SWEET LULLABY - Chanda O Chanda - Lata Mangeshkar - Lakhon Mein Ek Song

The Daring Novelist: Organizing the Blog - The Tickler File

The Daring Novelist: Organizing the Blog - The Tickler File: I've been doing this blog for almost three years.  And before that I had other blogs.  Many other blogs.  And I've taken them all seriousl...

From Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve - RUNNING AWAY - a story on the Effects of Divorce on Children

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: RUNNING AWAY

Click the link above and read the original story in my journal

My Short Story is also posted below for your convenience

RUNNING AWAY

Short Fiction Story

By

VIKRAM KARVE

“Hello Sir,” she said.

In the suddenness of the moment, I did not recognize her.

But then she gave me her vivacious smile, her eyes danced, and I knew who she was.

She had been one of my brightest students – but then that was quite some time ago.

“Of course I recognize you,” I said, “How can I ever forget one of my best students? But it was so unexpected that I was confused for a moment; and you’ve grown up so much, and I too am getting old, you know.”

“No, Sir, you still look handsome, and as young as ever. I’m sure all the girls still have a crush on you, like we did!” she said naughtily.

I almost blushed, so to change the subject, I asked her, “What you doing here at the airport?”

“I’m going to New York,” she said, “my flight is delayed so I am just killing time.”

“My flight to Singapore is delayed too,” I said.

“Singapore?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m going for a conference,” I said.

“Oh,” she said.

For some moments no one spoke.

To break the silence, I said, “Let’s go to the coffee shop. We can sit and talk over there till our flights are announced.”

As we walked to the airport coffee shop, I thought of the girl walking beside me.

She had abruptly left our school three years ago, after completing her 9^th Standard.

When we teachers expressed our surprise, the Principal of our school told us that her parents wanted to shift her to an elite boarding school, faraway in the hills.

We told the Principal that she was a brilliant scholar, one of our best students, who had the potential to top the 10^th Board Exams, and she would surely bring laurels to our school by adorning the merit list. We also argued that, even from her point of view, it was not prudent to change her school and shift her just one year before the matriculation board examination.

The Principal told us that he had discussed all this with her parents, but they were adamant.

So, the bright young girl left our school and went away to the boarding school, and I did not see her, or hear of her, after that.

“Sir, do you know why I had to suddenly leave school?” she asked, as we sat down for coffee.

“No,” I said, “we were quite surprised.”

“My parents were getting divorced and they did not want me around, so they sent me away to the boarding school,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “that’s sad.”

“Yes,” she said, “it was really sad. I did not like it at all.”

Though I had met her parents once or twice perfunctorily at school functions, I did not know her parents that well. In fact, I did remember most of my students, but I hardly remembered their parents.

I sipped my coffee and did not say anything, waiting for her to speak.

“I just don’t know why they split,” she said, “we seemed to be such a happy family together.”

“They must have had their reasons,” I said.

“Well, I think I know at least one reason now,” she said.

I just looked at her, waiting for her to continue speaking.

“The moment the divorce was through, my dad got married to a woman half his age.”

“Half his age?” I asked, quite incredulous.

“Yes. The female was his student.”

“Student?”

“You know that my father is a Professor, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

“She was doing her Ph. D. under him. The wily female snatched him away from us. And it was his fault too – a married man with a family getting involved with woman so much younger than him.  It was terrible – a teacher and a student shamelessly getting married to each other. Just imagine how embarrassing it must have been for me and my mother.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to show empathy.

“And do you know what my mother does?”

“What?”

“Three months later, she too gets remarried to a jerk from her office,” she said, “I hate him – he’s such a crafty smooth-talking fake.”

She paused for a moment and said, “And can you imagine his audacity?”

“Audacity?”

“One day he politely told me that ‘they’ wanted more privacy so could I please go and stay with my own Dad for a while?”

“Don’t tell me…!”

“Yes. And you won’t believe this – my mother just kept quiet and said nothing.”

“So?”

“So I packed my bags and went over to my father’s place, but it was even worse over there.”

“Even worse?”

“Though she did not say so in so many words, my ‘step-mother’ made it quite clear that I was not very welcome – the vibes, you know those negative vibes – I could feel them every moment.”

“That’s sad.”

“So I spent the next two years of junior college, my 11^th and 12^th, shuttling between the two places like an unwanted badminton shuttle-cock,” she said, “then I made a deal.”

“A deal?”

“I told them I wanted to go abroad to America for my studies and wanted them to fund it,” she said.

She paused for a moment, had a sip of coffee, and then she said, “you know, all of them were so delighted to hear this. My Dad used his academic connections and went out of the way to get me admission to the best university, and everyone, my Mom, and even my so-called ‘step parents’, are all chipping in to finance my education abroad for as long as I want to study. They all are so happy to get me out of the way.”

“Oh, so that’s why you are going to the States?”

“Yes. I am running away. To a new life,” she said.

Suddenly, her flight was announced, and she got up to leave.

“Thanks for the coffee, Sir,” she said, “it was so nice meeting you.”

“I am sure we will meet again when you come back,” I said.

“I am not coming back, Sir. There is nothing left here for me to come back to. I am leaving behind the baggage of my past over here and I am moving on to begin a new life over there – and I am not going to look back,” she said.

“All the Best. Take Care,” I said.

“You too, Sir, Take Care,” she said, and walked away.

She did not look back.

VIKRAM KARVE 

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2012
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.

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About Vikram KarveA creative person with a zest for life, Vikram Karve is a retired Naval Officer turned full time writer. Educated at IIT Delhi, ITBHU Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale and Bishops School Pune, Vikram has published two books: COCKTAIL a collection of fiction short stories about relationships (2011) and APPETITE FOR A STROLL a book of Foodie Adventures (2008) and is currently working on his novel and a book of vignettes and short fiction. An avid blogger, he has written a number of fiction short stories, creative non-fiction articles on a variety of topics including food, travel, philosophy, academics, technology, management, health, pet parenting, teaching stories and self help in magazines and published a large number of professional research papers in journals and edited in-house journals for many years, before the advent of blogging. Vikram Karve has taught at a University as a Professor for 15 years and now teaches as a visiting faculty and devotes most of his time to creative writing. Vikram lives in Pune India with his family and muse - his pet dog Sherry with whom he takes long walks thinking creative thoughts.

Vikram Karve Academic and Creative Writing Journal: http://karvediat.blogspot.com
Professional Profile Vikram Karve: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karve
Vikram Karve Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/vikramkarve
Vikram Karve Creative Writing Blog: http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com/blog/posts.htm
Email: vikramkarve@sify.com

© vikram karve., all rights reserved.

From Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve EATING OUT IN PUNE - 50 YEARS AGO

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: EATING OUT IN PUNE - 50 YEARS AGO:

Click the link above and read the a nostalgic post from my Foodie Archives, for you to relive mouthwatering memories, once more.

TU TITHE MEE - Should you tell your spouse about your ex ? Should I share my sexual past with my soon-to-be spouse ?

Should I share my sexual past with my soon-to-be spouse?


Should you tell your spouse about your ex?


Click the link below and see what can happen if you don't (or do) or you will land up like the heroine in the Marathi Serial TU TITHE MEE


Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: TRUST DEFICIT: 


So just click the link below and read about TRUST DEFICIT and JOHARI WINDOW in my journal


Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: TRUST DEFICIT: 


TRUST DEFICIT Musings on Trust in Relationships By VIKRAM KARVE 
 “Should I tell my would-be spouse everything about my past?” ...


Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: TRUST DEFICIT: 


Click the link above and read the full article in my journal

From Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve : THE ALCOHOLIC TEETOTALLER

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: ALCOHOLIC TEETOTALLER: ALCOHOLIC  TEETOTALER A Naval Yarn By VIKRAM KARVE Long back, sometime in the late 1970s, we were young officers just introdu...

MARRIAGE COUNSELLING

“Should I tell my would-be spouse everything about my past?” 


Click the link below to read the article in my journal and find out the answer 


Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: TRUST DEFICIT: 


Click the link above and read the article TRUST DEFICIT Musings on Trust in Relationships By VIKRAM KARVE 

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve : LOVEDALE - A STORY OF REMARRIAGE AND CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: LOVEDALE - A STORY OF REMARRIAGE AND CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: WAKAD PUNE - Poor Internet Connectivity

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: WAKAD PUNE - Poor Internet Connectivity: BSNL Landline Broadband Internet is NOT AVAILABLE in Rohan Tarang Wakad Pune hence the only available option is to use Slow Unreliable Wire...

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve ZAN ZAR ZAMEEN

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: ZAN ZAR ZAMEEN: This post has been published by me as a part of IBL; the Battle of Blogs, sponsored by WriteupCafe.com. Join us at our official website a...

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve PET DOG

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: PET DOG:

From Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve Discover the Walter Mitty in You and BE YOUR OWN HERO

Academic and Creative Writing Journal Vikram Karve: BE YOUR OWN HERO:

BE YOUR OWN HERO DISCOVER THE WALTER MITTY INSIDE YOU By VIKRAM KARVE Though I have studied science, engineering and technology...

Click the link above and read the story.
Also posted below for your convenience

BE YOUR OWN HERO

BE YOUR OWN HERO

DISCOVER THE WALTER MITTY INSIDE YOU

By

VIKRAM KARVE

Though I have studied science, engineering and technology, I have learnt more from literature and the liberal arts. 

Science may help you understand physical nature but literature will help you discover human nature. 

To quote James T Farell: “Just as science helps man to understand nature, literature helps man to understand himself”

Of all types of literature, my favourite genre is the short story. 

A short story can be read in one sitting and each short story has just one message or “moral” -- yes, a short story can convey a message quite effectively.

I love reading short stories and I love writing short fiction too.

Whenever I want to say something, to get something off my chest, I write a short story because I feel that your thoughts can be conveyed best and you can get your message across effectively via short fiction rather than pontificating or delivering moral lectures.

One of my all time favourite pieces of short fiction is a short story called THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY by James Thurber. 

This story illustrates how all of us live in two worlds -- the real world and the fantasy world -- the actual reality on ground and the mental maps in our minds -- the model and the paradigm. 

Of course, this story was written before the advent of the internet, so now our “fantasy” world includes cyberspace in addition to mind-space (our thoughts) -- so now we have our real life and a virtual life too.

Whereas the Real World is not fully in our control, our Fantasy World is fully in our control for we can choose what to think and we can have full control on our thoughts. 

You may be dubbed a “loser” in the Real World, but in your Fantasy World you can be a “winner”. 

Yes, in your mind’s eye you can always be your own hero. 

No one can stop you from fantasizing and that is why there is a “Walter Mitty” in all of us. 

All of us daydream and we all fantasize. 

A fantasy is a fulfilment of a wish, a vicarious realisation in one’s mind’s eye of unsatisfied desires in real life. 

Just like Joseph Heller gave a new word “Catch 22” to our vocabulary, James Thurber too gave us a new fascinating character “Walter Mitty” which has become a phrase to describe a person who daydreams of his heroic fantasies. 

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as “an ordinary, often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs”.

The protagonist of the story, Walter Mitty, a compulsive fantasist, is actually in real life a meek, faint-hearted, docile man who daydreams that he leads an exciting and heroic life in order to escape his humdrum existence. 

The story describes five heroic daydreams Walter Mitty as he performs the boring task of taking his dominating wife for shopping. He alternates between reality and his daydreams and these fantasies make his life exciting.

The story ends with a daydream, in which an intrepid Walter Mitty imagines himself fearlessly facing a firing squad, “inscrutable to the last”. 

I don’t want to spoil your fun by telling you more, so just go ahead and enjoy THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY. 

This story is freely available on the internet. I am giving a few links to the story and, for your convenience, I  also pasting the story below (from the url links mentioned):

http://bnrg.cs.berkeley.edu/~randy/mitty.html

http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=100

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

by James Thurber

"We're going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals toNewcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the what's-its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.

. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. "With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterburyrose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy ofLiberty and sank down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant," said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

This story brilliantly explores the conflict between the world of fantasy and the world of reality. 

Fed up with his dreary life and unable to cope up with the demands of the real world, Walter Mitty daydreams and finds both refuge and strength in his heroic fantasies. 

From being a “loser” in the Real World, Walter Mitty transforms himself to being a “winner” in his Fantasy World, and the metamorphosis is indeed fascinating.

The reader is awestruck as he reads how Walter Mitty transcends back and forth seamlessly from his dreary real life to his exciting virtual lives.

Is Walter Mitty headed for some sort of psychological breakdown? 

Or are his fantasies just a harmless way of making his life more exciting?

The story raises a dichotomy of the merits and demerits of living in the real world as a depressed loser versus being a happy winner in the virtual world and you are left with an unresolved question in your head. Does “happiness” in the mind compensate for the misery of real life?

In the context of cyberspace and social networking, does a “happy” online identity compensate for an unhappy offline identity.

The character “Walter Mitty” has become a subject of fascination since the story's publication, even prompting an article in a British medical journal suggesting “Walter Mitty Syndrome” might be a clinical condition that manifested itself in compulsive fantasizing. 

Everyone desires to be a hero, to achieve glory and success, to have an exciting life. 

We all have our unfulfilled dreams so there is a latent “Walter Mitty” lurking within us. 

I feel that sometimes it is good to fantasize and be your own hero.

It is only when your fantasising becomes obsessive and irrational that the Walter Mitty within you manifests itself and overwhelms your real identity, and then, things may go out of hand. 

Look around you, at home, in society and in your workplace – look carefully and observe people and observe yourself. 

Do you spot a “Walter Mitty” somewhere?

VIKRAM KARVE
Copyright © Vikram Karve 2012
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this review.
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.

Did you like this story?
I am sure you will like the stories in my recently published book COCKTAIL comprising twenty seven short stories about relationships. To order the book please click the links below:
http://www.flipkart.com/cocktail-vikram-karve-short-stories-book-8191091844?affid=nme
http://www.indiaplaza.in/cocktail-vikram-karve/books/9788191091847.htm
http://www.apkpublishers.com/books/short-stories/cocktail-by-vikram-karve.html

COCKTAIL ebook
If you prefer reading ebooks on Kindle or your ebook reader, please order Cocktail E-book by clicking the link below:
AMAZON
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MGERZ6
SMASHWORDS
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87925

About Vikram Karve

A creative person with a zest for life, Vikram Karve is a retired Naval Officer turned full time writer. Educated at IIT Delhi, ITBHU Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale and Bishops School Pune, Vikram has published two books: COCKTAIL a collection of fiction short stories about relationships (2011) and APPETITE FOR A STROLL a book of Foodie Adventures (2008) and he is currently working on his novel. An avid blogger, he has written a number of fiction short stories and creative non-fiction articles in magazines and journals for many years before the advent of blogging. Vikram has taught at a University as a Professor for almost 15 years and now teaches as a visiting faculty and devotes most of his time to creative writing. Vikram lives in Pune India with his family and muse - his pet dog Sherry with whom he takes long walks thinking creative thoughts. 

Vikram Karve Academic and Creative Writing Journal: http://karvediat.blogspot.com
Professional Profile Vikram Karve: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karve
Vikram Karve Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/vikramkarve
Vikram Karve Creative Writing Blog: http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com/blog/posts.htm
Email: vikramkarve@sify.com        

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