This post is meant to be a continuation of 'Book Review - Twists of Fate'. Here I talk about the things which weren't so relevant for the review, but worth discussing with those who've read it (and perhaps the one who wrote it).
A thing to notice about Sharvari, which stands as juxtaposition to what she thought of herself is that she played with boys in the locality, but not much mention of her girlfriends and what she did with them. Second, she dressed like boys, as they say, but the novels she read and the characters she imagined herself to be were always female and feminine, though in the protagonist roles. It might be an associative bias.
It is somewhat clichéd how her parents were the progressive ones, her father especially, and how they did not indulge in small talk. I believe that we all are conservative in some ways, and progressive in some others.
Nandini was bullied inadvertently. She grew up in the shadow of her elder sister and felt that she failed to fill in the shoes of her sister. They were big shoes indeed. Perhaps her sister was Bigfoot. :-P
But it is indeed something to notice that sometimes, parents are to blame for such things. Not that they could help Nandini from getting down the self destructive spiral, but they could understand that it is her nature and it is okay to be so. But they were busy with their's.
As fate would have it, ‘life’ happened to each one of them. Sharvari falls in love with a leading Neurosurgeon, and her love is returned in equal measure in him, Adarsh. But things start falling apart when, following an unfortunate accident the two fail to communicate their feelings with each other, cursing themselves as the reason of the situations thus arisen. Each one thinks that the other person holds them guilty, effectively entering a downward spiral of exacerbated guilt and strained relationship. Pari abruptly leaves for London without a single word, and becomes a famous (crime) photo-journalist with a leading media house there. She courts Ryan, but somehow cannot commit to taking their relationship to a next level. Turns out, she has been keeping inner demons just under the skin. Nandini too is married off by her affluent parents to another affluent family, but not before her first crush and love, Neil (brother of Sharvari) denies her love. She has to go through a few years of hardships before she can finally break free and rise as a phoenix.