A New Cover for "Helen at Westfield"

Helen at Westfield was a story that had a lot of simple living packed into it.  Helen had got her first real full-time teaching job at a small four-year college, and I found myself presenting it as a lot of fun.

As anyone who has read any of the Helen books knows already, pretty girls just naturally gravitate towards Helen!  In this story, all the women who are prospective partners for Helen are people whom she meets legitimately; not one of them is a student.

Our artist HALCHROMA has done a bang-up job with the artwork, and is responsible for representing these characters fairly accurately.  I was torn between having her paint four generic women for the cover, versus representations closer to my mental image of them.  The problem is that, as most people agree, the images readers create for themselves are just as valid, if not more valid, and the more detailed the depiction of the characters in the illustrations, the more they could clash with those in the reader's imagination.

Horror, Shame, and Anger

Many of my readers will be filled with horror, shame and anger at the events of last weekend (The George Floyd murder in Minneapolis).  My heart resonates with the feelings of those of you who feel this way.  The sheer helplessness we feel must be nothing compared with the panic that foreigners to this country must feel; at least those of them who have been attracted to the sentiment of a majority of Americans: empathy with the underdog, and with all those who suffer.

You may have read that I'm working on another segment of the Helen story; it set out to be a simple, even an idyllic, description of the lives of those in Helen's extended family.  Half of them, at least, are foreign, including Helen's beloved.  How am I to describe their lives after Helen and Sita timidly declare their love for each other?  How can anyone describe the slowly deteriorating environment in which Helen, her lover, and her several children, and her fearful friends try to settle into any sort of normal life?

I have made a strategic mistake of making all most of the protagonists in the Helen stories to be white; this makes it impossible to represent the racial dimension of the problems they face.  There is a little Indian girl (Alicia) who belongs to the group of kids who play in the dead-end in which Helen's home is located.  For the sake of brevity, I even omitted the few paragraphs in which I described her.  What sort of author am I?  I stuck to comfortable themes of music, and alternate orientation, and amnesia; only departing from them to make a brief sortie into prostitution--a very shallow look at it; narcotic addiction; the setbacks of being placed on suspension from college, and so on.  But circumstances are making it impossible to write something light-hearted and shallowly satisfying to essentially be a coda for the series.  The personalities which have already been established for Helen's friends, and her children, will not allow them to be mere spectators of the heartrending scenes they are likely to witness, in this story set in our present day.  How can they not take sides?  How can I suddenly change the lyrical mood of this book to reflect the gruesome reality of these simultaneous crises of epidemic, economic depression, racial violence--very likely incited by cynical provocateurs, and wrong-headed political leadership?

Kay

P.S.: There seems to be very little evidence that there were provocateurs. --K

The Saree, the Robe of Women of the Indian Subcontinent

I have been fascinated with the robe of Indian women (and women of the region, including Malaysia, Singapore, and Bangla Desh, I would imagine).  In the Helen story, at least in Helen and Lalitha, sarees are worn by both Helen and Lalitha.

I was tidying up my work area, and came across an old brochure, originally from India and brought to the US by friends of mine, and I realized that, unwittingly, my concept of Lalitha was based almost completely on the cover image shown here!

The brochure appears to be a 'Take One' sort of handout from a saree shop, or at least an office of the Indian government from around the late 1960's, it seems, on how to wear a saree.  I believe, historically, this was about the time when Americans were traveling to India, and the Saree Industry was eager to convince western women to try to wear sarees themselves.  As far as I can gather, Indian saree fashion of the last several decades have actually been as much influenced by Western dress, as by the development of Indian fabrics.  For instance, I have read that, in ancient times, the blouse, the garment that covers the torso of a woman, and worn under the saree, was invariably of a contrasting color.  Only lately have blouses begun to be worn in a matching color, apparently inspired by the suits of western women.  These days, fashions of all kinds are less slavishly adhered to by anyone.

Is this how I imagined Lalitha?

On the whole, yes, but in the details, I have to say no; this girl, though she wears a innocent and kindly smile, has that self-consciouness that models have!  I imagined Lalitha as a serious and awkward young woman.  I imagined her comfortable in her own skin, and sort of casually aware of her own attractiveness, and perhaps a little proud of it, but by no means impressed by it.  (I'm acutely conscious that I might be making too many--unfair--assumptions about this model, but I can't make my point without being critical of the expression on her face!)  I think our illustrator, HALCHROMA has somehow captured the essence of Lalitha a lot better in her cover art (below) than this photograph.  Moreover, she did her illustration without having seen this photograph at all.

The brochure, as I said is step-by-step instruction on how to drape a saree.  (I would very much like to give credit to the original creators of the brochure, but the information is not available.)

How to drape a Saree

To clarify: you first need to wear a petticoat (a waist-floor-slip) with a strong, non-elastic waist-band.  The waistband carries the entire weight of the saree.  You also need a dozen or so large safety-pins.  (A couple of safety-pins of the sort that you used to use for baby nappies would be great, if available; they're hard to find, these days!)

Frame 1.  Contrary to the description, you begin with anchoring the top end of the saree into your waistband in the center of your back.   (The instructions suggest that you start at your right hip.  Do it each way, and choose the method that works best for you.)

Bring it forward, going from right-to-left, and make a large pleat in front, and pin it to your petticoat.  These pleats enable you to walk!  Tuck the top edge of the saree into the petticoat.  (While you're winding the saree around yourself, leave the fabric in a pile on the floor, and turn your body; it is more difficult to be wrangling all those six yards of fabric around you.)

Frame 2.  Continue wrapping the saree around your waist, until you get to the center of your back again (where you started).  Make another large pleat, tuck it in, and, if you plan to be active with your saree on, use a safety-pin to pin the saree to the petticoat at the pleat.  (Keep tucking the top edge of the saree into the petticoat.)

Frame 3.  Now, we use the universal-one-size-fits-all feature of the saree!  All this while, the unwrapped part of the saree would lie in a puddle on the floor, as shown.  At this point, gather the end of the saree.  (This will be the part of the saree that falls gracefully over your shoulder, when you're done draping the rest of the saree.)  Leaving most of it on the floor, wind about six feet of it (1) round to your left, (2) round your back, (3) across your front, and (4) over your left shoulder.   Do this at about chest level, keeping the material bunched up.  Depending on your size, more or less of your saree will be in front of you, looking slightly pathetic!  To prevent the end of the saree sliding off, either wind it around your neck loosely, or temporarily pin it in place.

Frame 4.  Pleat the slack length of saree, as shown in the fourth illustration.  Of course, because of the end of the saree looped around you and over your shoulder, you won't look very much like the girl in the photo; there will be a lot of saree across your chest.  But pleat enough to take up the slack, so that all the material that was on the floor is pleated across your stomach.  (In the article, they tell you to pleat just as much as the girl in the photo needs, which is a lot, because she's so thin; the temporary winding of the end of the saree around you makes it clear just exactly how much pleating you need.  The end of the saree around your chest and neck will definitely be a nuisance.)

Frame 5.  Now you are a little beyond the illustration on the left above, because there is extra saree around your chest and neck.  But, if all went well, the slack will all have been pleated up, and carefully tucked into your waistband, and the pleats will be pinned onto your petticoat with the largest safety-pin you have.  (Rounded-point safety-pins are kinder to silk sarees!)  I just remembered that, because of the pin that holds the ornamental front pleats in place, you do not need to pin the front pleats in the lower layers

Frame 6.  Now, unwrap the temporary windings you did earlier; you're going to redo it neatly and properly.  The saree is wrapped from the pleats to the left, around your body, across the back, and to where the girl has it at her right hip.  All of this can be tucked-in to your petticoat waistband.  But at this point, the last few feet of the saree are draped across your front, covering up your breast, and over your left shoulder, and allowed to hang.  See the last photo above.

Frame 7.  Some girls allow this last bit of saree to be draped over the shoulder, with almost all of it falling off the shoulder.  An alternative is to pleat these last few feet lengthwise, and pin them neatly to the shoulder of your blouse.  This keeps the saree very firmly in place, and actually allows you to be a lot more active.  (I have been told of some South Indian women who would actually play tennis, wearing saree!  This was a long time ago, and I expect competition was not very fierce back then.)  That style is not common today, and it will be difficult to find a photo that illustrates that style.

It seemed to me that the model in these photographs looked excessively tall!  I shortened her, and you see the result above.  This looks a lot more like I imagined Lalitha to be, except that she would not have looked so grand except possibly at her first wedding, at which she married Suresh's father.  (For weddings, girls are dressed in a more buttoned-down version of saree; the style above is more for informal social occasions.  Some women will adopt this style for presenting in front of an audience.)

Honestly, Halchroma's cover, at left, is almost miraculously how I think Lalitha has evolved in my imagination, in the story a year or two after they settle down in Philadelphia, where Helen goes to university.  I would have expected Helen's arms to have more flesh on them than Lalitha's arms, but they're within the limits of plausibility.  I love the expressions on their faces, so different, yet so harmonious together!

I'll fine-tune this post, as I think about the process of wearing a saree more carefully!  The photos above have their own instructions, which are simpler than mine.  If you prefer, follow them, except that the end of the saree may not drape exactly as you want it to, because the amount of pleating is hard to estimate.  Go ahead and pleat exactly as much as they suggest; if the fall is too short, well, pleat less next time.  If the fall is too long, pull the end around you, like a shawl!

Kay, wishing she had a saree to play with these days!!

Elections with Pandemic!

My goodness!  I hardly had time to turn around, before all hell has broken out.

The closest thing to this pandemic that I remember is back when the AIDS virus was abroad.  At that time, it was a while before I realized that I had nothing to fear, because, well, I wasn't very promiscuous.  In fact ... let's not pursue that line of thinking!  But I remember all my friends back then, such as they were, were all upset.  At that time, having sex with almost anybody, any time you wanted, was the norm.  Almost overnight, people gave up that lifestyle.

What we have here is a much more contagious virus; you can get it from simply being sneezed on by someone who carries the virus.  On one hand, the virus is contagious, but on the other hand, it is not likely to kill someone who is, say, under the age of about fifty, unless they're prone to asthma, or some similar breathing disorder.  I have horrible, horrible allergies; they've bothered me since late January, and will bother me until at least April.  Then again, they would bother me in August, all the way until late September.  So I don't know whether that counts as having a respiratorial condition.  I almost always have a cough, which is annoying, and now, I should probably not go near anyone, for fear of scaring them half to death.

Well, I'm pretty reclusive, anyway; but I said goodbye to all the few people I usually meet face-to-face, and we're all resigned to keeping in touch via phone.  I have no classes this semester, so all I have to look forward to is watch my savings gradually disappear!  At least they're not invested in the stock market; if they were, they would be gone even more quickly!  If there really were a Helen, I could tell her that I'm her creator, and could she spare me a few dollars until I'm on my feet again!!!

I was so sad to see Elizabeth Warren close down her campaign.  I sent as much money her way as I could afford; I'm not sorry that I did, though it does seem as though it only prolonged the agony.  Bernie Sanders does not appear to have the ability to really respond to things happening outside his head; I wonder how he answers questions that these moderators put to him!  It is as if he lives in his own little world.  Joe Biden is even worse; I would think that all he wants is to be president.  There does not seem to be any sense of urgency of some sort of mission, like Bernie has.

So what do we have to look forward to?  Nothing interesting is going to happen until the National Convention sometime in the summer.  People expect the Corona-virus cases to peak within thirty days, and then the numbers will go down.  However, if it peaks sometime in June, the Convention will take place while the pandemic is still chugging along.  That's going to be very interesting indeed.  And very dangerous to older folks.  I have palmed off my own older folks on siblings and cousins, and nobody looks to me for support at times like this, thank goodness.  But I am in the habit of visiting certain friends, and their pets, and now I will have to make do with photos.

I have described to you all the various things that go on in the DeviantArt website, in particular all the would-be Anime and Manga artists, and those who aspire to providing artwork for computer games, and others who keep churning out FanArt, which is just depictions of their favorite Anime and Video and Game characters, such as Pokemon, and even Princess Peaches and Link.

Today, somebody in the administration of the website announced a competition, asking for a set of three works of art that contribute to a sense of Community.  There are a few paragraphs in Alexandra that probably hit the spot, but I don't think I can find three pieces.  Now that I think of it, Music of the Galactic Voyager is almost all about community.  And Jane is about the community of porn models!  But . . . it is too much work to put an application together!

I sincerely commisserate with those of you who feel bored when you cannot be in the company of your buds.  I especially hate it when they seem to be having a good time, without me.  And if I call my friends, and I get the distinct impression that the call was unwelcome, I quickly feel totally terrible, and try to get off the phone as quickly as I can.  I guess the most reasonable thing to do is to find out which time of day is the best to call them, and call them at that time.

I'm glad I don't drink very much alcohol, or I could easily see myself turning to it to 'keep me company.'  I do drink coffee, and it messes up my stomach!  I'm sorry to lay that on you readers, but I don't have much of an alternative.

I could always write, I suppose.  Maybe this is an opportunity to write something stronger than I have written so far!

regards,

Kay

These Confusing Times! What Does Helen Think?

I have always been something of a pessimist; I always expected the worst.  Of course, some of the time I was pleasantly surprised, and things were not so bad as I had expected.

More recently, I have given up that strategy of protecting myself, and decided to be an optimist instead.  But I insulated myself from the outcomes, by saying to myself: it isn't my problem, anyway.

This does not always work.  Political things, especially, depend on a lot of factors, none of which I can influence in a significant way, except in one way: I have a platform on the Web, and I can explain my own thinking about the facts, and try to persuade my readers to think of things my way.

Let's talk about Helen, briefly.

She was a musician, and, in her younger days, a very physical person: a ballet dancer, a tennis player, a long-distance runner (which does not emerge in any of the stories, I realize), and at various times, a carpenter.  She was also an actress in a TV series, and she had sung in opera (which is a kind of musical play of the Baroque era, which continues to the present day).

Then, she has total amnesia, but gradually re-acquires her personality, and begins to take an interest in her surroundings, and, presumably, the politics that is going on around her.

At one time, she was head of a (private) corporation, half of which was not-for-profit, and the other half pulled together all her artistic efforts: the recording company, LMN; her TV activity with Galaxy Studios, her investments in BNS, which was a book and music store chain, and the Instrument Factory, which didn't have a name.  Helen was well known as head of this corporation, and in many of the stories she was described as a very rich woman, which was a ploy, just so that Helen had the freedom to travel anywhere she wanted.

After her amnesia, of course, she doesn't really understand the extent of her financial power.  Actually, she does not have too much power; she is always nervous about spending too much, because she believes that all the money is going out, and very little is going in.  (This is actually the case; revenue is a trickle, from Galaxy and BNS, and money keeps going out, to Cindy, and Norma and Cecily---friends from her college days; a little foundation that provides financial help for poor children who need surgery, and the farm in Kansas, which is run by her step-brother Bo and his wife.  But she does not realize how much the dividends from her investments bring in; in fact, she does not know that she has major investments in Wall Street, thanks to Juliana, to whom Janet had entrusted her savings during Helen's college days.  So, though her investments are not very extensive, they manage to keep the little corporation from going into the red.

Here is a little fake interview between Helen and a friendly (and clearly liberal) newspaper or magazine.

Magazine:  Well, Miss Nordstrom, here we are in 2020!  The Iowa Caucuses are over, and the results mostly available; the Impeachment of president Trump was concluded, but the Senate acquitted him; the Stock Market is doing well, for the moment; the fires in Australia are gradually being fought successfully, and we're told that American firefighters were over there, returning the favor of the Australians who helped fight the California fires of last year.  Of course, the coronavirus is big news, and the Chinese governent is finally pulling out all the stops, but it looks as though they're more concerned with the bad PR than the problems with the epidemic itself!  What do you think?

Helen:  Wow, so many things!  I haven't thought very much about even half of these things!

Magazine:  I know for a fact that you're very concerned about the environment, and climate change, and those sorts of things!

Helen:  That's true.  I don't know what to say . . . We try, at home, to be as thoughtful as we can about, you know, environmental things; for example, we try not to use any sort of single-use plastic, and many of our friends try just as hard.  But, you know, I wonder whether each person, doing their little bit in their little corner, is enough to make a difference anymore.  But I fail to see how the government could jump in and do something dramatic!

One thing I'm hoping for, is that the government would support more environment-friendly, you know, power generation; like windmills, and those sorts of things . . .

Magazine:  Clean energy?

Helen:  Yes.  That's the most important single thing.  I don't know very much about science, and . . . those sorts of things, but I get the distinct impression that clean energy is important, and really, easy to do.

Magazine:  I think you'd get a lot of agreement there.

Helen:  And then, I read somewhere, that cars account for a huge proportion of air pollution, and, well, the Greenhouse Effect.  I don't know the details, but from what I have read, the Carbon Dioxide forms, like, a shell around the earth, that lets heat in, but does not let it radiate out.  This is bad.  This is what causes the warming climate around the earth.

Magazine:  So what do you suggest?  People must stop using cars, or use different sorts of cars, or what?  There are various possibilities, but I'd like to hear what you think!

Helen (looking a little taken aback):  Well, again, I'm not at all an expert, but . . . one thing we could do, is to use public transportation, right?  Instead of taking the car to go anywhere, we could take the bus, or the train, or . . . almost any public transport!  Not planes, though; I think that, er, Greta Thurnberg . . .

Magazine: Thunberg.  Greta Thunberg.

Helen:  Yes.  Greta, anyway; she said that planes are pretty bad.  She strikes me as someone who would know those sorts of things!  It's so terrible; I used to take planes everywhere . . . I still do, when I have an engagement anywhere outside of Philadelphia!  I even used to own a plane, I discovered recently.  At that time, time was what I was up against, and to fly was the most . . .

Magazine:  . . . Efficient?

Helen:  Well, time-efficient, for certain!

Helen Nordstrom, An Interview?

These days, a regret of mine is that Helen Nordstrom has little or nothing to contribute to the politics of 2019.

Most of the Helen story was written in the mid 1900s, when the major topics were gay marriage, and other issues of alternate lifestyles.  Today, we grapple with mainstream economic and social justice issues, and Helen is handicapped by her loss of memory and experience.  I must have wanted to make her purely a musician, and I succeeded too well.

I wonder whether it would be interesting to have Helen give an interview for a magazine that explored political views?

Magazine: Miss Nordstrom, you're a millionaire. What do you feel about your financial resources, at a time when poverty is rampant, and income disparity is so extreme?

Helen: I think I'm probably the poorest millionaire in the millionaire club! As you know,--and I was told!--that I announced my retirement some years ago . . .

Magazine: Yes, when you were going through a particularly difficult time.

Helen: Exactly. But I kept working with Galaxy Studios, at that time, and . . . I think the bookshop . . .

Magazine: BNB Inc.

Helen: Yes, they have made steady money, and of course that brings in some revenue. But I support several charities, as well as, you know, extended family, so the money is put to good use! But when I hear about wealth inequity, I understand, and I support steps to reduce it, generally!

Magazine: For the record, are you still a millionaire? There's a possibility that you might not be, anymore!

Helen: I might not, actually. I could find out from Becky Singer, who knows all about that! Oh, and also, we have a subsidiary, that is LMN Records, which makes steady money, and there's also an instrument workshop, that is losing money, so it's hard to keep track of. At tax time we find out!

Magazine: And you're also performing again, now, so that must bring money. And royalties, and stuff.

Helen:  Oh, yes, I forgot.

Magazine: Let's change the direction of our conversation. What are your thoughts about the administration, and the upcoming elections!

Helen: Well, until about the beginning of this year, I took the point of view that . . . our president is the one the people wanted, and it was a good lesson for all of us to be careful whom we select. We just could not be backtracking every decision; we have to suffer through this . . .

Magazine: . . . Term . . .

Helen: . . . Right, and do better next time. I was very unhappy with the public humiliation that the President was being put through.

Magazine: But now?

Helen: Now, I still feel the same. But I have been cringing increasingly more frequently, at seeing mean and unreasonable actions being taken in the name of the US, and thinking that the World thinks of these actions as American actions, and not just the actions of the President.

Magazine: But you still stand by the President?

Helen: Stand by is too strong a phrase of support. I'm unhappily tolerating what he does, and we will have a lot of work to build back the goodwill and the--I don't know what the word is; I don't think it is appropriate to seek approval, but the confidence, I guess, is the word I want. We need to earn the confidence of the world out there.

Magazine: What do you think of Twitter?

Helen: You know, we can't treat the population as though they were children. There are naive adults who are easily manipulated by, you know, Facebook, and Twitter, and other social media, but I think it is inappropriate to pass laws that say: people are foolish; we have to save them from themselves! We just can't do that. At least, that's my point of view.

Magazine: This has been very interesting! You know that your views are very much more conservative than those of the mainstream Democrats of today!

Helen: I think that's how elections work. I think we should make sure that elections are fair, but once the results are in, we're stuck with them.

Kay

Names in the Helen Story: A Startling Insight

I realized, just a few days ago, that there was an interesting coincidence in the names of characters in the Helen story.

Most of the names are just names I like, such as Janet, and Sylvia, and Eleanor, and Evelyn, all of which are names I have liked for years.  (I also like Kay, which is not my real name, but a Nom de Plume, which is to say, a pen-name, literally.)  I also like biblical names, such as David, Rachael, Naomi, and so on, though there aren't too many of those.  John and James are probably the exceptions.

Now, I'm not too much of an expert in this area, but the story of Rama and Sita is parallel to that of Helen of Troy;  in each case, a young queen is abducted by an enemy king.  In the case of the Greek legend, as recounted in Homer's Iliad, Helen is abducted by Paris, prince of Troy, because the goddess Venus promised him that he would have the most beautiful woman in the world as his lover.  Paris takes her away to Troy, and this sets off a decades-long seige of the city of Troy by a Greek coalition, which ultimately ends with the sacking of the city, and massive bloodshed.

The legend of Rama and Sita, attributed to the bard Valmiki, tells of Prince Rama, who marries the lovely princess Sita, and makes her his queen.  On their honeymoon, or at any rate, while they are holidaying in the countryside attended by only a small entourage, Rama leaves Sita alone briefly, when the enemy king Ravana, who is also a sorceror, comes upon her disguised as a handsome young stag, and carries her away to his mysterious magical island kingdom. 

Sita spends many months in a magical garden of king Ravana.  Somehow she succeeds in withstanding his amorous overtures--or does she?  The pivotal point of the story is whether Sita's virtue survived the imprisonment.

Once Sita is rescued and returned to Rama's court, there is great public curiosity about her ordeal, and when Sita's twin sons are born, their paternity is at issue.  Either Sita requests to be given a test, or Rama insists on a test, which amounts to a paternity test.  But Sita passes all the tests of purity, but is so traumatized by the doubts cast on her virtue that she leaves Rama.  (Actually, she calls on the Earth to open up, and receive her into its bosom.)

Did you notice that--entirely by coincidence, of course--the names of our lovers are Helen and Sita?  The plot of the present story (the story of Helen Nordstrom) has nothing to do with conventional concepts of virtue, so the names Helen and Sita have no symbolic significance whatsoever.

[Spoiler alert!  But don't panic; the Helen story is hardly a whodunnit of any sort.]  Helen is a young girl of great musical talent, whose sleeping libido is released by a chance encounter with a beautiful woman.  As a teenager, she is incorrigibly promiscuous, and has passionate--and often concurrent--affairs with numerous girls, and a few men as well.  But in her senior year in college, she encounters a foreign girl, Lalitha, who has a profound impact on Helen.  Helen, who at that time was the companion of Hollywood A-List actress Marsha Moore, finds herself irresistibly attracted to Lalitha, and Lalitha finds herself returning the attraction.  When Lalitha is ordered back home by a tyrannical father, Helen follows, but finds herself powerless to prevent Lalitha from being married off to a man the latter does not love or respect.

The visit to India is extremely costly to Helen; it stretches out for ten years; she is diagnosed with a brain tumor (which, of course, could happen anywhere, and cannot be blamed on India per se); loses her memory, and is repatriated without identification.  Luckily, a friend recognizes her, and a little more than a year later, Lalitha (who has returned to the US independently, neither Helen nor Lalitha knowing that the other has returned) finds Helen, and triggers the return of memory.  The two lovers pledge to each other in an unofficial ceremony, and the future looks promising.

But Helen has a wandering eye.  A lovely babysitter enters their lives, and presently Helen and Lalitha break up, and after many misadventures, Lalitha and Helen each find themselves with different partners, and though they mend their differences and become close friends, their romance cannot be rekindled.

Sita is Lalitha's kid sister, a decade younger than her.  By a great fluke, Helen and Sita are thrown together during the making of a movie, and frequently thereafter.  Helen is in disguise for the movie; she pretends to be a undiscovered actress.  Sita falls in love with this actress, and after she learns that it had been Helen, falls in love with Helen.  When Helen suffers amnesia a second time, Sita prepares to abandon her admiration for Helen as a hopeless cause,  but somehow the two women recognize their feelings for each other. 

I imagined Sita as a girl of a serious disposition, extremely loyal to her older sister, to whom she clings tenaciously, and whose opinion she values highly, and whom she admires as being the musician of the family--indeed the only family she has (apart from Suresh, Trish, and their daughter), since they have no ties to family in India.  Sita's fascination with Helen is sort of  initially derived from Lalitha's gratitude to Helen.  (Helen, after Lalitha had left her, pursues her to Baltimore, where Lalitha and Trish, and Lalitha's son, Suresh are in dire straits.  Helen persuades them to return with her to Philadelphia, and settles them with an apartment, and employment.  Lalitha never forgets that Helen came to rescue her twice: once to India, and once to the slums of Baltimore.)

The foregoing summary, apropos of nothing, prepares the way for a sort of follow-on book, not really a sequel, but simply written for fun, because I so enjoy writing about Helen and Sita, and thus far their interaction has only been a little bit here, and a little bit there.  (Sharon-Sita episodes can't be counted among them, because Helen acts so differently when she's disguised as Sharon.)

Well, that's basically all.

I was looking around for images of Helen of Troy, and Sita of  the Ramayana, but I was dissatisfied with those available.  Each of these women was considered a paragon of female beauty, but historical artistic depictions tended to go overboard with whatever features the artists considered to be appropriately superlative.  So some images of Helen of Troy are adorned with enormous breasts (because breasts were "in" for centuries in the West, unfortunately), and images of Sita showed her invariably with a bland expression; evidently bland expressions have been "in" for millennia as well.  A couple of pieces of art depict Sita--only a couple--with a grave face.  After all, on one hand she expected her husband to give her the benefit of the doubt, but on the other hand, as the consort of the King, there were public relations expectations.  The image shown here depicts Sita in a mood that could be either grieving, injured, or frustrated; or perhaps just preoccupied.  I was unable to identify the artist.

This representation of Helen of Troy is by Evelyn De Morgan, evidently someone on the fringe of--the Pre-Raphaelites.  I'm pleased to note that the Pre-Raphaelites did not value the ponderous breasts that other romantics were wont to endow their female figures with.  Let's face it: women do have breasts, but more is not always better.

Evelyn De Morgan seems to consider that vanity is a characteristic of Helen of Troy, though I am not certain that Homer indicated so.  The mirror is a hint.  (It is a work of fiction, anyway, so it doesn't matter, I suppose.  But being a pivotal character in the legend, I dislike the fact that vanity should be her central property of Helen, rather than, say, being crazy about footwear.)

Anyway, these illustrations of two of the most celebrated human beauties of mythology are frankly disappointing.  One reason that commentators give is that these women were considered ideals, and therefore not appropriate to represent in artwork.  That excuse doesn't really work, because there are so many depictions of the goddess Venus.  If she wasn't an ideal, who was?

Except for the ultra-curly hair--which is definitely a coincidence--I would not take this piece of art to be a model for Helen Nordstrom.

As a visual model for Sita Maunder, though (Maunder is not the family name of Lalitha and Sita; it is the name of the missionary family that brought Sita to the UK), the Sita picture is not bad.  I imagine Sita with an expression that is relaxed, but serious.  I also imagined her with rather straight brown hair, even black hair; and I imagine her without any jewelry, except maybe ear studs.  But more on that in another post.

Kay