Mr and Mrs Pinto - Aqil - ★★

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AUTHOR: Aqil
GENRE: Short Story
RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A decent short story about lost and rediscovered love. An interesting start and end but goes farfetched in between. Would have worked better with more development.


Story Synopsis:
Seventy-three-year-old Sebastian and his sixty-eight-year-old wife Jaya have just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. However, on what should have been a day of joy and celebration, Sebastian discovers that the Jaya he loved no longer exists and that their marriage is more like a steady habit than a love story anymore. When this realisation hits him, he inadvertently sets off a chain of events that might end up putting his marriage in trouble.
The story comes to us through the limited third-person perspective of Sebastian.


On the pro side:
✔ A quick story at just 25 pages. The start was especially interesting, and one part of the end was sweet.

✔ Unusual lead characters – it’s nice to see love explored from the geriatric perspective. The limited number of characters ensures that our focus stays on the central duo and not on other family members such as kids or grandkids.

✔ Sebastian being a retired insurance appraiser is incorporated decently in the story with his habit of assessing risks and returns, though there’s a notable exception in this depiction, which ended up diluting its value.

✔ There are some cute illustrations, not something I expected in short fiction.


However,
❌ I was expecting a backstory somewhat like that gorgeous four-minute reel at the beginning of the animated movie ‘Up’. The backstory of Sebastian and Jaya is barely touched upon, which is a shame because their office romance with the added angle of being an inter-faith relationship could have been explored very well. The complications of such a relationship fifty years ago would have been many, but they get brushed aside by a single sentence. Even their golden anniversary party hardly creates any vibes, whether warm or cold.

❌ The middle of the story is quite farfetched. I can’t imagine the risk-averse Sebastian acting that instinctively. And I can’t bring myself to forgive him for what he did. I felt really sorry for Alicia and wondered how the angle of ‘God works in mysterious ways’ could be applied to her experience.

❌ There are some depictions of a church wedding and interaction with a priest and so on. Sorry to say but most of the Catholic rep is inaccurate, possibly written by taking inspiration from Bollywood and Hollywood movies. Hollywood anyway shouldn’t be used as a foundation for Indian Christian stories as common Christian denominations in the USA (such as Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or LDS) are not at all common in India. And Bollywood shouldn’t be used as a reference because… well, everyone knows how accurate Bollywood is! Scenes such as “You may kiss the bride” and having a wedding rehearsal in church are not at all the norm here. Please do your homework better, dear author!


I have seen this story getting praised by many on Facebook, so I am quite disappointed at how this turned out. It had promise, that’s for sure, but the middle led to an event so idiotic that there was no saving my experience.

Quite a few reviewers have found this funny, so maybe I am just looking at the whole thing in a wrong way, but I simply can’t bring myself to see what happened as funny – it is a superficial assessment and ignores all the deep-rooted problems in Sebastian’s character and the negative repercussions of his actions on the other characters. It’s not a story of deep love but of selfish short-sighted love.

That’s just my two bits resulting entirely from irritation. Do feel free to try the story for yourself and make up your own mind.

The story is available for free on Kindle Unlimited.

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