Moi DNA

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Thanks to Sanny

Moving

"It's just the wind, ma!"
I had decided
I would tell her that
If she stared again.

As the Civic whizzed past
Several screeching
Electrical posts
I blew silent
Bubbles
Chatoyant with her name.

As they bounced
Irregularly
On the gnarled tree
I spotted familiar
Faces amongst the roots
And suddenly
On the clouds above.

Broken white stripes
Raced under the wheels
And head towards
The home
Which isn't, anymore.

Everything was bundled
"Will arrive tomorrow."
They had said.
But I wouldn't entrust them
With memories.

I poked my head further out
And felt the air
Drag itself,
Pulling me homeward
What-was-home-ward.

In the blinding sun
And the raucous air
I saw them again
Waving out to me
Saying goodbye.
Some were like
My brothers -
The kinds
Never born under
The same roof.
Some had pushed
Me down in a game
And were hoping
That I didn't
Carry hard feelings.

Some were
The only ones
Who knew
About Mr. Sharma's
Broken window pane.
Some were
Sole witness
To the ghost
Who walked in
Mrs. Mani's apartment.
We swore never
To tell anyone
About that.
But they also said
That it wouldn't
Be fun anymore.

All the aunties
Came over to hug us
And Mrs. Kare
Warned me
Against marrying anyone
Other than
Her Swati.
I promised.
Mr. Dushyant
Returned the kite
Which had cut him
Near his nose.

When they knew
The Civic wouldn't stop
They ran -
While she sat there
Hugging her knees
And the soft toy
I had stolen from my sister
For her.

I saw them rush
Behind my car
Hoping to bring my home
Wherever I went.
But she had sat there
Letting her tears
Run on her skirt,
Creating patterns
Never understood.

She knew I was
Someone who only left.
Someone who never
Will have a home.
Someone who will
Never understand
What it is to stay.
Someone who will
Never understand
Her tears.
Someone who will
Never have tears
Of his own.

"It's just the wind, ma!"

The Business of Love

It is unfortunate that the exquisite Belgian mirror - the only thing European enough in my house - contains nothing more than a forty year old man, with the insides of his cheeks nearly touching - making it difficult for me to ever order over the counter something with more than one vowel or too many "s" or "f" in them - not bad eyes, blue, azure, as I once wrote to the lady on the other side of the Pacific before the letter from her heir informed me of her death due to asphyxiation, a coffee brown suit with thin camel coloured lines like those left behind by a sepia ghost scratching her way down my body and out of my life, a single bed in the far end of the room under a fluttering curtain - glad there is something to freshen it up - a tired night lamp gloomy in spite of the lemon yellow and red shade which I bought at the flea-market, and an erect tail moving along the bottom curve of the mirror as if cautioning me not to spend too much time on myself. Skatty. I raised myself on my toes and spotted the white monocled eye look back at me, the same way she had when Becky handed her over to me and said, "It's catty."
"What dear? Her name?"
"It's catty", she had said and ran off to the waiting Lincoln, Boston-bound.


"Skatty? Like my suit?"
Skatty walked carefully over to the shoe-rack which also doubled as a scratching post - each one to their comfort - I turned to give myself a final look and puffed healthy air into my far from healthy cheeks.
"A poem, darling? For your Valentine? What better than a gift of words?"
I licked my lips and bit them to give them the colour of the season.
"Come Skatty. Let there be lovers pouring my way, and low-fat milk your way. What say? Let's make money off those silly fellas!"
Skatty jumped into my arms and cheered in her most nasal voice. She snaked her tail into my jacket.
The walk down to Artist's Hollow is striped with roads of offices, the high fashion avenue, a skaters' stretch with darker lines on the asphalt chasing the speediest skater but still falling behind him, a post office, a canal of the city's waste with wide mouthed fishes dead and floating like morons in a carnival, a few streets coloured with graffiti and ruined by the patches of neglected beige painted walls - and sometimes that is graffiti too by some loser with an existential angst crawling up his sphincter.
"Artist's Hollow" was never recognised by the postal department but no self-respecting denizen expected letters delivered here. Artist's Hollow was nine hundred square metres arranged in a circle of dying bricks, rusting lamp-posts and cussing senior citizens, diurnally hanging out of their windows wiping their saliva dripping mouths on yellowing towels fluttering in disgust from under their bellies.
Diana, the mime artist, was early and rolling her head - a white powdered promise of smiles, astonishment and dismay, telling a story which this generation of Jay Leno never understood - over her lean black clothed body. She had as much breasts as Mr. Clarster but jiggled less than his when he polished his saxophone. Sometimes they would jam together and make things even more incomprehensible. But today was different. The incorrigible love-ridden mind dips every scene - even dead mice with cheese freezing their legs together, perhaps the mouse was fetching the finest cheese for its loved one!? How romantic and tragic! So much like Romeo and Juliet in the rodent kingdom - every single scene, in honey and hope that everything in this monotonously spinning world was conniving to make things more beautiful for the hands-in-gloves to hold each other in unfeeling gestures of love, and the world was lovelier for the sole reason that they were in love.
And they arrived bumping into each other, eliciting pointless giggles and manly smiles while they tried to hug the whole of the other and still manage the awesome feat of walking in a straight line. Mark was there too and he promised every couple a wonderful portrait to preserve for eternity like their love. I spat on the ground and let Skatty jump her sexiest curvilinear trajectory to the cold bricks below. I kicked the wooden box and released several targets for Skatty.
"Go Gladiator!"
I sat on the wooden box and cleared my throat.
"Watcha gonna cook up today, reed-face?"
I looked up at Gena whose flagging triceps clapped against each other as she snapped her tablecloth - dirty the world while the tablecloth stays spotless. I was going to comment about how she should often slap her head against the wall to rid it of all the dust, when I spotted the prey. I grew a smile large enough to glare into the myopic Gena before cooing a saccharin-coated, "Such a wonderful day, Ms. Oafter, isn't it? Such a pleasant sight to see you in all your loveliness", and gave a smirk quick enough to pass unnoticed. She slammed her windows shut lest the worst of Devils - the ones who come clinging to you in sweet words of hope, promise and, in dire needs, love - clasp her tablecloth and make her home, His.
"Well, what a beautiful way to start my day! The prettiest love this town has to offer comes walking up on four legs and one heart."
They stopped and smiled at me.
"Darlings, what would I not give to be so blissfully happy such as yourselves. Happy Valentine’s Day", I said and kept carefully puffing my cheeks to rid this syrupy scene of bones and hollowness. They kissed each other as if on cue. I took out my pen and paper with equal readiness.
"If you lend me your hand, young man, I can translate your pulse into a love poem for your beautiful angel. No, not your right hand, lover boy. My poem is not about your appetite, and I am sure you wouldn't want me to put that down on paper", I winked. He extended his left hand. I removed my gloves and rubbed my hands together. This always works. I placed my fingers lightly on the bracelets of his wrist. I shut my eyes - I had to recall the lines - but this was also part of the game. I started swaying and smiled - ok, so was it "In the light of your ..." damn! I always forget that one. Maybe I should try the other one.
"My! You really love her, don't you? Ok, here goes" I said and cracked my knuckles.
"No, don't worry. Your love is still on my fingers. The cold does get difficult on a body living off one meal a day. So, don't worry, your love is still there."
I ran large invisible curvaceous strokes on the paper with the tips of my fingers before I picked up the pen.

What should I call joyous-this?

"Your lady's name?"
"Jennifer. Jenny if that is more poetic."
I wanted to burst out laughing. Poetic, indeed.
"Jenny would be lovely. Did you know that Walter De La Mare's greatest love was also named Jennifer?"
The girl pulled up her shoulders in the tickling knowledge of being mistress to a man who meant nothing to her, and pushed her little head deeper into his jacket. Where was Skatty?

What should I call joyous-this?
That grips me through nights many.
Strange is it, my heart amiss
Or that I call it my Jenny?

"Oh! This is so lovely. Please, read it Ralphie. Read it to me on your knees" the girle shrieked and tugged at Ralphie's cuff. I wanted to slam it on their face and tell them to be patient.
"But you have hardly heard all that he has to tell you, lovely lady. If this thrills you, guess what's coming up?" and I gave her a coy smile. Ralphie was more than pleased to have escaped the ordeal of pressing his knee to the bricks.
"Yeah, let him finish. Go on, man. You're good."
A certificate from a jerk is all that I needed and worse from one in love.
"Ok, I need both of you to be silent and focus on your love, ok? That way I will be able to write more honest. Ok?"
Ralphie looked worried now.
"Hey, man! How much did you say for this story?"
"Poem. $15 for 4 stanzas."
"What?" he shouted and quickly turned to his poetic Jenny and swallowed whatever he wanted to fling my way. Of course, his stomach was a better place for all that than my face. I remembered to puff my cheeks lest it become the sole reason for refusing the services.
"Come on Ralphie. Just this once. Please. Please. Puhleeaase."
He seemed to run a quick checklist of the various notes and coins he had and whether they summed to fifteen. You lost the beer, Ralphie, but what's a beer for a sheet of paper which she might tear up the first thing when she catches you with some hot chick. Puff, puff, puff.

"Ok, go on man, but nice stuff, ok? Maybe you should try better than these four lines."
"Stanza. I'll do my best" I said and smiled at both of them.

What should I call joyous-this?
That grips me through nights many.
Strange is it, my heart amiss
Or that I call it my Jenny?

Come closer, let me kiss you.
Allow your sweet wine-lips
Reveal that warm love so true
That does my life eclipse.

“Wine-lips is neat, man. Exactly my words. Keep going.”

In the black of the night
Our love beacons the gold path
Leading to a union, right
Made more so in passion's bath.

What should I call joyous-this?
That grips me through nights many.
Strange is it, my heart amiss
Or that I call it my Jenny?

"Hey, man. That is the same as the first one."
"Of course, it has to come one full circle, else it wouldn't be holistic love. You do know that, don't you?" I asked and looked at the girl hoping her romanticism to come to my rescue. She sighed and kept looking at the paper.
"You really feel like that, Ralphie?"
"Yeah, but that last bunch is the same."
"Stanza. See, here comes a kitty. Kitty, come here, come here." I picked Skatty and stroked her black head, so much like the hearts in Artist's Hollow.
"Let's see what a pure animal, with the Divine love flowing through its body, has to say about this poem. Here kitty, this is Ralphie's love poem for the love of his life, Jenny. You like it?"
Skatty purred and rubbed herself on the paper and back again. She started licking her paw in well practiced strokes.
"See, a cat wouldn't react like that unless it was heartfelt. After all I wrote what your heart said."
"Go on, Raplhie. I love it. I love you", she said and kissed him deep on his mouth. I watched him hold her waist - wait, isn't that his thumb on the upward curve in front. Sheesh! What's come on this generation!
"Ok, man. You win." He handed me the $15.
"No, young man. You win", I said and pointed to Jenny.
She held the poem in her hand and jumped a couple of times around and finally on Ralphie. And she should kiss him now! There, she kissed him. Again!
I spat on the side and barely missed Skatty.
"Oh! Sorry, lovely. Happens. Nice show, by the way. Now let me memorise that one I forgot."
While I fished out the parody of Wordsworth, Wyatt and Dickenson which I had forgotten, I whistled an old tune.
"Say, lover, why don't you send them my way, once you are done?"
I looked at the chalky face held atop a black pole. I squinted at her and slowly slipped my hands back into the gloves.
"Why Diane? So that they can sue me for it?"
"Hell with you, you hack. You could be nicer and let us all make money."
"Yeah right! All you can make is funny faces and scare people away. Go scare Mr. Clarster there. See, Skatty is going to puke!"
Diane swore hard and walked over to her piece of Artist's Hollow. I turned to look at Ralphie walk with a bouncing green lover called Jenny.
"Some good milk for you today! Now go and rub against those lovers walking there and bring them here. Give me five minutes to memorise this. Go Gladiator! Happy Valentine’s Day!"

Trying to understand literature - Why I write

In my mortal twitching soul

I hold Euterpe's sweet decree -

Create worlds, of magic bold,

And on sprightly word-wings, soar free.

- An apology for leading a writer's life, circa 2007, Eroteme.

Writing provides to me what a bath-tub does: A place where I can be my entire, passionate self, without having to cower in shame or pretend grandeur, a place where I can be so honest that I lose myself in the beauty of words and images and watch my own hand move on a promising blank terrain, nudging words to reveal themselves from under the whiteness of an emptied mind. I write because I love. I write because, in this world of impermanence, I seek something that is pure and permanent, and a writerly experience is just that.
I write because I care enough about the world and want them to look inside themselves and realise the story in there. I write because I wish to shut myself off from the world, read my own words and cry.
Beyond these very personal and very instinctive drives, I write because I have enjoyed beautiful literature and wish to offer my contribution to that. I believe art is the only differentiating factor between human beings and animals. Our appreciation and creation of art is something that, I believe, should never get corrupted or lost in the world's mire. Hence, I wish to offer something honest and completely of mine, that would appeal to some readers in this world and make them feel a lightness, a rightness that only true art can provide. A writer writes only for that reader's nirvana. As Nabokov had once said: "A work of art, has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me."

In case, someone wondered how "Why I write" would tie in with "Trying to understand literature", then I hope you have found the answer.

Attempting to create literature is an adamant belief in permanence. In this world filled with 2-day marriages, job-hopping, one-night stands, carnivals, 5 minutes of fame and American Idol, there are people who daringly believe in permanence, in greatness, in truth, in purity, in nothingness. I count myself as one of them and believe (enough to consistently annoy others) that art isn't a gimmick and definitely writing is not to be treated casually. It gives me great, immeasurable satisfaction to read a well composed passage, a beautiful story and an amazingly touching poem. I read because I wish to lose myself in the writing (thereby finding myself) and I write because I wish to lose myself reading what I have written (and again, find myself). I also write with the hope that those who wish to lose themselves find an avenue in what I write.

I read Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Lecture and couldn't help agree with him - on most things. I do not write because I am angry with the world. I write because there is a world. Its joys, grief, hypocrisies, honesty, simplicity, complexities - everything that makes this world spin - entices me to write. The promise that this world holds in making any piece of my fiction plausible, goads me on to write. Writing is the single way I have realised to connect to this world in the way I want to - completely, passionately, effortlessly.

Writing and literature are connected merely by intent and design. While anyone can write and do so honestly, a writer who wishes to contribute to literature, is a conscious writer with a purpose. Such a writer looks at different things in the world and keeps weaving a few tens of ways to express the same. Although novelty and new scenes are welcome, what a writer typically attempts to do is express the same sunrise, the same scene of love-making, the same distraught eyes which watch a lover leave, the same tender fall of a duck shot in mid-air - the same incidents of life, expressed differently. Milan Kundera puts it aptly when he describes the purpose of a novelist: "[A novelist's purpose] is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say." And this is done quite consciously. One feels vulgar when one is exposed to a written work preceding the one he holds in his hands, and containing an expression, an idea or an insight which he had initially thought to be originally his. I still recall the time when - and this was in a writing workshop - a fellow writer, after reading a piece of mine, said, "This reminds me of a Fitzgerald story I read". I was so terrified that I searched all over the Net for a Fitzgerald piece which was like the story I wrote. Having found none, I approached her and demanded an explanation. She laughed her 20 year old heart out before replying like the 70 year old she was, "You are so silly. I would have murdered to be likened to Fitzgerald and here you go taking offence. I was only referring to the style." I remain uncertain of the truth in her comparison, but it dawned on me that day, that I was instinctively repulsed by writing like some writer (contemporary or on God's payroll of copy editors).

I have many stories to tell. I could spell them out in under 20 seconds each but I prefer to create a whole world around it and ensure that I have your attention till the very end. I do not want you looking at your watch and the only methods I will employ to ensure that are all contained in my story. I have been telling stories since I was 5 or so. My mother's repertoire was exhausted quite early and I created a few short quick stories as well as some sagas. As I grew more exposed to the world around me, and thought things that others might or not, I created stories as I moved around. I would visit dinner parties and imagine someone getting poisoned there, a beautiful little girl engaging me through the evening and doing a "Great Expectations" on me (but the story was different), or creating a business proposition which suddenly drew me into a deluge of several million (and in that age, I only thought in terms of millions) dollars. I created empires, circuses, families, dynasties, murder mysteries, drama but never wrote any of them. I always went to bed and started the next day exactly where I left, the page of each story in my head accurately marked (no dog-ears, please). I haven't yet lost this habit, so my world tends to be a chattering one either on the outside or on the inside. With all this happening around me, I simply had to write.

I wasn't always conscious of my writing. What I wrote then wouldn't ever be published in Alvibest today (and I am doubly critical of myself). But as I read more stories and authors, I realised the world that they were all trying to create and the beauty of it all drew me in sharply. To be honest, I realised the banality of the world in which I live and often treated writing as an escape into paradise. I didn't hate the real world but preferred the real world I was creating for myself. Here was a world where anything was possible, people wore the clothes I wanted them, said what I wanted to hear them say - a world where I was God. Then one day it entered me to become a writer contributing to literature. That day my world went on strike. People in there no longer spoke what I wanted them to, they didn't even smile at me. They did things I never thought they would do. Several times I would start writing a story about Sandra and the character would actually be called Vasantha. I started to write a story about something and ended writing about something entirely different. I was happier this way. I would never be able to point out the exact year or month when I decided to become a writer who would (hopefully) contribute to literature. Now, I don't see any other purpose in my writing.

I write to help readers see a smell and touch a sun-beam. I write to give readers an experience. I wish that my writing gets to be powerful enough to shake the reader out of their skin and make them see something which they had shut off. I don't want readers to always be happy or dreamy. I want to disgust my readers, make them lose their sleep, silence them, make them cynical, make them reach out to everyone around them, make them think, make them slow down - make them live anew. When I wrote "Finality" for Alvibest, I wasn't going to be satisfied unless each reader felt like throwing up. I wanted each reader to feel what the protagonist felt for his sister. I wanted them to see the vegetating girl lying on the bed. If that was done, I am satisfied. I don't want my readers to be comfortable. Hence, I write.

Writing is the only art which doesn't produce sensation in line with the medium employed. Paintings and sculptures are visual and limit themselves to that. Music limits itself to the ear. Dance is for the eyes, but writing differs. Although the medium is purely visual (the text on the paper), the effect is not meant to be merely visual. Writing bores into the mind and explodes a bomb of sensations. I write because I wish to create a whole bouquet of emotions and feelings in the reader.

I write, because I cannot help it. I always pack my notebook and pen before I slide the toothbrush in. I always want to buy notebooks because I fear that I might run out of them. I love everything associated with writing: pens, paper, ink, languages, words, sounds of words (I could keep hitting "Hear it again" for the word "persiflage" on Merriam Webster's site) and people. Of late, I write mostly at my computer/laptop but my most personal writing is still done in a ruled notebook (I am not good at writing on unruled ones). Writing is essential to my sanity.

When writing a story I strive to be honest. I achieve this most easily when I am not constrained (by word limits or the need to write the best story). As I grow to understand (or be confounded by) the sinews of a short story, I am more convinced that a short story's primary aim is to provide a unique experience. This cannot be achieved without a tale to tell. Sometimes - and I would leave that to the experts - a wonderful piece of writing can evoke in a reader an experience which is sublime and the absence of a tale is noticed only in retrospect. Nevertheless, the primary goal of the writer in me is to provide an experience by telling a tale whose rendition is timelessly delightful. Beyond that, I have little else to commit my writing to. It is not the strength of an idea or insight (and Kundera's works abound in that although his story telling abilities are often questionable), it is not the mere ornamentation and literary elements and it is not merely the tale that can provide an experience. Literature is made of the same design that went into making a human body. I wish to lose myself learning and living one of them.

Trying to understand literature - A discussion

The following are two of the email discussions I had with professors of creative writing (with a leaning towards fiction). My initial query being the same, justifies the near similar emails I sent to each of them. Some portions of my responses would be similar too as what I wished to say remains the same across both exchanges. Read on.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


Dear Mr. ******,
I hope this mail doesn't come across as an intrusion. I read that you co-edited the anthology The Contemporary American Short Story and I was hoping that you might be the best person to help me with a doubt that has been nagging me for a long while.
If an introduction to myself would help, here goes. I am a computer scientist (please don't get bored as soon you read that) and I enjoy writing though not yet as a profession. I work with ******* in India. I write mostly in English and tend to write literary short stories, poems and nonfiction. I created a literary magazine called Alvibest (condensation of Ars longa. Vita Brevis Est) which sends out the magazine as a PDF to subscribers (only about 100 of them now). India suffers from a lack of literary journals to the tune of what America or Canada has. Actually, there might be only as many as fingers on one hand could count. So I decided to create one recently. I do not claim literary worth or merit though I would confess to being in love with writing.
I hope that helps place where I come from when I ask, "Why is contemporary short fiction seemingly devoid of form?". I read stories in the New Yorker, VQR, AGNI, The Paris Review and I always seem to wonder at the end of the story "Ok. So?" I was brought up with the stories of Saki, HH Munro, O'Henry (and the stories that are collected in the annual series nowadays make me respond with the same ok-so?) and Poe. Those stories had a clear form of beginning-middle-end. The characters were interesting and the stories were good too, although they might seem (at times) excessively plotted. I thought it was just something to do with me, until many of my friends responded in a similar fashion when they read these stories.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but aren't contemporary short fiction attempting to present a slice of life, without twist, without plot, without form, as life often tends to be? Why would we do that to short stories if we still expect a beginning-middle-end for a novel? Aren't they but stories of a different metre? Undoubtedly, a novel provides a canvas large enough to detail several characters and their development and short stories cannot afford such luxury, but why are stories of late so starkly abstruse in their content? Not all of them, but most of them make me wonder "Ok, so what was this story all about?".
If you read John Updike's story "The Crow in the Woods" you might get an idea of what I am trying to say. The story is beautiful and creates the images very well, but it ends on a rather abrupt note. Is the contemporary short story all about creating wonderful characters/scenes/images and then stopping?
I hope you could guide me on this matter (understanding the contemporary short story and why it so often ends on an abrupt note) or if you feel that it would demand too much of your time, could you point me to some resources which will help me appreciate the form of contemporary short stories? Thank you for your time.

Regards
*******

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear ******,

Thanks for your note. I’m always glad to hear from an ardent reader and admirer of short stories. Because I’m teaching and finishing a novel at the moment I can’t be as expansive as I’d like to be here, but I could point you to a source or two. I don’t disagree with your point that a lot of stories one finds in prominent places lack a certain resonance and feeling of completeness. The writers of such stories would probably argue that we’re in a postmodern or post-postmodern era in which pastiche or slice of life best reflects the fragmented, warp-speed culture in which we live. With the notion that form should mirror content, perhaps these writers believe that stories should not be unified since modern life lacks order and cohesion. For my part, I’d argue that every era contains its own chaos, every individual is a swirl of thoughts and memories, and the demand that art be precise and unified should be no less true now than it was in the time of Aristotle. In short, I don’t disagree with you. However, I would say that there are scores of contemporary short story practitioners who are turning out excellent work. The tables of contents of my two co-edited anthologies can be found here:

{Anthology 1}
{Anthology 2}

While some of the writers can be hit and miss when you take their collections as a whole, I’d certainly stand by the oeuvres of Charles Baxter, John Cheever, Stuart Dybek, Ha Jin, Bernard Malamud, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro and Tim O’Brien, to name just a few. I think Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies more than stands up to the hype. And these are only American writers. If part of your frustration has to do with the seeming lack of plot, this was shared by Michael Chabon a few years ago and prompted him to edit a series of anthologies that return to traditional forms. For more, follow these links:

Link1
Link2

All best,
******

-- ******* ******
Director, MFA Program in Creative Writing
Associate Professor of English
*****************************

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Mr. ******,
Thank you so much for sparing some time to reply to my email. I am extremely sorry that I didn't notice the sentence on your page which said "*** *** *** ***(forthcoming in 2008)". I suppose you refer to this novel which engages you currently.
It is my personal dream to perfect the art of writing short stories and I am working on it in my own way. Hence, as you might have recognised, I am very concerned about the way this art form is going.
To be honest, I do not understand this notion of modernism, post-modernism etc. I read about the art (rather anti-art) movement called Dadaism and could only shake my head in disbelief. It appears as if the discipline required to work on art (in its various forms) troubles many a soul into coming up with less demanding detours which they wish to be called art as well.
You raise a fantastic point in your response: every age had its chaos, but earlier fiction didn't seem to be affected by it (although colonialism, slave trade, wars were all part of those eras) save providing material to write about. We seem to permit the modern artist complete freedom, and unfortunately, the freedom to call anything they produce as art/literature. I am not fanatical about traditional forms, but I would like to know whether I could partly objectively look at a piece of fiction and be able to say that it is good and then term it beautiful based on the tenderness of my senses. I am able to do this with the works of Nabokov or the works (although they aren't all fiction) of Pico Iyer. This need might be quite an Indian (Asian) one for we come to treat music, visual arts and writing with the same severity demanding them to be clear in their intent.
Yes, the authors you mention are good (I haven't read some of them). Jhumpa Lahiri is good. Her stories (and I really mean the story in each of them) are good but she doesn't seem to care about playing with the language (as, say, Cervantes or Nabokov or Saki did). English is a fine language and its beauty must be exercised to provide delight to the reader. It is not about being flowery, but heightening the senses of the reader. Personally, I think Ms. Lahiri's stories in the Interpreter of Maladies lack that. Nabokov's (and I fail to hide my preferences over this email) works excite me to the point of perspiration. You can taste the words he uses and relish the imagery.
Cheever is delightful in his stories although I have read just a couple of them. I am sure you must have read "The Country Husband". I read it several times and though I liked his description and the way the piece moves, I have no clue how it ended and what he meant by the last line. Cheever appears to be delighted at the way he composed the story. Many people have admired it and said wonderful things about it (including Nabokov), but not in one place did I find a thorough reading and analysis of it. The conflicts in the characters (Weed and his wife, primarily) and the several incidents symbolising the "narrow escape" are fine, but the story... I wonder. Not one person with whom I have interacted (and fate and I might be bad at choosing people) could convincingly or categorically state what that story was about.
Undoubtedly, many current stories are beautiful (I enjoyed the story "Old boys, Old Girls" which also won the 2006 O'Henry prize. But at the end if someone asked me What was it about? I might fail to provide an answer that sounds like the crux of a story. It might be my failing more than the traits of the story) but I read all of them thrice. Once to simply enjoy it, or not, second time to look deeper and feel the writer's pulse and finally to vivisect it objectively with simple questions like: What is the story in two sentences? What is the leitmotif? Can you visualise the protagonist and be able to sketch him (I also sketch)? Did you feel the love/hate/passion/tiredness/fear/pettiness/etc. of the character(s)? and a couple more. I must confess that most of my sessions of buttonholing a story haven't been successful enough to arrive at a specific verdict.
It is not merely lack of plot, but the lack of clarity into what marks a good story that leaves me frowning even on pleasant Spring evenings. Can I sit on a chaise lounge and while a friend reads a story and summarises it for me, ask him clear and pointed questions and, upon receiving appropriate responses, be able to say "Then that might be an interesting story"? I am not seeking objective measures in abundance, but some simple qualities that don't leave me befuddled and wondering as to: How did this story win the prize? Why did they publish this story? Where is the story?
Again I have taken too much of your time but don't expect a response unless some of the points I raise here titillate a need to discuss. Thank you very much for providing pointers in your response as well as responding. It's been a pleasure conversing with you about this.

Regards
*******

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The following email exchanges were with another professor.

Dear ********,
I hope this mail doesn't come forth as an intrusion. I came across your course webpage (*** ***) and I was hoping that you might be the right person to help me with a doubt that has been nagging me for a long while.
If an introduction to myself would help, here goes. I am a computer scientist (please don't get bored as soon you read that) and I enjoy writing though not yet as a profession. I work with *** *** in India. I write mostly in English and tend to write literary short stories, poems and nonfiction. I created a literary magazine called Alvibest (condensation of Ars longa. Vita Brevis Est) which sends out the magazine as a PDF to subscribers (only about 100 of them now). India suffers from a lack of literary journals to the tune of what America or Canada has. Actually, there might be only as many as fingers on one hand could count. So I decided to create one recently. I do not claim literary worth or merit though I would confess to being in love with writing.
I hope that helps place where I come from when I ask, "Why is contemporary short fiction seemingly devoid of form?". I read stories in the New Yorker, VQR, AGNI, The Paris Review and I always seem to wonder at the end of the story "Ok. So?" I was brought up with the stories of Saki, H.H. Munro, O'Henry (and the stories that are collected in the annual series nowadays make me respond with the same ok-so?) and Poe (and that is a fine story you have picked for your course). Those stories had a clear form of beginning-middle-end. The characters were interesting and the stories were good too, although they might seem (at times) excessively plotted. I thought it was just something to do with me, until many of my friends responded in a similar fashion when they read these stories.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't contemporary short fiction attempting to present a slice of life, without twist, without plot, without form, as life often tends to be? Why would we do that to short stories if we still expect a beginning-middle-end for a novel? Aren't they but stories of a different metre? Undoubtedly, a novel provides a canvas large enough to detail several characters and their development and short stories cannot afford such luxury, but why are stories of late so starkly abstruse in their content? Not all of them, but most of them make me wonder "Ok, so what was this story all about?".
If you read John Updike's story "The Crow in the Woods" you might get an idea of what I am trying to say. The story is beautiful and creates the images very well, but it ends on a rather abrupt note. Is the contemporary short story all about creating wonderful characters/scenes/images and then stopping? Like a wonderful stroke of red paint on a white sheet, left there to be admired, but not delivering much sense as paintings often tend to do.
I hope you could guide me on this matter (understanding the contemporary short story and why it so often ends on an abrupt note) or, if you feel that it would demand too much of your time, could you point me to some resources which will help me appreciate the form of contemporary short stories (I was unable to find The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction here in India, so any other resource would be helpful)? Thank you for your time.

Regards
*******

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Dear ********,

Thank you for your thoughtful query. My brief answer to your question would be that not all contemporary stories lack the clear form to which you allude, though it is certainly true that in many cases the twists and turns lead us only to confusion or unsatisfyingly abrupt endings--or both. Some writers test our tolerance for ambiguity by being deliberately cryptic, as if parsing Joycean codes. Others, however, in attempting to engage the mysteries of human personality test our own notions of life and skirt the irrational. As Vladimir Nabokov notes in discussing Gogol's "The Overcoat": "[Gogol] pottered happily on the brink of his private abyss" and reflected the "sudden slanting of the rational plane of life." As contemporary readers of serious shortfiction, we become accustomed to the telescoping of events and those epiphanic moments when the writer's treatment of the slices and glimpses break upon us like a prism. In a post-Freudian world we come to accept the mixed tones/mixed motivations that are part of all of us. Unlikethe novel--from which we demand more form for the investment of time needed to engage it--short fiction is a different genre with different expectations.

As mentioned, this is a hasty response and one that I will reflect on and perhaps reshape in a later email. Meanwhile, with your permission,I would like to share your good email with the students in my spring2007 course on "The Modern Short Story" by way of getting them to think about the important questions you raise.

Thanks again.
******* *******

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear ********,
Thank you very much for your response. I agree that not all contemporary stories tax the reader with content that leaves one bewildered and often wondering whether some pages are missing. But the frequency and the leaning of the short story seems to be - and I may be mistaken - towards a form where the story is not of greatest importance. This would bring us to the vital question of What is a story? Length of it can be discussed once we understand what the notion of a story is and what a reader expects to find in the confines of 10-1000 pages.

Personally, I feel that cryptic prose is best left to Zen Koans (they are wonderful too, and there are some at: http://inagardencalledlife.blogspot.com/2007/01/zen-koans.html ) else reading short stories becomes less a matter of the soul and more a matter of the intellectual fecundity of the reader.
If the novel's justification is its demand on reader's time, then I think I would raise a justification for the short story as that on reader's hope. A reader does arrive at the start of a short story expecting a rapid heightening of experience and of senses in one sitting and in this hope that he carries in his breast, is the clear need for something that is not quotidian, and if it appears so, then its insight and revelations aren't. I hope I am able to get my point across. One would read the newspaper if he wanted something real and lacking something dramatic. Yes, the intent of a story is to dramatise life, isn't it? What then becomes of a story which tells me something about a character's life and ... the end.
The human cunning has only been partly gauged as of today. Given a piece of text, the finest minds can arrive at a few hundred interpretations and possible innuendoes. I do not belittle the interest and work of literary scholars, but I merely demand the basic from a short story; hence, the disturbance in my mind regarding the state of short stories. The reason I sent you the mail was primarily to seek your help in understanding what drives contemporary authors to write thus. Again, I agree that not all of them do so and traditional forms linger, but that is my concern - that it lingers.
You mention Nabokov and I couldn't help but smile. He is brilliant and his stories are truly short stories. He loves the language and it is clearly visible in his work. The imagery he creates runs clearly in the mind's eye while we share the roads and trains of Russia with his characters (I am referring to the short stories alone. His novels are splendid, too). I have never had complains against him save in one or two instances, but he excites me so, that I let them pass. But there is a clear story in his short story and that is why I find him delightful.
I beg your pardon, but this notion of modernism, post-modernism, post-Freudian world and similar hues of painting the world and its ways aren't clear to me. Maybe I lack the sensitivity to appreciate them. I still feel that a short story must contain a story and then we can lend our individual artistic peculiarities to it, thereby stamping it with our individual styles. I can pick a dozen stories in random from popular magazines today and ask one question of each of them: In two lines, what is the story? I wonder how many of them would yield a clear answer.
Cheever is delightful in his stories although I have read just a couple of them. I am sure you must have read "The Country Husband". I read it several times and though I liked his description and the way the piece moves, I have no clue how it ended and what he meant by the last line. Cheever appears to be delighted at the way he composed the story (esp. the last line). Many people have admired it and said wonderful things about it (including Nabokov), but not in one place did I find a thorough reading and analysis of it. The conflicts in the characters (Weed and his wife, primarily) and the several incidents symbolising the "narrow escape" are fine, but the story... I wonder. Not one person with whom I have interacted (and fate and I might be bad at choosing people) could convincingly or categorically state what that story was about. If I may be so bold as to suggest, your students might find it an interesting exercise to explain what the last paragraph in that story meant. I wouldn't be surprised if the sheer variety of the answers reveals something which we need to acknowledge.
Undoubtedly, many current stories are beautiful (I enjoyed the story "Old boys, Old Girls" which also won the 2006 O'Henry prize. But at the end if someone asked me What was it about? I might fail to provide an answer that sounds like the crux of a story. It might be my failing more than the traits of the story) but I read all of them thrice. Once to simply enjoy it, or not, second time to look deeper and feel the writer's pulse and finally to vivisect it objectively with simple questions like: What is the story in two sentences? What is the leitmotif? Can you visualise the protagonist and be able to sketch him (I also sketch)? Did you feel the love/hate/passion/tiredness/fear/pettiness/etc. of the character(s)? and a couple more. I must confess that most of my sessions of buttonholing a story haven't been successful enough to arrive at a specific verdict.
It is not merely lack of plot, but the lack of clarity into what marks a good story that leaves me frowning even on pleasant Spring evenings. This need might be quite an Indian (Asian) one for we come to treat music, visual arts and writing with the same severity demanding them to be clear in their intent. Can I sit on a chaise lounge and while a friend reads a story and summarises it for me, ask him clear and pointed questions and, upon receiving appropriate responses, be able to say "Then that might be an interesting story"? I am not seeking objective measures in abundance, but some simple qualities that don't leave me befuddled and wondering as to: How did this story win the prize? Why did they publish this story? Where is the story?
I am sorry to demand your time in reading this mail. I would be honoured if you chose to share this email with your students. I would love to hear the highlights of the discussion that might ensue. I do not claim to know/understand it all, but I genuinely want to learn to appreciate the modern short story. Do forgive me if any portion of the mail bears too much of my frustration in this quest. Looking forward to the more elaborate mail from you.

Regards
**********
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Trying to understand literature - What is a story?

It is my most pressing concern of late, esp. as I haul these books in the cavern of my arms, to understand what a story is and what can be, in all fairness, called literature, without fearing a future recall of that appellation that one might bequeath a written work of art. I think the fear is more often to call something non-art, fearing glaring elitist eyes stomping our nebulous standing as a connoisseur of art. But I fear less than I wonder, and as in most battles that ravage my discerning insides, I think my quest to understand, know and realise wins over fright. Let me assure the erudite reader that I take no regard of genre/pulp writing and I am definitely not allowing the case for chick-lit and Anurag Mathur to creep in here. I am going to postpone the discussion of other art forms to future predilections. I have, as the reader might summon to memory, written about the visual art form of painting and a bit about poetry. I shall focus more on prose, in this post.
The reason for urgency stems from my own doing. I read a lot of stories published by some renowned magazines. Let me give you a sample of one of them:

http://www.bu.edu/agni/fiction/online/2005/mitchell.html

Please do read the "story" before you proceed.
Assuming that you have been kind enough to heed my words, allow me to ask you, What is the story in what you read? This is essentially the question that ruined many days and reading excursions of mine. I read stories from The New Yorker, from VQR, from Paris Review (oh! they are bad!) and so many other - chiefly American - literary journals. What I failed to realise was what made these works worthy of inclusion (considering that these journals were a good measure of worth)? I read Chekhov and Cheever and Oates and Carver but didn't quite grasp that one chromosome of good writing. As a reader and as a writer this knowledge is vital in order to deal in fine works. Undoubtedly, the final say should rest with the reader who is the only one to decide whether s/he likes or not a particular piece. Whether the voiced opinion is influenced by popular views or not is something we'll never quite know but in her/his heart s/he shall know. But I feel that being aware of what measures to employ in recognising good literature (as one might classify good wine or a good ballet) would serve to promise me days of lesser anguish.

Do you notice that nearly everything on earth seems to have fair metrics and benchmarks, except for works of art? That might be something to think about. It might be silly to want to measure arts, but I believe that one should not in the name of leaving things unclassifiable, resort to opening doors to shallow works forced into the ramparts by the sheer strength of voice and numbers. Art, unlike what was practiced in the earlier days, has become a glamourous affair, with everyone assuming that it can be easily produced. Personally, I disagree with the vox populi that anyone can create and, while people continue to believe that writers aren't born, I shall prefer to understand clearly what goes into being a piece of good literature. Although, I am prepared to drop my measuring tape when confronting the nebulous, I refuse to do so earlier than required.

In this post (which forms a part of the "Trying to understand literature" series), I would like to delve deeper into what is a story. In the next section of this series, I would like to present email exchanges that I have had with a couple of professors who teach creative writing (esp. fiction). It is an honour that one of the professors wished to use the mail exchange in his classes. In the final section to this series, I would like to present what motivates me to write and what I consider good writing.

Please take a minute to recall at least one story which you liked. It would be wonderful if you could share that with me. Do you recognise what is it that makes it memorable? The characters? Plot? Twist in the tale? Description? Suspense? Emotions?
I think what differentiates a short story from a novel is the concentration of a unified effect that it has on the reader. Where a novel can show and elaborate, a short story must show by directing. A novel allows for portions with a milder pace and engagement. A short story cannot afford that. A novel has the luxury of creating more detailed images and building a variety of emotional attachment in the reader. A short story must do that by providing the quickest summary of its characters and stoking the fires of the humaneness in the readers with torches and not twigs. Yes, a short story does, indeed, place importance on the acceleration and crux of the experience to share with the reader. A novel, on the other hand, has the space to create a richer tapestry which can absorb the reader entirely into its colours and threads. Poe thought that the short story was the finest form of story-telling. Hemingway epitomised compactness with his 6 word story: "For Sale. Baby shoes. Never used."

But what is essential to both is an interesting tale. A short story or a novel without a tale to tell, is mere fluff. All the rich embellishments cannot replace the tale. Why else would one come to read a story? Isn't the primary motive behind the reading exercise, selfish at its very core? Isn't the reader desiring something new, something titillating, something to take him/her far away from his nondescriptive life into a world which charms, which enchants, which moistens your eyes or leaves you speechless for a long time? As Nabokov once said, in response to Edmund Wilson, "The longer I live the more I become convinced that the only thing that matters in literature is the (more or less irrational) shamanstvo of a book, i.e., that the good writer is first of all an enchanter." Unfortunately, I have never met him, but I am certain that he didn't use the word "irrational" with a condescending connotation, but to ward off futile attempts at strapping a story to the leather couch and psychoanalysing it.

So, with an intention to provide a summary, it should be clear that a story needs a tale as much as the thinking mammal needs a skeleton. In school we were taught that a story should have a beginning, middle and end. Nothing is quite rigid in arts, but absence of anything firm enough would result in a collapse of what is being upheld. Sometimes, a story might not have a clear beginning, but a middle and end are fairly essential, else a written work of art would simply be a description or a report. Let me take the example of John Updike's work (which I often cite as an example) called "The crow in the woods". It is a beautifully written piece, devoid of beginning-middle-end but at the close of the piece, one is left wondering "Ok. So?" It is a piece in the collection called "The Married Life" and yes, it does paint a scene in a marriage but what on earth was the story? If you do not have faith in my taste (which you needn't) then you might hike my rating after reading this review from the Time (search for the word "crow"). Please read till the point where the reviewer says: "It is beautifully said. But what it says is just not enough."

Often, I have written pieces on this blog which lead nowhere. I would never call them a story. They were simply something I felt, a thought that flitted by and winked me in the eye. Pieces can be beautifully written, remarkably clever and make one's jaw drop in awe, but the story is not an advertisement on MTV. It is meant to connect to the human element in the reader and water the irrational plants of thought and feeling. If a story boils down to being like a clever joke or a cunningly plotted jailbreak then we aren't where a story should be.

When on one hand pure literary elements, description and play of words don't produce a story, mere plot and tale cannot do so either. Consider the great Chekhov's (or Tchekhov as some might know him) tale called, "Oh! The Public". To me, this story is pure plot told with an intention to make that final statement which Podtyagin wished to make (on behalf of Chekhov). Frankly, the portions in between come across as empty salads, stuffed to justify the dessert. Another story I can point the reader to is Joyce Carol Oates' "Ugly" which depicts the life of a girl considered ugly and how she builds an armour around herself (and this point I missed in my reading). This is how it starts: "I knew there was something suspicious about the way I got the waitressing job at the Sandy Hook Inn." Very nice. Creates the right amount of suspense to pull a reader in. It is fairly important to entice a reader at the outset, else the reader would simply skip to the next story (unless she is your wife or your story is part of a university textbook. Actually, I am not sure of the former case). So Ms. Oates does a decent job in presenting something that makes the reader go "Hmmm, and do her suspicions get proven? What was the reason for hiring her?" With the reader's interest piqued, Ms. Oates turns unfair by not addressing that at all in the story and lets it fizzle away leading the story into the protagonist's ugliness and her encounter with a teacher from her school. The story seems to be more about the way the mind of an ugly person works/thinks (with lines like "Another advantage of ugly: you don't waste time trying to look your best, you will never look your best."). Again no story and a literary trick (a literary element which is unfairly injected becomes a literary trick) of a promising start (something, in story-writers' circles, known as "starting with a bang").

While on the point about enticing a reader, please don't start off telling me that "I write for myself" and "I don't care if no one reads this". If you desire to publish (in print or online) then it is for presenting the reader with your work. Might as well respect their time and place. If you only care about yourself, then why bother to publish (and worse still ask money for it) or why care about what is literature?

Hence, a well written story is both an interesting tale as well as fleshed out with a beautifully employed language and thoughts/ideas which are delectable. This is not a case for grandiose and flowery language. Since I have given you examples of works lacking, it would only be fair to give you a piece of Jhumpa Lahiri that I read recently as an example of a fairly well done story. There is nothing spectacular, as one would find in Nabokov or Updike, nor is there something shattering as one would find in Kafka. The story is honest, simple and clearly revealed as one reads on. This should serve as an example for writing a good story with lean meat cloaking the bones of a good tale. Her stories in "The Interpreter of Maladies" would be example of more bone than anything else. She has told them well, but there is hardly a life in each of them that slides under the pages as you shut the book and walks with you repeating lines and expression from the story.

A tale can be presented in a myriad ways between the extremes of a motion picture and an enumerated gist. A writer must be honest to his self and present the story in the form that is closest to the vision he holds in his soul's eye. I shant go into what a writer must inculcate as that isn't appropriate to this post. Whatever a writer does, a story (novel or short story) is valued for its tale, inherent beauty, construction and the honesty with which it is told. None of the stories I have mentioned above will ever be classics for what they (except Ms. Lahiri's work) lack in fulfilling. Tagore's Ghare Bhaire is and will always be a classic as it has a wonderful tale, has an inherent beauty (in the way it reveals the human soul which is so alike in its diversity), is constructed very well (for its time) and is thoroughly honest. A reader desires a memorable experience in what they read, while they soar into personal memories springing out from a scene they just read and an insight which makes them go "So true! That is so true!"

I would like to hear what you feel about the shamanstvo of a story.

The unbearable decency of being

A couple of weeks ago, a girl sent me an email with an attachment of an article she wrote. She said the following in her mail: "take a look at it and let me know what you think." "Please" is not so small a word that could have been missed out, but I let it pass. The article was about education and I let my love for the subject rule over any other sense.
The article was fair but had enormous scope for improvement. So, I replied the very same day asking her about the target audience and mentioned a few places where the article had grammatical errors. I then proceeded to invite her to a discussion (over email) regarding a different structure which would engage a reader in the subject from the outset. I am still to receive a reply from her (even a "I'll get back to you soon").
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A friend of mine needed some papers I had in order to complete a sale. He was in a hurry to get the sale done as soon as possible and urged me to get the papers in spite of knowing that the papers were in Madras and I, in Bangalore. He called me every hour to know whether I had booked my tickets to Madras or whether someone was going to send those papers to him. I rushed to Madras, got the papers, and couriered them to him well before the date which he wanted to make. I am yet to receive (it has been well over a month) a call/mail/SMS from him saying he received the papers (let alone informing me about the sale, etc.).
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A team member tells me that he didn't test his work against the stipulated test suite. I ask him to run that test suite in order to be sure of his deliverable and before informing management. He tells me, "I have run what I feel is enough. If you want to run it, you can do it yourself." I had to assure him that his work cannot be completed by someone else (duh!) and he would need to revisit his level of commitment to his work.
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I have many such examples when I have come to realise that being decent (not nice, not courteous, not anything glamourous, just decent) is quite an enormous feat. While the world over people seem to be concerned with euphemism (mistaking that for decency) and sweet-talk, I fail to see any move towards basic decency.
I think it is unfair to expect a human being to be decent and hence, I think, the lack of any slipping in that direction. Why should someone be decent? Since I expect the world to work for me and they are obliged to do what I say, I have no need to be decent. I might employ sweetness and "decency" while specifying the job and ensuring its completion, but that is business-as-usual. Decency is an unbearable burden in our everyday affairs. Being decent requires me to care about the other person and I seriously don't. Why should I care about everyone on earth? Even the few tens of people I interact with, don't deserve my care. Aren't they adults? Why should I be nice to them? I asked them to do a job, and they have done the job. The matter rests. Should I have the onus of making them feel good for having done the job? For Christ's sake! It was their job! And this whole rigmarole of being nice takes so much of my time. Are they paying me for it? Is anyone paying me for it? Of course not.

Of course.

And when I awoke

... I had grown myself a new horn (albeit asymmetrically)!!

Inheritance

I watched him tap the wolf's teeth and run his opisthenar along the stuffed muzzle. The taxidermist's gift made it the only living thing in Herr Oswald Pohl's office. I wished Herr Pohl would quickly take the file from me and let me go home. The five hour ride on the scooter had left my buttocks sore and my exposed knees and knuckles, brittle.
"Do you know why a wolf teaches her cubs to kill early?"
I waited for him to add something more to his question to help me see the relevance. At length, I said, "To let them learn to survive in the wild?"
He laughed loudly and patted my cheeks. I hated it when he did that. If being called schüler wasn't enough, I also had to put up with the extra bread slices that the others would drop on my plate and wipe their hands on my hair, their refusal to let me be party to their whiskey and this repeated patting on my cheeks.
"Herr Pohl, was I right?"
Herr Pohl's smile kept shrinking ever so slowly that I wondered whether he ever laughed a minute ago. He looked at me from behind his table and said, "That is what most people are made to believe because the animal truth is not to our palate."
"Herr Pohl, please tell me."
He simply shook his head and said, "The blood that paints one hand burns less than when it is the red skin of ten men."
"Herr Pohl, but why does the wolf teach her cubs to hunt if blood burns?"
He waved away my doubt and looked bored.
"So what does Herr Schmidt send us today?"
"I didn't see, Herr Pohl. Should I read it for you?"
He beckoned to hand over the file to him. I could read, and I wondered why I was never allowed to read the file that Herr Pohl received every fortnight or the messages he sent to Herr Schmidt.
"Why are your shorts dirty?" he asked while carefully reading through the file.
I hesitated before I replied, "Slipped on the turn of the shunpike."
He looked at me without raising his head and said, "Then I am sure the scooter is also damaged, eh?"
I simply swallowed and looked down at my toes.
"What happened, son?" There are times when Herr Pohl emerges from Herr Pohl but not quite as that. A softer voice, a slight smile, a gentle word for you to be honest but not for you to cling onto and expect that Herr Pohl to stay.
"Please don't be angry, Herr Pohl. I did nothing you didn't ask me to. I didn't disobey Herr Schmidt either. I was only parking the scooter and walked... there, when one of the Jews threw a brick at me."
"What! How dare he?"
"No, no, nothing happened. This other prisoner pushed me away and that is why I got dirty. Just a little", I assured him and looked down at my feet not wanting him to see me cry at having disappointed him. I wasn't sure about what wrong I had exactly done, but I could feel it.
"Who was the dog who threw the brick at you? What was his number?" he demanded.
"I don't know, Herr Pohl. They... they shot him", and I started sobbing.
"Once?"
I looked at him and through the veil of tears and saw his skin flowing down with my tear, his face smudging and melting into monstrous designs. I quickly wiped my eyes and Herr Pohl asked me again, "Only once?"
"A few of the soldiers shot him. I don't remember - it was too fast."
He breathed in deeply and let it out with a gruff snort.He returned to his file while I stood there. I could still see the old Jew push me down to sods. His eyes shut tight while that other prisoner was repeatedly scorched with bullets well after he was dead. He opens it only to the silent fatality of death. I had seen him before, reading books and writing something occasionally. When he finally looks down at me all he has to say is: Copreus. What did that mean?
"Herr Pohl?"
"Hmmm"
"What does Copreus mean?"
"Copreus is not a what but a who. Where did you read that, schüler?" he smiled.
"I didn't read it, Herr Pohl. The old prisoner who saved me called me that."
Herr Pohl slammed the file shut and threw it against the wall.
"What was his number?" he asked, pausing on each word and tearing them out through his teeth.
"I don't know. I didn't see it, Herr Pohl, I swear. I think it was 143 something."
Herr Pohl quickly extracted his message pad and started furiously scribbling into it. I pulled myself on my toes to see whether it was a complaint to my father, but all I could see was "14300 to 14399" and then the usual cryptic message that I have carried a hundred times: Shoes: so-many and Lampshades: so-many. I wonder what that meant. What would Herr Pohl do with - how many was it today? - 56 shoes and 82 lampshades? Why did the Jews hate me for occasionally delivering a note about leather shoes and fancy leather lampshades? I sank back on my heels. Herr Pohl was a trembling shade of pink.
"Take this to Herr Schmidt, immediately."
"But, Herr Pohl", I whined, "I just got back and..."
"Go!" he growled and flung the note at my face. I instinctively looked at the wolf. As I bent down to pick up the note, the only face that came to my mind was the old man spitting the word "Copreus" to my face. In that word and this note, I smelt the Devil snaking from the fallen prisoner's skull and an unpardoning God pushing me down outside Auschwitz.

In a world made of paper

So, here is my bookshelf in the new house I have shifted into (as if shifting across cities wasn't enough, I do it within a city too). Ok, this is how it should look although there is a slim chance that it would stay this way for long (and it already has transformed while I write this post). I am glad that this house (where I need to bow at each doorway) has a decent place for the books I brought to Bangalore. I know, I know, I know. You would love to see a nice oak or mahogany book almirah for them, but hey! I don't think I can afford it. Not from a monetary POV but, as a dear friend of mine said: I am nomadic. Given that I seem to carry my house on my back, adding a nice chestnut or better, an ebony almirah to my sagging shoulders wouldn't be what the ol' mountain monk calls wise. So let's just enjoy this setup.
Let me describe the layout (rather, let me keep a note of what I intended to do). On shelf (1) you will find novels. To the rear and shying away from the curious onlooker is Virginia Woolf with her immensely interesting novellas. Sitting beside her, lending her support, are Jane Austen (Literary Classics) and the Bronte sisters (Literary Classics). The latter two books are gifts from a very dear friend. John Irving, Tagore, Annie Proulx (and how on earth do I pronounce that? Prowl-ks? Proo? Proox? Gosh!), Heller, Ha Jin, Maugham, Mann, Pico Iyer (with a poor attempt at fiction in Abandon. He is better writing nonfiction, you know. I would say that Lady and the Monk was an exception, but...), Hesse, Nabokov (the finest master of the art), Steinbeck, Graham Greene, Kazantzakis (why didn't someone give me a name like that?) and Vonnegut complete the novel party. How many have I read? My, my, what an impudent question to ask!

On Shelf (2) are my favourite books. Was I Dennis the Menace, I would say favouritest and I would still fall short of what I feel for them. They delight me when most other things fail. These are my collection of short stories. I still believe that the short story is the purest form of prose and requires masters to write them. I believe it is the sheer difficulty in writing a good short story which has left the literary community invent ways to circumvent the demands of short stories and create high-brow phrases like "postmodernism", "modernism", "post-postmodernism" and the like. Forget about being able to tell a wonderful story, these contemporary "short stories" are neither short (they can go upto 25 pages) nor do they have a story in them. I wish people would leave the art alone and do something else if all they can do is break the art with their incapacities. But I shall ramble about this in another post.

Come, come. Sit down and listen to what I have here. 2 rows of books. See? 2 (nearly) full rows of books. Lip-smacking, isn't it? Come closer. The most non-coforming book, lying on top of all of them is Oscar Wilde's collections. A treat but what a misbehaved book. To the rear is Joyce Carol Oates (Faithless). She is the queen of contemporary writing and I am still to figure out why. I would call her works as deliberate and having demanded effort, but beyond that, I see little merit in them. Yes, yes, yes, another post. The next book is the 25th Anniversary collection from Pushcart; interesting at places. The Paris Review's Anthology (very disappointing and vulgar), O'Henry's stories (about 200 of them), Coomaraswamy's Indian Tales, Jhumpa Lahiri (she got the art of creating a good story alright, but how about telling it with feeling?), Poe (Oh! Why weren't more of him created?), R.K.Narayan, Graham Greene again, Roald Dahl (Oh! He is such a treat!), Woody Allen's complete prose (he is good but at places he tries too hard to make you laugh with all those exaggerations), Anthologies (edited by Milton Crane and others) and Dostoevsky complete the battalion to the rear.
Lined up in front for their sheer beauty and art are: Saki (Oh! I could kiss his feet for the kind of stories he told), Maupassant (more feet kissing), Oxford book of American Short Stories, Alice Munro (she is good), Carver (I sense great talent in him but am unable to put it in words), O'Henry Prize Winners 2006, Joyce with Dubliners and Scott Fitzgerald (he is good, very good. He writes with so much feeling).
Then in purple is the man who could taste and smell purple: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov. He is and will always remain to be the master of the art of writing. Sad, he died a year before I was born. The man loved languages and loved English although he felt that couldn't find in it the versatility of his mother-tongue. He was careful about each word he introduced, each sound, each stray cat that walked alongside the protagonist and each leaf that fell in the story set in Autumn. He wanted you to hear the sounds of the distant fountain dripping on the verdant pool while you frowned in irrational concern over the main lady character and the way she wasted her life thus. You were left sheared of all clothing and skin with your nerve-endings naked to the cold Winter wind, although the most raging sensation is of the heat of passion between the lovers who meet every night in the story. When he describes the girl's eyes as "shards of green glass" I hastily look at my fingers suspecting that I have pricked them. "Shards": the "r" is what creates the desired effect of sharpness in that word, a pinnacle of unforgiving brutality and iciness. Taste it for me, please. Nabokov's stories are very, very delicately composed. He was both artist and craftsman. Care to know more about him (do check out "Nabokov: A Life in Pictures")? Believe it or not, I have spent the last 2 hours reading more about him. That purple book is the collection of short stories by Nabokov. Leaning on him (like most writers should) are works by Truman Capote. Ray Bradbury and Updike are at the far end with another book serving as an Introduction to Short Stories completing the collection.

The shelf marked (3) contains poetry, nonfiction and philosophical works. Here you would find JK, Osho, Capra, Gibran, Hof..Hofsta... the guy who wrote "Godel, Escher, Bach", Will Durant, Sri Aurobindo and a few others. The nonfiction collection has Pico Iyer, McCourt, John Wood, R.K.Narayan, Dalrymple, Andrew Motion (poetry) and a book of Chinese poetry.

(4) contains books on writing, on sketching, strategy, decision making theory, management and some notebooks.Computer science and the whole business of software creation is stored in (5). (6) contains printouts related to the world, literature, management, insightful articles and books on interior design and blueprints of farmhouses and cottages.

The 4 people who were struggling to lift the carton of books that I had packed looked at me through snorting sweat and hissed: Are you carrying the entire library of a college? I beamed as if I was just complimented for my exquisite body (which it isn't!!). I wanted to tell them that this is just a fraction of what I have in total (most of it being left behind in Madras), but I was busy instructing them to be careful and gentle. 150+ books in all and they were complaining. Humph! Philistines!

That's it, ladies and gentlemen. Good Night...

A salute

To a man who revealed the essence and power of creating conflict in a story. He also introduced me to wonderful plots. He filled many days of my teenage life and I will always love him for the gripping story of If Tomorrow Comes...

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Sheldon.html?_r=2&ref=arts&oref=slogin&oref=slogin