Tag: short story

Sounds

Rijul BallalLeave a comment

After  walking the long winding maze of streets that were filled with loud cars and people, the chirping crickets sounded like aliens.

You could still hear the bikes rushing past, the shopkeepers and customers talking, and the food shops frying the nights special, as you enter the street. The street seemed like a lifeless world without the buzz of electric lights or voices that carried out from within the homes around its flanks. If electricity was still supplied, this street along with three others would surround and guard the park and fill it with voices, as though the patch of greenery was a great marvel meant to be protected, preserved.

You could hear footsteps and people brushing aside the low hanging branches as they made their way away from the park. There was only one person walking in the opposite direction at any given time, so even if the night left you blind you’d hear footsteps and know where not to go. A man left the park and walked into the street, his dog’s chain clinking as they darted to and fro, lead forward by excited sniffing.I heard his feet scrapping along the road and crushing leaves long after he disappeared from underneath the dim moonlight.

I heard a group of kids in the park huddled around a single bench. They argue with each other for more space in hushed voices. Another dogs, which has no chain, is busy turning over rocks, kicking up leaves and wining excitedly. One kid, who sounds young, keeps repeating in Kannada that his uncle has a phone and he wants a rematch. An old couple sit on the elevated foot path murmuring to themselves.

On the left I see a woman open her squeaky window, she lights a match and goes back in.A group of Rajasthani women clothes as loud as their voices have what I mistake to be a yelling match with other Rajasthani women in cramped apartments. As their laughter carried across the streets and echoed off the houses, I realized they were just having a conversation. An old couple who looked a lot like the two who were sitting murmured as they pointed at the women.

I reached the end of the street and heard someone bounding up their stairs. the power came back on as I walked back. TV’s came back on, the now nosy street and park gained a renewed vigor. Lights and people buzzed about me. It was still quite in comparison to the main street, but not as silent as it was before.

I could now see people in their homes. They like the noise, seemed to heave come from no-where. An Enfield purred and another in response. I walked off the street and all the street’s nosises were drowned out.

Collected Stories:Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Rijul Ballal5 Comments

Where do I start with Marquez? The first story is about a corpse[?] describing his long draw out decomposition.

Nearly 300 pages of bizarre, strange stories that baffle you with ever line. When Marquez had a normal story halfway through the book I was certain I was reading the wrong book.The book will be really hard to follow for the uninitiated but if you stick with it and try to figure out what Marquez is doing with every line, story and idea that he throws at you, you’ll be amazed. You’ll still be a little dazed and lost but it’s worth the effort.

The reading experience is mystical. The various sections of the book  seem disconnected, like surreal images from forgotten dreams. Now and then a few… ideas [not characters, ideas] in earlier stories, within a section, make a cameo in the most random places in another story and you are left wondering what just happened. Once you’ve picked yourself off the floor and try to figure out what happened, you realize everything makes sense even if you can never explain it with words.

I worry that this little write up isn’t long enough but in my defense Marquez needs to read to be understood, it’s hard to describe the  sort of  literary wizardry Marques puts on display. Describing a ghost ship that makes no sound the first time it  crashes and hides for half a life time is like a lamp. Functional but not crafted with passion. Reading about Marquez just isn’t as reading Marquez.  If you don’t mind having your brain tossed around like salad the book is definitely worth picking up.

Dream of The Fishermans wife

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Who would have though that a three century old woodcut of two octopi performing cunnilingus on a woman could inspire you to write a great story instead of just giggling like a 13 year old?

While looking at Japanese woodcuts one day, I found that image. A woodcut by Hokusai associated with the Kinoe No Komastu [young pines] from a three volume book of Shunga erotica published in 1814. It is the most famous shunga Hokusai ever produced. Wood-prints like this were popular during the Edo period when the merchant class [the lowest in Japanese pecking order] found themselves growing more wealth and able to afford woodcuts of stories,landscapes,erotica, and flora and fauna.

But the story by A.C Wise, which I found after more reading, that appeared in Shimmer magazine did something that seemed to give the silly woodcut far more meaning than anyone seemed to have intended.

“Dive.

The word slams into him, sudden certainty. He must follow his wife down; he must find her under the waves. They must find each other. As the sun passes the apex of the sky, the fisherman strips and describes a perfect arc into the blue.

The water slices him open, steals his breath. Cutting knife-clean through the dark, he swims down”

The story isn’t particularly long. A fisherman’s wife becomes enthralled with the ocean, while the small town where they have struggled to make a living, is slowly abandoned. They decide to stay[and possibly kill themselves]. This is used to symbolize love, belonging, loss and freedom.

Firstly the manner in which we know the wife- as something that belongs to the fisherman- is a deliberate attempt to make a statement on the condition of women in 18th century Japan. More interesting is the fact that it is the wife who leads the husband to the ocean. It is the wife and not the husband who drives the story. It is the wife who is able to stop their suffering.

The husband is in the role that women are usually cast in. He seems to exist to offer support to his wife, but the loyalty and dedication he shows makes him compelling in his own right. The ocean which radiates atmosphere ever time it is mentioned seems to gleam with possibilities. you wonder why they hadn’t thrown away everything else and dived in earlier.

 The octopi in the image aren’t just octopi anymore. They’re just symbols of the oceans of a world below that seems to be growing more preferable as the wife and husband look at their fading lives and passion interrupted by the world they live in.

That is the best way I can describe the story, but the story loses much of its appeal when you strip it down to its plot. The gears that drive the story are the symbols lurking in ever corner. Wise takes women in the 17th century, the wide possibilities and freedom the ocean expresses, the changing social structure of Japan and mixes them up to make a statement on passion,love and freedom. With rich, enticing images and poetic descriptions The Dream of the Firshermans wife makes you wonder how something so beautiful could have been written based on a rather perverted woodcut.