This is a beautiful story. The beauty lies in the realistic description of the events that is taking place. This story is not a plot centric story. It is a literary kind of story. The end is really good. It also conveys a very important message, be what you are. The story also tries to express the inadequacies of the educational system. When th elder brother preaches hero the author is making sarcasm of the entire education system. The message is loud and clear. The message is the impracticality and uselessness of the education. At one point the elder brother says that the pricipal of his school, a Dlit. from Oxford was unable to make his ends meet till his illiterate mother joins him. The emperical realities of the daily life are different from the theoritical ideal types.
The elder brother of the hero of this story is not more than three years elder to him but acts like a big man. He preaches the hero for diligence. He tries to scare the hero that he will fail unless he studies day and night. The hero makes a routine not to follow. The event of routine preparation is vividly described. It appears that the reader himself is preparing routine. The fate of routine was similar to what most of us have in our lives. This is where Premchandji is a master, a genius. He is such a minute observer of human actions. He knows what is in the mind of his readers and what they do in their daily life.
The story moves on between the failure of the elder brother in spite of slogging day and night. The hero comes first without making much effort. The elder brother keeps studying all day out to end up in the same class for three times. The hero runs behind kite and yet comes first. However, the genealogical responsibility of the elder brother make him deliver preaching to the younger brother. The preaching is a medium through which the author attacks the educational system. Through the hero the author wants to depict that one should take studies with as much seriousness as much it is required. There is much more and important in life than becoming a bookworm. It will not take you very far, may be you will end up like the elder brother, someone who slogs to fail in the same class. It is not the failure of the elder brother it is the failure of the educational system. The one who makes merry comes out as a topper and the one who works hard fails. The author contends that that is more to life than formal education.
When the story starts the elder brother was four years senior to the hero but in the end he was only one class senior to his brother. In spite of all the failures the urge to preach does not dies. Yet in the end he makes use of his best potential, his height, in catching a kite. The hero follows him.
Showing posts with label Hindi Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hindi Stories. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Mantra
This is a very intense story written by Premchandji. By reading this story and the some other stories I was think if there is any other story writer in the world who narrates with such an intensity. Even when one compares the stories with novel by the same author it appears that Premchand did more justice with his stories.
This story is of early twentieth century, pre-independence era. The beauty of the story is in its freshness. It appears as if the story has happened yesterday. I think only Munshiji can do this. The narrative has a rich doctor and a poor old village person. The doctor plays golf. One day as he was getting ready to go to the golf ground a poor person arrives with his sick child. Previous to this six of his children had died and this one was the last alive child, a probable support during old age. The doctor refuses to attend to the child, golf and his routine was more important that the patient. I do not know whether Munshiji was influenced by the concept of alienation and mechanistic society, terms that were in vogue during those days in the writings of Marx, Durkheim, etc. It was the age of industrialisation and a different kind of society was emerging in Europe and so was social theorization. In the story there is a reflection of the social theory jargon of that era. The doctor's mechanical adaptation to the routine, kal subah aana---- (you come tomorrow, I am getting late. I do not attend to patients during my play time, etc.). The golf more important than the life of a human being. Premchandji has not highlighted that the poor man was deprived of the medical assistance because of the poverty. He has highlighted how the society had become immune to humanistic relations.
The old man does his emotional best to convince the doctor to attend to his son. The doctor gets into his car (another symbol of machine) and moves ahead without having an iota of qualm. As the car moves on the old man still waits as if the doctor will get a call of conscience and the car will return back. This is a very touching description. The son of the old man dies.
The doctor had only one son and a daughter. As Munshiji is telling that doctor was having only two children, a boy and a girl he also explains how rich can afford to have only two but the poor has to have more than two. His hint is towards the high mortality rates among the poor people.
The son of the doctor is a lover of snakes. He has many of them with him, all kinds of poisonous snakes in his house. He makes scientific study on them and also plays with them. The boy has a strong empirical belief that snakes do not hurt human beings unless they are disturbed. On one of his birthday's his girl friend requests him to show his collection of snakes. The boy takes her to his room. The other friends too join. One of the friends challenges him that the snakes are without the poisonous teeth. The boy gets excited and starts to squeeze the neck of the snake to open its mouth to prove that the snake is having its poisonous teeth intact. It was a cobra. The pressure on the neck troubles the snake and it gets vexed and angry and subsequently bites the boy. The father says that the finger to be chopped off. The boy forbids and looks for the herbs, jadi, that he has collected as a part of his experimentation. He is confident that the herb will work. The herb does not work. The boy is in coma.
Some one says that there are people who can recite "mantar" and can cure the snakebite. People started searching for those people. The old man whose son has died was a great healer of snakebite by the traditional approach. He was very famous. He had treated many people with snakebite. He seldom used to take money. He used to argue that there is no price for a life. In a way Premchandji contends that life cannot be commodified. I think he was against the idea of the marketization of the basic health services. It is evident that in those days there was a practice of private medical practice. I was informed by my grandfather who completed MBBS in late 1940's that there used to be no governmental support for the medical personnels. The MBBS doctors used to move around on cycle and treat patients. There was a district board that was also not owned by the state.
As the old man learns of the bad condition of the doctor's boy he feels good. It is night and he tells his wife about the case. His wife too feels good that the doctor's son is dying. I think the most touching line was, our six children died and the seventh one too, what difference did it made but the doctor has only one son. He had collected so much wealth by sucking others blood. I will like to see how the doctor wails at the death of his son. The old couple was thinking of death to the doctor's son. An extreme sense of revenge.
Premchandji is narrating a great contrast between the traditional healers and the trained doctors. The description of the difference is in the attitude of the two. He is not getting into the dynamics of science and myth, he is not getting into the debate of science versus black magic. His intentions are very different. He is trying to make an impact on the behaviour and atomisation of the trained doctors. He is trying to say that the trained doctors too are human beings and they should behave like one. He brings in the points of power difference between the patient and doctors. He contends that the doctors do not talk to patients politely.
The wife of the old man sleeps but the old man is sleepless. He is struggling with his conscience. He starts moving hurriedly towards the house of the doctor. The boy is assumed dead and arrangements are being made to take him for the last rites and there was an eerie of silence, people were tired of weeping. The healer arrives and asks the people around to bring water and he also starts reciting 'mantra'. The boy opens his eyes before the sun sets in. Everybody is happy, the doctor recognises the old man. He feels the pain in his heart. The same man came with his son and he did not attend and subsequently the boy died. However, his son was alive because of the old man. The old man was searched but he had already left. The wife of the doctor had thought of giving lot of money to the old man. The wish remained unfulfilled. The doctor wished to touch the feet of the old man and request to absolve him of sins. The wish remained unfulfilled.
This is a great story. It tells the behavioral difference between the rich and the poor person, the literate and the illiterate person, the urban and rural person. In a way the author tries to argue that science that makes people inhuman is bad. The myth that is unscientific yet human is better. What good is science if it cannot be used by the poor and common person? It is the matter of access and affordability too, only availability will not help.
I really liked this story and I cried reading the story. Tears spilled out when the old man was fighting with his conscience. It was the climax of the story.
This story is of early twentieth century, pre-independence era. The beauty of the story is in its freshness. It appears as if the story has happened yesterday. I think only Munshiji can do this. The narrative has a rich doctor and a poor old village person. The doctor plays golf. One day as he was getting ready to go to the golf ground a poor person arrives with his sick child. Previous to this six of his children had died and this one was the last alive child, a probable support during old age. The doctor refuses to attend to the child, golf and his routine was more important that the patient. I do not know whether Munshiji was influenced by the concept of alienation and mechanistic society, terms that were in vogue during those days in the writings of Marx, Durkheim, etc. It was the age of industrialisation and a different kind of society was emerging in Europe and so was social theorization. In the story there is a reflection of the social theory jargon of that era. The doctor's mechanical adaptation to the routine, kal subah aana---- (you come tomorrow, I am getting late. I do not attend to patients during my play time, etc.). The golf more important than the life of a human being. Premchandji has not highlighted that the poor man was deprived of the medical assistance because of the poverty. He has highlighted how the society had become immune to humanistic relations.
The old man does his emotional best to convince the doctor to attend to his son. The doctor gets into his car (another symbol of machine) and moves ahead without having an iota of qualm. As the car moves on the old man still waits as if the doctor will get a call of conscience and the car will return back. This is a very touching description. The son of the old man dies.
The doctor had only one son and a daughter. As Munshiji is telling that doctor was having only two children, a boy and a girl he also explains how rich can afford to have only two but the poor has to have more than two. His hint is towards the high mortality rates among the poor people.
The son of the doctor is a lover of snakes. He has many of them with him, all kinds of poisonous snakes in his house. He makes scientific study on them and also plays with them. The boy has a strong empirical belief that snakes do not hurt human beings unless they are disturbed. On one of his birthday's his girl friend requests him to show his collection of snakes. The boy takes her to his room. The other friends too join. One of the friends challenges him that the snakes are without the poisonous teeth. The boy gets excited and starts to squeeze the neck of the snake to open its mouth to prove that the snake is having its poisonous teeth intact. It was a cobra. The pressure on the neck troubles the snake and it gets vexed and angry and subsequently bites the boy. The father says that the finger to be chopped off. The boy forbids and looks for the herbs, jadi, that he has collected as a part of his experimentation. He is confident that the herb will work. The herb does not work. The boy is in coma.
Some one says that there are people who can recite "mantar" and can cure the snakebite. People started searching for those people. The old man whose son has died was a great healer of snakebite by the traditional approach. He was very famous. He had treated many people with snakebite. He seldom used to take money. He used to argue that there is no price for a life. In a way Premchandji contends that life cannot be commodified. I think he was against the idea of the marketization of the basic health services. It is evident that in those days there was a practice of private medical practice. I was informed by my grandfather who completed MBBS in late 1940's that there used to be no governmental support for the medical personnels. The MBBS doctors used to move around on cycle and treat patients. There was a district board that was also not owned by the state.
As the old man learns of the bad condition of the doctor's boy he feels good. It is night and he tells his wife about the case. His wife too feels good that the doctor's son is dying. I think the most touching line was, our six children died and the seventh one too, what difference did it made but the doctor has only one son. He had collected so much wealth by sucking others blood. I will like to see how the doctor wails at the death of his son. The old couple was thinking of death to the doctor's son. An extreme sense of revenge.
Premchandji is narrating a great contrast between the traditional healers and the trained doctors. The description of the difference is in the attitude of the two. He is not getting into the dynamics of science and myth, he is not getting into the debate of science versus black magic. His intentions are very different. He is trying to make an impact on the behaviour and atomisation of the trained doctors. He is trying to say that the trained doctors too are human beings and they should behave like one. He brings in the points of power difference between the patient and doctors. He contends that the doctors do not talk to patients politely.
The wife of the old man sleeps but the old man is sleepless. He is struggling with his conscience. He starts moving hurriedly towards the house of the doctor. The boy is assumed dead and arrangements are being made to take him for the last rites and there was an eerie of silence, people were tired of weeping. The healer arrives and asks the people around to bring water and he also starts reciting 'mantra'. The boy opens his eyes before the sun sets in. Everybody is happy, the doctor recognises the old man. He feels the pain in his heart. The same man came with his son and he did not attend and subsequently the boy died. However, his son was alive because of the old man. The old man was searched but he had already left. The wife of the doctor had thought of giving lot of money to the old man. The wish remained unfulfilled. The doctor wished to touch the feet of the old man and request to absolve him of sins. The wish remained unfulfilled.
This is a great story. It tells the behavioral difference between the rich and the poor person, the literate and the illiterate person, the urban and rural person. In a way the author tries to argue that science that makes people inhuman is bad. The myth that is unscientific yet human is better. What good is science if it cannot be used by the poor and common person? It is the matter of access and affordability too, only availability will not help.
I really liked this story and I cried reading the story. Tears spilled out when the old man was fighting with his conscience. It was the climax of the story.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Marey Gayey Gulfam
This is a short story written by Phanishwar Nath Renu. The famous movie in black and white with Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman as main protagonists named "Teesari Kasam" is based on this story. To be honest the word "based" do little justice to the description. The story is a 22 page story but the strength of the plot and the vivid description of events is so realistic that it covers three hours of cinematographer. I do not remember if there is any addition or delition of any part of the story in the movie. Even the songs are based on the songs in the story.
The best part of the writing of Renu is his style of writing , the realistic description. It appears that the sound of the bells of the bullocks comes out of the text. The use of ellipse and the sudden break in the narration is the other very important characteristic of Renu's style. In fact he textualises silence through ellipse, and sometime as a dialogue within apostrophe. After the apostrophe there will be sudden change in the flow of narration. However, the beauty is his control over the narration. The directional or temporal change appears so natural that one enjoys the change. The change appears very natural.
The content of the story is not very great but the way Renu has controlled his actors is superb. Not a single character appears to be out of place. The begining and the end of the story is very smooth and the transformation is very rounded. If one really look at the end it is very painful yet Renu has not depicted the end the way it is depicted in most of the romantic stories. Right from the begining till the end the plot is weaved as if the actor is dreaming and in the end it appears as if the actor has woken up after the sweet dream has ended. There is a smile on his face. The entire episode happen in reality yet the feeling is of a dream.
There are strong reasons to believe that the actor Hiraman is having a dream. The way he involuntarily smiles in the begining with the beautiful lady in his bullock cart. In the end too he is smiling when the lady is departing. All he is doing is having a friendly chat with his bullocks. How is that possible in real life? How can the actor be so insensitive?
The actor was in love with this beautiful lady and the lady too was in love with this person and yet the end is so smooth. There is a sense of loss for the reader. Atleast as a reader I had a sense of loss. How is that Renu has not added any melodrama in the end? How is that he is able to manage such a different kind of end to his story? If one looks at the events only the direction of the movement of bullock cart has changed. The emotions has not changed much. It started with a "Kasam" resolution and ends with a "Kasam" and oath though thi stime the number has changed. This one is the third resolution made by Hiraman and hence "Tesari kasam".
As one reads the story or watches the movies it appears as if one is walking through a beautiful street by the side of a glazed window of beautifully decorated shop. The person is roaming and s/he is not in a mood to purchase. There is no guilt of not having money. The purpose is not to purchase but to observe and enjoy. Similarly in the story the transformation is so smoth that one fails to notice how time passes by. The story captivates but at not point of time emotionally blackmails. I think this is the beauty of the story writing. The writer at no point of time purposefully make any attempt to engage reader by making emotive appeal through the actors. The description of the situation entralls. The writing is so causal yet it is captivating.
The best part of the writing of Renu is his style of writing , the realistic description. It appears that the sound of the bells of the bullocks comes out of the text. The use of ellipse and the sudden break in the narration is the other very important characteristic of Renu's style. In fact he textualises silence through ellipse, and sometime as a dialogue within apostrophe. After the apostrophe there will be sudden change in the flow of narration. However, the beauty is his control over the narration. The directional or temporal change appears so natural that one enjoys the change. The change appears very natural.
The content of the story is not very great but the way Renu has controlled his actors is superb. Not a single character appears to be out of place. The begining and the end of the story is very smooth and the transformation is very rounded. If one really look at the end it is very painful yet Renu has not depicted the end the way it is depicted in most of the romantic stories. Right from the begining till the end the plot is weaved as if the actor is dreaming and in the end it appears as if the actor has woken up after the sweet dream has ended. There is a smile on his face. The entire episode happen in reality yet the feeling is of a dream.
There are strong reasons to believe that the actor Hiraman is having a dream. The way he involuntarily smiles in the begining with the beautiful lady in his bullock cart. In the end too he is smiling when the lady is departing. All he is doing is having a friendly chat with his bullocks. How is that possible in real life? How can the actor be so insensitive?
The actor was in love with this beautiful lady and the lady too was in love with this person and yet the end is so smooth. There is a sense of loss for the reader. Atleast as a reader I had a sense of loss. How is that Renu has not added any melodrama in the end? How is that he is able to manage such a different kind of end to his story? If one looks at the events only the direction of the movement of bullock cart has changed. The emotions has not changed much. It started with a "Kasam" resolution and ends with a "Kasam" and oath though thi stime the number has changed. This one is the third resolution made by Hiraman and hence "Tesari kasam".
As one reads the story or watches the movies it appears as if one is walking through a beautiful street by the side of a glazed window of beautifully decorated shop. The person is roaming and s/he is not in a mood to purchase. There is no guilt of not having money. The purpose is not to purchase but to observe and enjoy. Similarly in the story the transformation is so smoth that one fails to notice how time passes by. The story captivates but at not point of time emotionally blackmails. I think this is the beauty of the story writing. The writer at no point of time purposefully make any attempt to engage reader by making emotive appeal through the actors. The description of the situation entralls. The writing is so causal yet it is captivating.
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