The End of A Story

BSM Murty

It’s rather intriguing. I have been trying to write this story for the past so many days. I discarded many of its half-finished drafts, but as if it will not let go of me. Or, perhaps, I myself was under an obsession to have done with it. Awake or asleep, I have always been thinking of nothing else – as if I am caught in a labyrinth; as if I don’t remember how I got into it, or how I can find a way out. That itself is like a big conundrum – how it began or where it will end.

But I haven’t given up yet. Although even after several attempts, I’m unable to visualize its form or shape so far. All around myself I find a fog wrapping round me – something like vapour or haze. My pen would write a few lines and suddenly stop and go no further. But in a vague manner this would go on intermittently.

Today I have started writing that story again. Let me see how it goes forward, and how far it will go now. I have a deep conviction that I will soon be able to write it to its finish, and rid myself of this obsession. Still I have no clear idea of what will happen, or what shape my story will ultimately take. Or even whose story it will turn out to be.

To tell you the truth, the idea of writing this story came to me on a day when I, by some strange chance, met short story herself. It was a totally unexpected  randevouz. She looked like a shy, fragile and sad-looking young woman. I faintly remembered, she lived somewhere in my neighborhood. And I thought, perhaps, I had seen her somewhere. I wondered how she appeared before me - so suddenly on that particular day.

“And,where do you live here ?” – I blurted out to her in my amazement; “ I think you live somewhere in nearby in our neighbourhood. But today, after a long time, I see you here. Hope you are quite well.”

She gave a faint smile but would not speak. There was silence for a while.

“ I have been trying to write a short story for the past few days” I told her; “a short story just like you. Though I know, I wouldn’t ever be able to write such a short story – your look-alike.”

She kept smiling all the while, but would not speak. I knew, she would rather not open up. I had an instinctive feeling, that she would not be freely communicative. How could she be on a first meeting. And yet, it seemed she had known me all along. Hesitantly, I kept speaking to her, but she remained silent without uttering a word.

But after a while, she spoke in a very soft voice – “ Actually, I had heard about you, but didn’t know that you also write short stories.”  Hastily I mumbled – “No, no, I don’t write short stories, though now I want to write one; but, perhaps, it’ll be my first short story. Luckily I met you today, which surely augurs well for my story. I now feel confident – I can write my story which I’ve been trying to do for such a long time.

She smiled again but still remained silent. I could see, she was quite reticent. I kept thinking about her.

Suddenly she said - “I, too, am thinking of writing a short story nowadays; and, perhaps, it could be your own story, may be; though I haven’t started it yet. But now that I’ve met you today; perhaps, I may start writing that short story soon.”

This instantly got me alarmed and slightly nervous. Worrying a little, I wondered whether she knew everything about me, and may be she would write something unpleasant and bizarre about me, who knows ? Sensing my uneasiness, she smiled broadly and said – “But I have not yet decided, how true it could be about you.”

That put me slightly at ease. And I thought, may be, the short story she writes about me could give a fairer account of myself. Because she doesn’t seem a person who could vilify anyone’s character for the heck of it. May be she wouldn’t like to write anything disparaging about me. Nonetheless, I involuntarily started hiding my frailties and dark thoughts within my inner self. And I saw her looking away to another side.

 “Do you know everything about me?” - I dared myself to ask her. 

At this, she broke into a laughter and said – “ Do we know everything about anyone? Leave alone myself – Do you think you really know all about yourself? Can you say this with full conviction?”

 Totally flummoxed, I saw the bare truth in her incisive statement. True, I couldn’t claim to know my own self completely. Did I understand fully whatever I did, or should have done, or might do at any given time – no, I didn’t.  In fact, to understand oneself is, perhaps, much more difficult than to understand someone else. I did immediately realize that there was much truth in what she was saying. And as I saw, she was still smiling as before. At that moment, I found myself sinking more and more in my own perplexities. Her sky-blue pool-like eyes seemed to plunge and explore my utter bafflement.

 Just to distract her intent attention, I said – “But I see nothing in my life that could be of any use in your story. I am a very ordinary person – only a bundle of human frailties and flaws, with no attainments in life worth any mention. I am at best a vain and valueless being. Though, I know, even in that trash, you could find something for your use. Being short story yourself, you could give a significant form to anyone’s story. It’s my good luck that I met you today just by chance, and I’m now quite hopeful that my story that you are going to write must turn out to be a good short story.” I said all this in a single breath.

I noticed that she was listening to my words intently all along. Her eyes now seemed deeper and bluer than ever – like a deep and transparent pool.

Suddenly she said – “No one knows everything about anybody. It’s almost always a futile attempt. And that’s why the real story lies hidden behind all that remains unknown and unsaid. Like the life of a human being, all short stories, too, end before they can be finished. We have just to take them as finished, even with their unfinished end. Perhaps, that’s why no story, in truth, is ever finished, and we have to accept it as it is – a perpetually unfinished story. I myself, as you can see, am scarcely complete yet. The truth is, I know, I am yet incomplete; though I’ve no grudges. I’m fully aware of this hard truth, and couldn’t care less, too.” 

 I don’t know why, but it seemed to me that she may have been talking about the complexities and confusion of my own mind which always lay in a haze.

But she had been saying all this in her own excitement. And I myself was wrapped up in very similar thoughts. Then, intervening in her flow of thinking, I said – “ That’s true, but just tell me - because you must have written many short stories by now – how do you write a successful short story. Though, of course, I would rather agree that all stories, in a way, remain unfinished even in their completeness; but, after all, they have a clear moment of beginning as well as their definite end, and between the beginning and the end, there is also a palpable midriff, so to say.

She looked rather pensive at this point, and with some gravity she said –“You are, perhaps, right; or may be, perhaps, wrong, too! A short story doesn’t have a physical body, as it were. It is more like an invisible spirit. It cannot – and should not – be seen in any physical form, like you see a human body, or some concrete object. And otherwise also, you can never see the soul or the spirit like you see the physical body the soul inhabits. It always remains free, always somewhere beyond its physical boundaries. You can only visualize it with your eyes closed, and not with your eyes wide open. That’s why you cannot visualize it at all, in the midst of worldly commotion. If ever, you can meet it only in solitariness – when you are in a total void, half awake and half in sleep.”

Her words seemed somewhat intriguing to me, because at this moment of our meeting, I was feeling exactly like that. We were all alone, with no one else there. And I myself felt like in a blue daze. Indeed, all that she was saying appeared to me to be so true! I had never thought, I’d meet anyone like her today. In fact, as I had come out for a stroll, I was only thinking of the story that I wanted to write -  till suddenly I came across her. And she, at that moment, seemed to be lost, deep in some thought. It was, indeed, a strange coincidence. She herself appeared before me, though I had been searching for her for so long, as I had kept working on my short story.

Lost as I was in my thoughts, she smiled again, and said – “What are you thinking? Didn’t you like our sudden meeting? In fact, it was just by chance that I came to this side for a walk. And stopped here when I found you coming my side, lost in your thoughts. Though I seldom come out for a walk. May be, I walked to this side searching for myself or, perhaps, looking for you. And that’s how we met.”

All her words sounded very enigmatic to me. Why would she come to this side searching for herself? Or why should she be looking for me? Hardly anyone knows me in my neighbourhood. So how would she know that I was wandering here – in this lonely area? Her words seemed to me like a intricate puzzle, but they were extremely enchanting – pulling me close to her. Particularly her liquid, pool-like eyes, which would lighten up whenever she would speak.

Suddenly I realized it was getting dark and I should go back now. But all my doubts and misgivings were still swirling in my perplexed mind. And instead of thinking about the short story I wanted to write - now I grew more concerned about how she would write my story. And as she had been saying - I wondered - would that also be an unfinished story?  Another point for my worry was – where would she end my story. Trying to give our conversation a different turn, I asked her – “But would you kindly tell me, or would you when we meet again, please tell me, how is the story you are writing about me progressing. And the next time when we meet, I also would like to discuss with you the short story that I am trying to write – how is it developing. I now feel there’s no harm if - when we meet next - we should discuss the stories both of us are trying to write. And in the one that I am trying to write – I think, at least I shall learn something from you; and I believe, I shall be able a bit better to see how you view me in your story.

At this she broke into a full-throated laughter and said – “ Yes, it’d be nice meeting again; though who knows by then what shape our short stories would have taken, and what we shall gain by a  discussion about them. Because one thing I know about short stories that they can change their path any time, at any point, and in any direction. We will have to go along with our stories in our own different ways. Going our separate ways, face to face with them, we shall have nothing – or very little - to discuss. These short stories are very fragile, extremely delicate things. They would hardly have anything to say to each other. That way they are very reticent, very secretive beings. They would like to walk their own separate ways in silence. We can only walk behind, following them. They’d brook no intrusion or mediation. They are no physical beings; only a spirit. They’d vanish so instantly that you would not be able to see them even with your eyes closed.

 And - how true of her words? - the very next instant she disappeared from my vision. Even when I closed my eyes, I could not see her. And I was left brooding on how she will write my story and how it will end.

   © Dr BSM Murty

Painting : Courtesy, Pratyaksha

The Hindi original short story ‘Kahani ka Ant’ can be read on vibhutimurty.blogspot.com: 2015, March 9

 

[Excerpt from Sean Doyle's newly published (Feb, 2021) novel which has a brief encounter with the author and me described in the novel.]

Night Train to Varanasi                     

Sean Doyle

(Tentative Title: A Layered Mirror: India with my Daughter)

Contents

Prologue: Her End is her Beginning

Part 1 – From the Deep End to the Desert

Interzone: Night Train to Varanasi

Part 2 – From the Labyrinth to the Lair

Epilogue: Home

Night Train to Varanasi

Sean Doyle

I met him on a train. I was returning from Delhi to Varanasi. Perhaps, in February, 2011. Still in his sleeping bag, on the facing lower berth, he was slowly awaking from sleep. His daughter lay fast asleep on the upper berth. I checked my watch. It was 6.15 am. An hour more to Varanasi. As he woke up, I greeted him: Good Morning!

We soon struck a conversation, and he said it was his second or third visit to Varanasi. He also told me, he usually stays in one of the cheap local hotels near the Ganga ghats. It is convenient to move around from there. He could stay closer to the life in the narrow sreets.  He was a writer, he told me,  and also ran a literary agency in Australia. Before we detrained, we had become friends. His daughter looked rather aloof and taciturn.

Sean Doyle met me again , on my invitation, in a small get together at a friend’s apartment. After he went back, he kept a regular email correspondence of which I now discover, I have a large volume. In those days, I was busy researching and writing my biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad. He, too, revealed later that he was writing a novel – or rather a narrative of his travels in India in the style of fiction with descriptions of places, including dialogues with characters he met as he went round on his travels through various cities in India. Ultimately he polished it off as a novel - which can best be called ‘un-magical realism’,  presenting real-named people in it – one of them being myself, by our chance meeting in that AC-2 Sleeper. That novel is now published and available in India

It is rather queer and quaint to find oneself as a living character in a quasi-fictional travel account which you hold in your hands as a enticing novel. But that also stops you from being a reviewer of the book. In fact, all that I’m entitled to do is to act as an Usher. And I’ll do just that, and start with that very serendipitous moment of epiphany – when we bumped into each other!

 

Excerpt:

I’ve barely stirred when I hear a voice.

‘Good morning.’

Where am I? On a train … I raise my eyeshades. A man of perhaps 60, with glasses, smiling eyes and a kind, round face, is sitting on the berth opposite mine, swaddled in his bedclothes, sipping a steaming chai. A picture of contentment.

‘Good morning,’ I manage. I now know where I am.

‘How did you sleep?’

‘After last night, like a log.’

‘Yes.’ He smiles. ‘I noticed you were quite busy. You did well.’

‘Thank you, and thanks to the kindness of your compatriots.’

The chai wallah appears. I get one then check on Anna: sleeping still. And our packs: present and accounted for.

‘Do you know where we are?’ I ask him.

‘About an hour from Varanasi.’

Excellent. We do the introductions. He is Mangal Murty, a retired Professor of English Literature, living in Varanasi.

‘I studied literature,’ I say.

We chat about the classics for a bit, not my first such conversation in India. I’ve found myself another ‘English’ gentleman. Brothers of empire indeed. I love it.

Murty is also a writer, having recently published the collected works of his father, Shivapujan Sahay, a leading literary figure in Hindi mid-last century. Murty’s something of a specialist biographer, having written a biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad, India’s first president, and one of Jagjivan Ram, an important pre-Independence politician who was of low caste. Ram’s daughter, Meira Kumar, served a term as Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the lower House of Parliament (national). And in true classics mode, Murty has also produced a study of Poe’s fiction.

‘And what is your line of work?’ he asks.

‘Book publishing. I’m an editor.’

‘Oh, lovely.’ He reaches into his bag. ‘Do you mind if I film you?’

‘What?’

‘Can I film you while I ask you a few questions about book publishing in Australia?’

‘Ah, okay.’ This is a first: the wake-up interview in bed during which I … wake up.

He asks, I answer. It’s all over in two minutes.

‘Thanks so much,’ he says. ‘Very interesting.’

A waiter comes by with some sad-looking chola bathura: chick-pea curry and small puri (deep-fried bread). Think I’ll wait till we get there.

Murty has an idea. He wants to start walking tours of the Old City in Varanasi for Indian and foreign tourists.

‘I like it,’ I say. I’m surprised they’re not already happening.

‘It’s a great oversight that they don’t already exist,’ he says.

‘That’s just what I was thinking.’

‘I have a few friends who want to be involved,’ he continues. ‘Would you like to meet us? We’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on what foreign tourists would want from these tours.’

‘Sure, I’d be happy to.’

‘Delightful. Do you have a phone?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, I’ll give you my number. Today is Sunday. We could meet on Wednesday or Thursday.’

‘Fine. We’ll be in Varanasi for a week or so. I’ll call you on Tuesday.’

You know you’re in Varanasi as soon as your train pulls in. The platforms are populated by bearded, saffron-clad sadhus – carrying little stainless-steel tiffin tins (for food) and big Shiva tridents – and lazy, brown cows. And all the signs are in Hindi. It smells like revivalism.

‘Do you need help with your bags?’ I ask Murty.

‘No, no,’ he replies with confidence, ‘a couple of my students will help me.’

Sure enough, the train has barely stopped when two youths, fresh-faced, energetic, eager to please, appear. They greet Murty by bending down and touching his feet, a sign of respect. He lets them then acts as if the gesture is entirely unnecessary: a common Indian pantomime. I’m amazed. He’s not even teaching any more, yet here they are, nine o’clock on a chilly Sunday morning, picking up his bags. If an academic tried this in the West, he’d be laughed at and maybe face misconduct charges.

And a couple of days later

It’s 6:15 pm. The meeting Murty mentioned is upon us. I’m feeling weak, like a hollow version of myself, but I’m here. It’s an odd choice of venue, a room at the bottom of a regulation apartment block, bare but for a metal-formica table and half-a-dozen stainless-steel chairs…. I’m sitting with Murty, three or four other local luminaries, and two of his ex-students. The latter might be the ones who met him on the train, but I can’t be sure. I was too zonked. The luminaries include a high-flying architect, a female English Literature academic, and a lawyer. And there’s a guy with one hand who asks me several times about Australian ‘folk tales’ and can’t comprehend that we don’t have such an oeuvre, as India does. Maybe he’s after an Aussie equivalent to The Song of the Cowherd….

 

The book keeps wilfully breaking all the traditional moulds or superimposing them very adroitly – the novel, short story, theatre, history, philosophy, spiritualism – they are all in a dance! It’s much like a potpourri, a heady cocktail; though the booze stays always soft and light-hearted. And once you are caught in the flow – you are carried forward effortlessly and delicately. 

And some random quotes from the novel -

        I first visited India in 1984 and have been back numerous times. It is a thread running through my life, like love, the sea, literature, music, enhancing the drama of being. Why India? That question’s been on my mind for 30 years

         I want Anna and India to get along, as you do when introducing loved ones. I want her to be entranced by the otherness of what she sees, ancient beliefs and lived traditions the West abandoned long ago.

As we ramble along with the narrative, the ancient Chinese traveler, Hiuen Tsang often comes to mind. Sean lands in Delhi and peregrinates through cities and places like Mathura, Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur,Ajmer, Pushkar, Varanasi, Bodh Gaya, and so forth, taking you through his experiences, with Anna, his daughter playing all along as a contrapuntal tune.The narrative is often embellished with epigraphs.

          ‘If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India!’

-          Romain Rolland

          Varanasi brings out a yearning for oblivion. The river flows, silent, shining. It will take you away, to eternity.

          The Ganga, and the Aarti, are incarnations of Shakti, the primordial cosmic energy that moves through the universe. Shakti is female power symbolised as a deity. She is responsible for creation and is the agent of all change. So the river is an embodiment of this energy, which initiates change. Death certainly is a change. The Aarti honours the river and embodies its energy, like prayer. This is good, a Hindu concept I can understand.

          My attitude towards India is, at base, contradictory. I can’t live within it, I can’t live without it.

And he ends by saying -

My time will come. I’m not finished with India yet, and I pray she’s not finished with me.

Sean had sent me a draft copy as he was still working on the book. It lay in my file. But now that the cat is soon to be out of the bag, it shows its wagging tail in this pre-view.

He kept sending emails. Even as the work was about to begin, he emailed on 21 May, 2011:

I returned from India last week, and I have had to deal with many, many awaiting emails. I do miss India very much … I fully agree: it was a very felicitous meeting on the train, and I look forward to staying in touch with you in the future.

Ten days later he wrote again:

Thank you for your perception of me as an Indian. I am very happy to read that! I have great affection for Indian people, so I take it as a real compliment. An autorickshaw driver actually said the same thing to me when I bargained hard with him for a good fare.

He further wrote:

When I got back from India, I started reading EM Forster's A Passage to India. I have to say that I didn’t like it, and gave up after 114 pp. There is too much style, and too little substance in it. Very little action occurs, and Forster's expression is a bit too self-consciusly clever for my taste. He seems to love his own cleverness much more than he loves any of his characters. He satirises all of them (so at least he is even-handed in a racial sense). A great contrast to this was Kipling's Kim, which I read while in India. Kipling has clear and strong affection for most of his characters, especially the Indian ones. The silliest characters in his book are the English, who think they run things but actually have no idea what is going on around them. And there's no shortage of action. I enjoyed it immensely!

The book will be out in India on 18 February, 2021 on Kindle for Rs. 449. And you can read this blurb of the book on Amazon.in. Just click on it for a pre-booking!

Writer and editor Sean Doyle has loved India for decades, so when his first-born, Anna, finishes high school, they set off on a two-month trip. She wants an adventure; he wants a holiday. But India is no cakewalk, especially for the faint-hearted, and Anna has not only recently overcome a personal trauma that’s left her feeling fragile, she has also never experienced anything like the gargantuan, pulsating Subcontinent she’s walking into. There’s no doubt about it: Sean is nervous.

Torn between keeping his daughter safe and giving her the space to embrace India as he has, Sean undergoes one of the most intense, challenging experiences of his life. He knew Anna would be confronted, but he didn’t imagine he would, too. Amidst the noise, the sensory overload and the extremes of life that typify India, they discover more about themselves, and each other, than they thought possible.

Blending erudition, humour and paternal angst, this is a beautifully nuanced exploration of a father–daughter relationship set against the backdrop of one of the world’s most culturally and spiritually rich countries.

I also post here the book’s cover and some photos of Sean when he visited my flat in Lucknow, in 2014. I hope we are soon face to face with a best-seller!

 

 

 

 

 

 

**

Things have turned out-standingly. We experienced extraordinary kindness, twice, to get berths we weren’t entitled to, and we met an interesting, erudite gentleman. The latter happened only because of the former: if we’d had confirmed berths, they could have been elsewhere in the carriage. Murty and I may never have spoken.

A night that began in limbo became something quite heavenly on this express train to the City of God.