The Unadorned

My literary blog to keep track of my creative moods with poems n short stories, book reviews n humorous prose, travelogues n photography, reflections n translations, both in English n Hindi.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Introducing Him: the Narrator

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Have you seen him somewhere in your locality or at your workplace or on the road or even at your club?

He is sanctimonious, well-meaning, and at the same time, nearly foolish and silently meditative. He broods over all his past activities either at the behest of his belated wit or for flitting rounds of self-righteous sulking. He is knowledgeable, smart and up to date, but loves the old world of peace and compatibility. He is as quick to learn from his experiences as to forget them under his natural ingenuousness. He is prepared to help you, even before you ask him for help, for he believes in the grace of giving-give before being demanded, concede before being pushed out. He can suffer, for your cause and can tolerate the brickbats for you. He is aware rights are to be protected against encroachment; sometimes one has to pay a price for it. He is a conscientious patriot, a humanist of the first order. Given choice, he would ban all the superstitions. He is not against God per se, but it pains him to see the wanton misuse of this beautiful concept. God cannot be an object of convenience, nor a carrot before the luckless small-timers.

He is the narrator of my next book and I'll have him around in all my thirty stories that will make the opus. He will encounter man and monkeys, wise men and rogues, friends and strangers; he will travel in rail, road, air and ship; he will go there either invited or unsolicited-but all the while he will get his reward in jeers, slaps, kicks, brickbats. He will be very close to love, very close to win a bet, almost near the thief, but he cannot succeed…he would be miles away from vindicating himself.

I'm now forty percent through the writing, but then Muse being an unpredictable entity, it is not easy to guess how soon the final shape would emerge. I'm waiting to see my second story book "The Roadshow" with the same eagerness my readers might be harbouring.

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By
A. N. Nanda
Berhampur
29-02-2008
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