Short Story

Don't play with me

Punyakante Wijenaika

Anju! her name came with force like a strong wind out of the darkness of the forest to hit her sharply.

She quivered in the sunlight as she stood on the narrow bund between her father's rice fields.

'They have seen us!' said the boy with the bicycle who was responsible for her being out in the sunshine. She had been gathering firewood in the dark forest until he rang his bell and called her out onto the bund. He quickly handed her a long envelope.

'They are calling you,' he reminded her.

'I know,' she said. Of late they are always calling me to be close to them either inside the house or in the dark of the forest near the house.

'So why are you still waiting here with me? Why don't you answer their call?'

'Because we are not doing anything wrong. We are only helping each other to pass an exam. You brought me these notes on history. Since we are not permitted to visit each other's homes and study together we have to meet this way and exchange notes.

Suddenly she noticed white storks standing close to each other in the field.

See those storks? If they can stand next to each other openly in the field why can't we?'

He laughed then and the sound of his laughter was like music to her ears.

'Anju! Anju!' the voices were now on the edge of the forest, almost out in the open sunlight.

Swiftly he turned his bicycle and made ready to go.

I'll see you in school tomorrow,' he rode towards the main road above the bund just as her mother and aunt emerged out of the forest, 'and remember we are not storks, we are people with restrictions.

She was alone on the bund. She turned to face the anger of her mother and aunt. Her mother came up and hit her hard across the face. The aunt took her by her ear, twisting it until she screamed in pain.

'Have you forgotten you are no longer a child but a grown-up girl now? Have you forgotten how we protected you within the house and how I washed your blood soaked towels by hand? Have you forgotten the blood stains on your school uniform?

'But we meet in school everyday,' she protested through her tears. 'We are studying together.'

Her aunt held her by the hair and pulled her into the darkness of the forest.

'Meeting in school you are under the teacher's eye.

Meeting him here on the bund alone is another matter. Because of all this watching of television young girls today are shameless. They no longer have the modesty, shame and fear we had when we were young.'

The blue sky vanished as she was dragged into the darkness of the trees to where her half-gathered bundle of firewood awaited her. She lifted her burden onto her shoulders and walked ahead of mother and aunt into the house.

She sat numbly and listened to the lecture of modesty that her mother preached.

'If you don't behave yourself I will have to stop you from going to school!' her mother threatened.

'I want to pass my exam,' she wept. 'He came to give me notes on history.'

'Why couldn't he give them to you in school?' her aunt demanded.

'We are not supposed to pass notes to each other in school,' she explained.

Her mother snatched the white envelope he had given her and opened it.

Both mother and aunt went through what he had written but since neither could read letters they tore it up and threw the pieces into the fire.

'It could be a love letter,' aunt said grimly.

Her mother nodded helplessly.

'Amma, they were history notes,' she cried.

'Why did you let her burn them? Now I may not pass the exam. What is going to happen to my future?

'We will see to your future,' said the aunt grimly. 'When the time is ripe we will marry you off to the right man so that you cannot get into mischief.

To Anju's horror her aunt disconnected the small television set her father had fixed to the wall and carried it to the door.

'This is the cause of most of your troubles,' she told Anju's mother, her younger sister. She herself was an unmarried spinster aunt.

'I will keep it in my house until she has learnt her lesson!'

For a moment the girl stood frozen as if she had been struck dead.

She looked at her mother's face.

It was frozen with anger. There was no communication.

Then suddenly she ran to the back cupboard where her father the farmer kept his pesticides hidden from cats and dogs. She took a full bottle of the deadly poison and ran near the household well. When her mother came running she had already gulped the whole bottle and plunged into the deep, dark, coolness of the water to escape the burning of her throat.

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The guava tree

Elmo Fernando

The fierce cold wind blew about his bare chest. He tucked-up his sarong and paced up and down the sordid verandah aimlessly. He could hear the gush of the flowing river, in spate.

The sky was overcast. He gazed frequently at the dense gloom which cast a shadow at his lack lustre eyes.

Far away in the paddy fields he could hear the voices of men and women in chorus.

They were harvesting. It seems as if the harvest is a richer one than it was last year. But what of his own paddy fields, that had grown wild with weeds for the whole of last year.

He could hear the chanting of the 'nelum kavi' that rent the distant air. He could also imagine the ripe golden paddy waving to and fro in the balmy wind.

His wife was the moving force behind those harvesting ceremonies, that more often used to take the form of a get-together of all villagers at 'Menik Hinna'. Now he retrieves the past that has been so enlivening and invigorating.

Whatever he did was admired and considered good not only for his wife and child, but for his neighbours as well.

Barely an hour ago, the house was a hive of activity. His relations, friends and a few neighbours were gathered there.

It was the alms-giving in memory of his son who died three months ago with a terminal disease, which the doctors weren't bothered to diagnose.

The villagers firmly believed that the devil had snatched her away. All these phases of his life, he bore with a stoic solemnity.

He remembers reading Susan Stebbing's "Thinking To Some Purpose" and the chapter on muddled thinking.

Was it this kind of muddled thinking that led to this catastrophe? But Susan Stebbing is now 'old hat'. How does her thinking suit his present plight? Now that he is the sole survivor what could he do?

He looked around and observed the sitting room and the white-clothed seats where the members of the Maha Sangha sat to partake of the alms in memory of his son. This alms-giving became a mute, if not a grim reminder of his dim past.

Within a matter of months, his life took a turn for the worst.

He sat down to recapture the train of events that reduced his family to one single being-himself. Basking in the chair he noticed a lizard nibbling at a speck of a rice-cake fallen on the floor.

How free and happy, he thought the minute creature is, wobbling around the speck nibbling at it again and again and finally consuming the whole thing. In a split - second the creature vanished. Where had it gone.

It had come from nowhere and gone elsewhere. Wasn't it life in a nut-shell. He was listening to the roaring wind and to the steady awful roar of the river. Suddenly he was jostled into reality.

"Wont you have your lunch? Now its past 3.30. What has happened has happened. Why do you brood over so much? Aren't you a man?" Yelled his sister.

He rose up from his seat, only to face the family photograph, on the wall, of himself and his wife carrying their infant child.

This made him recoil with penace reminding him of that fateful afternoon and the wretched guava tree which was cause of this disaster.

This tree bore fruits in plenty and the deliciously flesh fruits have always been the cynosure of all playful schoolchildren returning after school.

This was a curse he thought. So one fateful day he did lie in ambush for these incorrigible scoundrels. But what's the use? He had tried so many times to bring them to books, with no avail. Then he struck upon a fool-proof plan, amusing himself with the thought that the crazy vandals would meet their 'water loo'.

Yet his mean idea was to strike upon a fool-proof plan, amusing himself with the thought that he could vanquish these ruffians for ever.

His mean idea was to insert arsenic into these fruits. But how was he going to set about this task with his own son hanging around. Besides how is he going to conceal this strategem from his sister who has now virtually taken his wife's role.

Surely his son was getting late getting today waiting for a class, after school. Slowly, he looked around to see whether anyone was watching his movements.

There wasn't anyone other than his inquisitive sister who seems to be chopping firewood at the farthest end of the garden.

Hurriedly, he went into the store-room where he knew urea and arsenic were stored in a tin for fertilizing his paddy fields.

He put some into an old can with the help of a pair of tweezers and carried them towards the guava tree bearing the fleshy fruits in abundance. He reached the suspending fruits on a ladder, taking the can containing arsenic and urea powder. Deftly he screwed each fruit on a side with a pen-knife buried the poison secure and plugged them in.

Now he thought the 'guava thieves' would meet their 'waterloo' before long, as he lay in ambush to see them arrive to pluck the fruits.

He gazed far into the distance and saw to his amusement the frightful little ruffians coming swaying their satchels carelessly. He knew that they would do a bee-line to the guava tree to quench their thirst by eating the precious fruits with relish.

He saw them walloping closer as their mischievous banter became louder. Just at the precise moment he heard his sister waiting at the far end of the garden. "Malli come soon I've been stung by some viper."

He forgot all about the guava episode and hooked to see what the matter was. It was a ghastly sight to see the sister fallen spread-eagled. She was in great pain and had to be carried into the house. Suddenly some schoolboys came running to his shouting.

"Uncle, uncle your son is vomiting blood after eating guava."

He was between two worlds. He had to leave his sister at home and rush the son to hospital.

The doctors asked him.

"What has your son eaten?"

He was speechless.

"Can't you say what your son ate?"

Stammeringly he replied "g-guava."

"Anyway, there had been some poison in those fruits ... we'll give him an anti-dote.. but wonder whether he would recover"

"Is he so bad" asked he

"Yes" replied the doctor

"Have you any enemies around your house?" the doctor inquired.

"No"

"Then do you suspect anyone?"

"No"

That was all he remembers of that fateful day.

"What are you still doing?" thundered his sister again, from the kitchen.

"Here the food is getting cold."

Then only did he come back to his senses. He replied back to his senses. He plied back, depressingly.

"I don't want, I am not hungry."

The wind swept howling through the bleak verandah. From the west the blackness was creeping over the sitting room.

He felt a tenseness creep through his limbs. The patter of raindrops on the bushes in the garden grew louder and very soon the storm broke out.

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Aristophanes of modern European theatre:

Dario Fo

Dario Fo: In addition to playwright, Dario Fo is also director, stage and costume designer, and on occasion he even composes the music for his plays.

France Rame, his leading actress, has assisted in and contributed to the writing of many of the plays they have produced in their 45 years of theatre together. She has also assumed the administrative and organizational responsibility for the Fo-Rame Company.

Franca Rame was born in Parabiago, a small town in the Province of Milan. That she happened to be born there was pure chance: her family was performing in the town at the time.

Her father Domenico, her mother Emilia and her brother, along with aunts, uncles, cousins and other actors and actresses hired on contract, were all part of a travelling theatre troupe touring the towns and villages of Lombardy and Piedmont.

The Rame family's ties to the theatre are very old. Since the late 17th century, they have been actors, and puppet masters, as the occasion required.

With the arrival of the cinema they shifted from puppet theatre to real theatre, enriched with all the "special effects" of the puppet theatre. They travelled from town to town, and were well received wherever they went.

Dario Fo was born on 26 March 1926 in San Giano, a small town on Lago Maggiore in the province of Varese. His family consisted of: his father Felice, socialist, station master and actor in an amateur theatre company; his mother Pina Rota, a woman of great imagination and talent (in the 1970s her autobiographical account "Il paese delle rane", telling the history of her home town, was published by Einaudi); his brother Fulvio and his sister Bianca; and his maternal grandfather, who had a farm in Lomellina, where young Dario spent his childhood vacations.

During Dario's visits, his grandfather would travel around the countryside selling his produce from a big, horse-drawn wagon. To attract customers he would tell the most amazing stories, and in these stories he would insert news and anecdotes about local events.

His satirical and timely chronicles earned him the nickname Brist�n (pepper seed). It was from his grandfather, sitting beside him on the big wagon, that Dario began to learn the rudiments of narrative rhythm.

Dario spent his childhood moving from one town to another, as his father's postings were changed at the whim of the railway authorities. But even though the geography remained in a flux, the cultural setting was always the same.

As the boy grew, he became schooled in the local narrative tradition. With growing passion, he would sit in the taverns or the piazze and listen tirelessly to the master glass-blowers and fishermen, who - in the oral tradition of the fabulatore - would swap tall tales, steeped in pungent political satire.

In 1940 he moved to Milan to study at the Brera Art Academy. After the war, he begins to study architecture at the Polytechnic, but interrupts his studies with only a few exams left to complete his degree.

Towards the end of the war, Dario is conscripted into the army of the Salo republic. He manages to escape, and spends the last months of the war hidden in an attic store room.

His parents are active in the resistance, his father organizing the smuggling of Jewish scientists and escaped British prisoners of war into Switzerland by train; his mother caring for wounded partisans. At the end of the war, Dario returns to his studies at the Academy of Brera in Milan while attending courses in architecture at the Polytechnic, commuting each day from his home on Lago Maggiore.

1945-51 he turns his attention to stage design and theatre d‚cor. He begins to improvise monologues.

He moves with his family to Milan. Mamma Fo, in order to help her husband put the three children through college, does her best as a shirt-maker.

For the younger Fos, this is a period of ravenous reading. Gramsci and Marx are devoured along with American novelists and the first translations of Brecht, Mayakovsky and Lorca.

In the immediate postwar years, Italian theatre undergoes a veritable revolution, pushed along mainly by the new phenomenon of piccoli teatri ["small theatres"] that play a key role in developing the idea of a "popular stage".

Fo is captured by this effervescent movement and proves to be an insatiable theatregoer - even though he usually can't afford to buy a seat and has to stand through the performances.

Mamma Fo keeps an open mind and an open house for her children's new acquaintances, among them Emilio Tadini, Alik Cavalieri, Piccoli, Vittorini, Morlotti, Treccani, Crepax, some of them already famous.

In the summer of 1950, Dario seeks out Franco Parenti who is enthralled by the young man's comical rendering of the parable of Cain and Abel, a satire in which Cain, poer nano ["poor little thing"], a miserable fool, is anything but evil.

It's just that every time he tries, poer nano, to mimic the splendid, blond and blue-eyed Abel, he gets into trouble. After suffering one disaster after another, he finally goes crazy and kills the splendid Abel. Franco Parenti enthusiastically invites Fo to join his theatre company.

Dario starts performing in Parenti's summer variety show. This is when he has his first "encounter" with Franca Rame - not in person, mind, but in the form of a photograph he sees at the home of some friends. He is thunderstruck!