Creative Writing

Short Story:

Searching for someone

Caryl Nugara

A woman fully covered in a thread-worn saree walked slowly along the gravel pathway of her village. She seemed to be deep in thought. No one wanted to speak to her, neither would she converse with anyone in this terrorist occupied settlement. She just passed along looking querulously into the distance as if she was searching for someone.

The systematic use of terror had surrounded the village in a tight ring and by night the fires lit sent flames that pierced the night's bleckness like angry red eyes.

Corpses of young men who refused to join the terrorists lay where they were exterminated, ghastly examples to awaken others who would elude the call to support 'the cause'.

Tobacco plots, vegetable gardens and fields were all forsaken and trampled on by savage soldiers in their belligerent black boots. Nights brought fear and agony to the heart of every woman, man and child.

In the nocturnal quietness houses here and there with holes like gauged eyes stood silent, their lamps not lit while darkness enveloped the abandoned roads. Sometimes the groan of a wounded person, the wailing of a child or whispers of people tensely alert could be discerned. Was that the enemy advancing ?

Abodes that once sheltered families from which sounds of tasks being done emanated, were now half demolished walls and caved in roofs gaping out at night when the moon appeared, "resembling more or less a mis-sharpened silver shield with its portending impressions of sword blows on it".

Everything around including the villagers seemed to be hopelessly worn out, just waiting, just remaining inactive for something to release them from the anguish, distress and the fear of death.

The evening was even more melancholy but still the woman walked about soundlessly. The guard on duty would give her a warning, demanding her not to defy the curfew. Yet she continued with her solitary wanderings. Indeed she was the personification of the dreadful events fallen upon her village.

She thought of her daughter Rajini. Not so long ago she had looked with pride on this young girl whose long, plaited hair was adorned with a jasmine. The red embellishment on her forehead only emphasized the beauty of an innocent face. The woman's heart was bound by threads of love to this girl on whom she pinned her hopes and dreams.

Then came a time when she saw a change coming over Rajini. She said, 'Isin't our part of this country precious to you, Mother ? Those you consider as terrorists are only fighting for freedom. Don't you realise that ?" The woman taken aback in surprise paused for a while.

'But, my daughter, haven't you seen the suffering and destruction brought on by the conflict? Our land has needlessly lost the children we nurtured and fed from our breasts.

It was detestable to the woman to perceive the look of defiance and hatred on her daughter's face as she disputed.

Mother, I was born here and will challenge death for the 'cause'. With icy hands, fear and sorrow gripped the woman's heart as tears welled up in her eyes. Rajini continued. 'I'd give my life for my birthplace. Let my memory remain forever as heroes are immortal.

The woman made a gesture as if to embrace the girl but instantly her hands dropped to her side. She bowed her head sadly as she moved away from her daughter. Her face took on a grievous expression as she understood that soon she would have to give up possession of her girl.

Rajini disappeared for some time and the woman was too terrified to mention it to anyone.

Later one evening when the crimson rays of the sun dyed the village in reddish hues then giving way to the night with "stars shining tremulously like funeral candles," Rajini came to bid to a hasty goodbye to her mother. 'Come my girl, let me embrace you only for a while. Let me recall what a gentle child you were.

"Mother, I offer my life because this land needs it. I love you but I've promised to make a sacrifice with a glorious motive. She broke away from the woman's embrace and swiftly ran into the enemy territory where secretive shadows dragged her away.

The woman yearned to run behind the girl but she suddenly declined. She comprehended that her daughter was the bearer of something momentous, something dreadful to put into effect which would "blow" her up to pieces and drench her in her own blood.

So the woman in her deranged mind kept on wandering, searching, not even caring where she could lay herself down to sleep in the night.

Profile of a scribe:

Using 'her wits as well as her fists' for creating detectives

Ammu Joseph

Sara Paretsky, award-winning author of the V.I. Warshawski detective novels, is often credited with having transformed the mystery genre with the creation of a female private eye who "uses her wits as well as her fists" and is as unafraid of emotions as she is of criminals.

According to British crime writer P.D. James, Paretsky's Polish-American heroine has "a humility, a humanity and a need for human relationships" lacking in the hard-boiled, loner detectives of other celebrated American crime series.

"I thought it was time for a tough, smart, likeable female private investigator," says Paretsky.

In a genre where women have traditionally been either vamps or victims - certainly in the early 1980s, when she began her career - she created a character who was neither an angel nor a monster but, rather, a strong woman who could be a whole person - sexual without being evil, moral without being saintly - and an effective problem solver.

Reclamation

"The first thing that V.I. does in the first novel, Indemnity Only, is to claim the night, the dark, and the solitariness that have historically marked women for victimhood," she points out.

"She goes to her office late at night, the electricity goes off and she goes by herself to the basement to fix the fuses and then meets a strange man in the dark. At no point does she question her right to occupy those spaces. It is that, more than the fact that she is a detective, which made her a revolutionary figure."

The Winter 2007 edition of the scholarly journal, Clues: A Journal of Detection, focused on Paretsky to mark the 25th anniversary of the debut of her popular protagonist this February. But V.I. is obviously on a well-deserved break after her life-threatening adventures in Fire Sale, the last book in the series: she is missing in Paretsky's newly released 14th novel, Bleeding Kansas, set in the farm country where the writer grew up rather than Chicago, Warshawski's stomping ground.

Nevertheless, the new book stays true to another important hallmark of Paretsky's fiction: the story unfolds within a social and political context that illuminates current events and trends.

In Bleeding Kansas - "a tale of love and loss, of faith and bigotry and the uneasy harmonies people establish when they have to live close to one another" - she takes on religion and religious extremism which, according to her, underlie much of contemporary American foreign and social policy. "I was trying to understand for myself the people who live with a fundamentalist mindset," she says.

Paretsky believes that the crime novel, in which the intersection of law and society are starkly obvious, is the perfect vehicle for laying bare injustices of many kinds, including the social, racial, patriarchal, and economic.

Even though detective novels generally support the status quo and are usually not seen as political, she says, "I do believe that crime fiction in particular, maybe more than general fiction, is very political."

Either or

There are, of course, readers who do not share this view. In her essay for The New York Times series, Writers on Writing, she mentions a letter from a furious reader demanding to know why her books were "infested" with political issues when all she wanted was to be entertained.

Her response: "When you're writing about law, justice and society, you are either challenging or supporting the status quo. In Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, he's bristling with anger over street crime and is furious with what he sees as American judicial leniency. No one called this a political novel, but I don't know how much more political a writer can be."

She points out that in Europe her books have always been seen as political because they deal with questions of social justice. In fact, British author and critic Joan Smith commented positively on the overt political content of Paretsky's work in a review of her third novel, Killong Orders, saying it "restores politics to its rightful place in the mainstream private eye novel, and in so doing revitalises the tradition."

In the U.S., however, Blacklist, written in the aftermath of 9/11, was the only one of her novels seen as political by readers as well as critics - possibly because part of the subtext was a specific law, the Patriot Act, and the greatly enhanced powers it gives the police.

The book split American fans down the middle, usually on political grounds. "Reviewers who were furious with me for writing Blacklist praised me for returning to a straight-forward crime novel in the next book," she says. "However, in my opinion, Fire Sale was even more political than Blacklist because it looked at the enormous power that big box retailers have over the survival of entire communities."

Paretsky's non-fiction writing and regular lectures to a variety of audiences across the U.S deal with contemporary issues even more directly. For example, in a blog titled "Where is the outrage?" posted in early December on The Outfit, a collective of seven Chicago crime writer-bloggers, she criticises the U.S. Supreme Court for upholding a lower court ruling that allows the San Diego welfare department to break into the homes of welfare recipients without a warrant.

"I wish I could believe they would break into the home of Dick Cheney's friends and former co-workers, who have been living on government welfare for seven years, enriching themselves at our expense, but of course that will never happen."

Writing in an Age of Silence, a recent collection of essays by Paretsky, explores the traditions of political and literary dissent that have informed her life and work. Described as "both memoir and meditation," the book - which has just been published in India - is among the recently announced finalists for the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award 2007.

Wide canvas

The essays, some based on public lecturers, cover a wide canvas: from her difficult childhood in rural Kansas to her life-changing involvement in the civil rights and women's movements, from her sociological analysis of American crime fiction to her current preoccupation with political developments in the U.S. since September 2001.

The latter is the focus of the last, particularly poignant chapter of the book titled "Truth, Lies, and Duct Tape". Expressing her despair and outrage over the transformation of life in America since 9/11, she describes the various sources of censorship that currently threaten both writers and ordinary citizens: the market, the government and public hysteria.

Writing about the handful of mega conglomerates that have come to dominate book publishing and distribution, and thereby determine who and what is published, she notes that "forces of silence can come more subtly from the market than from the edicts of a totalitarian State."

She also highlights the simultaneous onslaught faced by libraries, which once sustained both writers and readers: "Just as libraries have been heavy losers in contemporary budget wars, they have also been on the front lines of today's assaults against America's most cherished liberties."

She begins the final section of the chapter with the question, "What is the appropriate response of a writer in times like this?" Paretsky obviously believes that her role is to continue writing stories that people will want to read, making it clear that she is not interested in writing or reading propaganda novels - books written only to make a point.

At the same time, she says, "I can't stand idly by while my beloved country reduces its citizens to speaking in whispers out of fear of what their invisible, invasive government will do."

In her review of Writing in an Age of Silence P.D. James wrote: "This small book is both a testimony and a polemic; it is one woman's voice among many, but it is a powerful one". What is more, the issues raised in it have relevance and resonance well beyond the U.S. certainly in India today.

Guide for amateurs:

Build a rich vocabulary

One forgets words as one forgets names.

One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. - Evelyn Waugh

If you want to excel in the use of any language, you have to enrich the strength of words in your command. All the words a person knows or uses form his vocabulary.

However, there is a difference between the set of words he actually uses and the set of words he can recognise or understand. The two sets are known as expressive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary respectively. All those words a person recognises may not be in his command when he speaks or writes.

Tools of thought

Words are tools of thought. One advantage in learning new words is that you are exposed to new ideas. Suppose you happen to read the word symbiosis in an article and search for its meaning in a dictionary. You will read, 'the relation between two living creatures that live close together and depend on each other.'

You will also read that the adjective is 'symbiotic.' There is symbiotic relationship between termites (the white ants) and a particular kind of bacteria living in their intestines.

The bacteria in turn help the termites digest food. This is a case of mutual help by the two living close together. With this in mind, you may say that India and Pakistan should have a symbiotic relationship for mutual benefit. This example illustrates how new words generate new ideas in your mind.

A great advantage of acquiring a rich vocabulary is that you will enjoy any kind of reading better, since your comprehension ability will be better. Faster reading will ensure higher reading achievement. If many of the words you read are strange, reading becomes strenuous. It is impossible to run to a dictionary every time you come across a new word. Improving vocabulary

There is no magical shortcut. But if you work with dedication, you will find that building a rich vocabulary is an enjoyable activity. It is not dull or tedious. The first step is to develop the proper attitude for learning words. If you have a resolve to enjoy learning new words, half the battle is won.

Do not think that a rich vocabulary is needed only for students of language or literature. Even students learning technical subjects will be greatly benefited by developing their vocabulary. Those who are rich in words will appreciate technical concepts better, since they have a fine knowledge of the sharp meaning of words.

Let us take the case of a student of electrical engineering learning a lesson involving 'resistance'. If he knew the meaning of the word in general use, he will quickly learn the philosophy of Ohm's Law. The technical meaning of any word is related to its meaning in common parlance.

The tools

Once you have decided to go for vocabulary enhancement, you should get proper tools, and start using them systematically. The essential tools are: A good dictionary: It will have a large vocabulary; but may not have sample sentences showing the correct use of words in different contexts.

Keep in mind that your parents or teachers, though they are greatly learned, cannot act as a substitute for a good dictionary. Read all the entries against the words you refer to, unless you are in a hurry.