The Art of Story Telling

Story telling is an art dating back to the ancient days, may be a time soon after people learned to speak. The story teller may want to talk about an incident which he experienced first hand. It would have brought certain emotions to his mind and he wants to bring up the same emotions in his listeners. Now, that is a hard task and so, he resorts to all the tricks in his book (that is if he has one) and then supplements them with gestures, tones, facial expressions and actions. He may even mimic the voices of his characters.Well, a story teller can do it but a writer can't and so he has to make use of other methods. Adding details is one of them.

For example.....

This is not something that I know directly but something that I heard from Mr. Kulkarni, a friend of mine who was working as a supervisor in an orange farm in South Africa. Yes, of course they do have orange farms there. And apple farms, grape farms and extensive vegetable farms too. Even the Chinese government has taken a lot of land on lease to cultivate edible crops.

Now, where were we? Yes, the story told by Mr. Kulakarni. Yes, yes, he is a very intersting man. One of his daughters made it to the Harvard and that too in Astrophysics. Yes, right in Mr. Robert Sawyer's class. Wonderful fellow, this Robert Sawyer is. Heard him live on BBC once. He was talking about the afterlife of something.

OK, now this story. I will make it rather short. It is actually about a father and a son. The son's name was Herbert and they called him Herbie for short. His father's name was John Foulton. The boy had lost his wife in an accident while they were living in Nigeria. The father and his son had just gone out to the city when there occurred in their village a flash flood and a landslide. See, flash flood is bad enough and a landslide is even worse. The father and the son were in the city standing on a bridge watching this river swell up and a lot of muddy water, trees and debris getting washed downstream. The roads were blocked and there was no means of communication and they couldn't go back home the same day and had to stay in a hotel. They couldn't send a message to Herbie's mom. But there was no need. Their house and the houses of several people were washed away by the landslide and several people including Herbie's mother had gone missing. The father and son came to know about this only the next day when they reached the village.

They left the village in a week and came to another village in South Africa. Herbie had to join a new school there and he had to learn Swahli. It was was hard for him.

Herbie used to be a voracious reader and he had finished his home library before he was fourteen. Reading took him to new thoughts and ideas quite different from those of his father and some of his classmates'. When he was thirteen, he and his father moved to a new house near Herbie's school. Now, the father had to take two buses to reach the mine where he worked as the supervisor but his son could just walk to school. This gave the boy quite a lot of time to pursue his hobby which was reading. When he wasnt reading, he would still wander in the garden with a book in his hand.

Their garden was a large one and part of it was wooded and the woods continued to the neighbour's property which was totally wooded. It was an impenetrable forest with tall trees, creepers and all that. Snakes too.

Herbie's father had asked him not to venture into the thick forest beyond their own property and Herbie too was afraid of those creeping things hiding in the grass and among the dry leaves.

Their house and the neighgbouring house once belonged to a carpenter who had sold it to a local merchant who worked at a local department store. He went back to Florida where he got involved in Oyseter farming. The last thing the present owner heard about him was that his farm was prospering and he had a shop near the Kilpatric National Museum of Fine Arts.

Wagabe, the present owner of the house had rented it to Herbie's father for a small rent on condition that he would take good care of the garden. Mr. Foulton loved gardening and he took special care of the garden and it was a sight to see. Two years after they occupied it, the garden had become famous among the villagers there. It had the look of a picture postcard. Shrubs, flowers and some very tall trees. There was even a Venus Fly Trap which gave such pride to Herbert that he invited his whole class to see it one day. But when his classmates came, the plant had no intention to eat, much to Herbie's disappoinment. But his classmates still liked his big house and they played hide and seek there till Herbert's father came back.

Apart from the Venus Fly Trap, there were two more trees which intersted Herbert so much. These were two tall palm trees which always confused him. Only one of them bore fruits since the other one was a male tree. He used to bump into them when he was young and he used to tell his father that those trees always got on his way. His father only gave him an enigmatic smile as a response. Of course, as he grew up he knew what a foolish ideas it was to accuse a tree of getting in you way. You get in their way since you are the one who moves, right? But, wait a minute. How can you get in their way? Their way? Silly, where are they going? They simply don't have a way for you to get in.

These palms were the most precious ones in the garden. They were planted by the house owner's grand aunt who had been excommunicated from the church when they found that she had learned witchcraft from a local medicine man. This medicine man was arrested for the death of two of his rich neighgbours. He was hanged to death. The fact that this lady had learned witchcraft from him came out only after his death when his house was sold and his personal diary was made public by the man who bought his house.

This old lady also died in an accident. People say that it was not an accident but a suicide. Anyway, for some strange reason, the owner of the house had asked Mr. Foulton to take good care of the trees. He had once put a hedge around them and the house owner didn't like it and he had to remove it.

The tree was on the northern part of their house and it was close to the study room on the first floor. From there, the palm trees could be seen.

Only if they were allowed to use the study! That room was under lock and key. Herbert had the desire to look into it several times, but his father told him on all those occasions that he had given his word to the house owner and he was bound to keep it.

Herbert had shared his interst in those trees with a freind of his who was studying in the fourth grade.This boy was four years younger to Herbert and he had missed one year at school since he had whooping cough for almost a year. Even now he looked lean and weak. His name was Hussein and he was a Moslem.

Herbert had asked Hussein to keep it a secret whatever he had told him about the palms. There was no need since what Herbert had told him was not believable anyway.

He had told him that the trees did move. He said that there were days when both of them would change places. He had not noticed this at first since it was hard to tell between them. So, he marked them with a piece of chalk and they didn't move about for a few days. They resumed their movements only after it rained and the chalk marks were washed away.

Herbert tried other ways of marking them like tying strings around one and this too prevented them from moving about. So, he watched them from behind the bushes but never saw them actually moving. But he was sure that they do change places now and then when he was not around.

The first time when Herbert told his father about this was when he was too young and naturally his father didn't take him seriously. But later, years later, Herbet brought it up again when he returned from the city after finishing his Master Degree in Applied Mathematics at the Membua College.

This time his father couldn't deny his request to allow him to open the study room and watch the palms from there on a full moon night.

It was a really bright full moon and Herbert and his father were in the study room waiting to see any movement in the garden. The moon light shone brighly over every shrub and plant in the garden giving them an eerie look.

They didn't see anything for a long time. And then they saw something. The movement was not a subtle one. May be that is why they didn't notice it at first..

However after the initial confusion, they saw the palm trees sliding towards one another and with their palm fronds almost going around each other and slowly but rhythmically engaging themselves in a dance.

Two days later a botanist came and took a good look at the date palms in their garden.

See, that is what a story does to you. It is nothing but pure magic. It is the craft of the story teller or rather his witchcraft.

Story Writing

Model Story with the letters in names

 As a practice exercise it is a great idea to take up writing stories with some constricting rules. Trying to write a story with each paragraph starting with each of the letters in a long word or even with the letters in your name is a good way of making your creative juices flow. Here is an example. The author's name is obvious.

Silence prevailed in the courtroom as the judge was about to pronounce the most important part of his verdict. Is the woman to be hanged or confined forever or let go free?

Really speaking, I didn’t care much about it. The court had a long session that day and I was in a hurry to go home.

Everywhere around me, I could hear subtle whispers and heavy sighs. Even the fans which usually made a droning noise were rather quiet today.

Every day, in the courtroom, someone is let go or kept in or even sent to the gallows. Witnessing all this for years had made me kind of insensitive. I was feeling hungry and I could already smell the hot meal in my kitchen a full thirty miles away. Lalitha wouldn’t have eaten but the kids couldn’t have waited.

Killing is not uncommon these days. When the state does it, it is called a war; when the public does it, it is called riot and when it is in the name of justice, it is even considered a good thing.

Usually, women don’t get hanged much these days. Their children or other encumbrances come to their rescue. This woman’s son had never come to the court to plead for her.

Many times I had pondered over the effect of punishments. It is one thing when you cane a child, but it is a totally different issue when an adult is sent to the gallows.

And then I heard it. Even the judge had a hard time pronouncing it. The woman was to be hanged till death. She didn’t scream or even weep. She only expressed her desire to see her son once before she was hanged.

Recalling the heinous nature of her crime,  I had no doubt that she deserved it. But two years later, when fresh evidence of her innocence came to light and the real murderer was arrested, I felt really bad. I didn’t go to the court for two days. But then I resumed my work. To err is human, to forgive is not exactly just divine…it is God himself.

Sandpiper

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster. Her debut novel, In the Eye of the Sun (1993), set in Egypt and England, recounts the maturing of Asya, a beautiful Egyptian who, by her own admission, "feels more comfortable with art than with life." Her second novel The Map of Love (1999) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has been translated into 21 languages and sold over a million copies.  She has also published two works of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper(1996) - a selection from which was combined in the collection I Think Of You in 2007, and Stories Of Ourselves in 2010.

Soueif writes primarily in English,  but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English. 

 She was married to Ian Hamilton, a famous English literary critic.

She lives in London and Cairo.

The short story Sandpiper by Ahdaf Soueif reads more like a poem than a short story. The basic elements air, water, fire and earth interplay with one another in this story highlighting the events that happen in the life of the main character. There are very few specifics; even the names of the main character are not mentioned. The place names are mentioned very rarely which gives this story a certain universality and timelessness.The story is told from the first person point of view of the central character, Lucy's mother and Um Sabir's daughter-in-law. This is a typical example of feminist writing.
There is no intriguing plot in the story and the conflicts are mainly internal. Marital discord due to cultural differences can be cited as the theme of the story.
The narrator, Lucy's mother, herself a writer, takes us into her first short utterance itself. It is a simple sentence which sounds like part of a private casual conversation and it sets the mood of the story.

                                      Outside, there is a path.

The rest of the story is about how she is unable to find her own path to happiness. She had met her husband, an Egyptian, in her own country. After a long courtship of four years, they got married and every year she has been six months in her husband's place at Alexandria near Cairo, Egypt.

"...:twelve years ago, I met him. Eight years ago, I married him. Six years ago, I gave birth to his child."
This cold objectivity is also heard when she talks about her motherhood.

As the story opens we see her at the beach near her husband's home in Alexandria. She is describing how she used to spend her time at the beach. Her description tells us a lot about how she loves to see the basic elements interacting with one another. They are very gentle to each other. They chase, cajole, fondle, unite, get into each other's being. This even forms a cycle. She is very passionate about everything in her life. She takes an interest in everything around her. The stranger the subject of her interest, the stronger her involvement. She is hungry for more and more varied experiences.

On the other hand her in-laws are very protective of her like they are generally of the women folk. It has been spelled out to her at the Cairo airport that women are considered second sex in Egypt. Coming from a more liberal land like Europe, it mattered much to her though she managed to adapt herself  to that.
After her first child was born, he husband became less passionate about her. He would have tried to harmonize her with his culture for long and then gave it up when he got really frustrated. She would have lavished all his love and time on her child, ignoring him. From the way she talks about how expectant she was when she was expecting this sound only natural. The part where she talks about how she played with her child even when it was still inside tells us that certain things are universal and do not pertain to any single culture.