Favourite Stories (Part 1)

 

“In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We tread out the grapes, and another drinks the wine. We sow the corn and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and we are slaves, though men call us free. Misery wakes us in the morning, and Shame sits with us at night”. (from the story ‘The Young King’ in this collection).

On the night before the day fixed for his coronation, the young King, just a lad of sixteen whose birth and growing up years have given the whole country many tales to whisper about, dreams - not once but thrice. In his dreams, he sees pale, sickly and famished children, haggard women sitting at the table sewing, naked slaves in ragged loincloth chained to each other, diving into the waters again and again to retrieve pearls, Death and Avarice wreaking havoc in the woods.

And in one of the king's dreams, one of the weavers preparing the robe of tissued gold for the King’s coronation utters the above lines. Shattered at what he witnesses in his dreams, the young King refuses to wear the robe of tissued gold, crown studded with rubies waiting for him and carry the scepter with rows of pearls on it on the coronation day.

When the council arrives, says the king – “Take these things away, and hide them from me. For on the loom of sorrow, and by white hands of Pain, has this my robe been woven. There is Blood in the heart of the ruby, and Death in the heart of the pearl. Shall Joy wear what Grief has fashioned?” 

Instead, he wears a leather tunic and a rough sheepskin cloak, adorns his head making a circle out of a spray of wild briar. The young King is ridiculed and reprimanded by his advisors. Wise ones remark that the day of coronation is a special one, a day of enjoyment for the king and his subjects, not a day of abasement. Naïve is the king for he doesn’t understand that the world works in certain ways that cannot be changed, that the burden of the world is too great for one man to bear.

People mock at this dreamer of dreams, refuse to accept this king who’s appareled like a beggar. They deride him saying, “.. out of the luxury of rich cometh the life of the poor. By your pomp we are nurtured, and your vices give us bread. To toil for a master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.” The young King quizzes naively, “Are not the rich and poor brothers?” They are eager to slay this king who they think is a fool.

What happens to the young King, a noble soul who believes in kindness and not in power, who wants to walk with the masses as one among them rather than rule over them? With a glowing and memorable climax, The Young King is one of my favorites in this collection of stories by Oscar Wilde. 

It is said that the author told these stories to his son at bedtime. Though the steady drizzle of thou and thee in the story may lend an archaic, classic feel, there couldn’t be a better instance of all-time relevant story. In a world where the rich are getting richer, the poor even poorer, the gnawing gap between have s and have  nots  widening like never before, this story makes us ponder if the rich and poor can be brothers, is an equitable distribution of wealth really feasible? 

So much to unpack, think and debate about in this story that's labelled meekly as a fairy tale or story for children. 

Fiction Reveals Truths that Reality Obscures

"Change is always occurring. In a slow, silent and beautiful way, change has been occurring and it will continue to do so. But you're all meddling with its process. And because of the interference of you nagariks, not just humans but every other being on the planet- the water bodies, the trees, the mountains  alike are suffering too. Everything and everyone is subjected to violence. I'm simply asking you to try and stop that intrusion. Thus far, nature has prospered only through collaboration. Instead, the civilised ways are driven by force and hostility, and everything integral to nature is being looted" . 

Sabari, an old tribal woman, born in the lap of forests who knows it like the back of her hand, says the above to Lord Rama when he visits her. The open and gentle dialogue between the two characters in Volga's On the Banks of the Pampa, translated from Telugu by Purnima Tammireddy, discusses many questions, all of which are both contemporary and urgent.

In the wake of all that has happened and is still happening in Jammu, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab - flash floods, landslides, cloud bursts, destruction and loss of life on an unprecedented scale - the toll of our unscientific development and mindless avarice is explicit. It's  immense and incalculable that we cannot turn a blind eye anymore. As rivers rage with a brown fury and logs of wood pile up and choke the gates of dams, it's time we stop and ask - Is this what we call 'being civilised'? What does urban or developed mean?  What's the cost at which we earns these tags?

"We forget the original sequence - observe, marvel, understand, respect, love. A new order has emerged in its place - observe, loathe, ridicule, attack, control". 

On environment, civilisation, development, the road to change and associated costs, on state and citizenship, borders and boundaries, this slim novel, an imagined extrapolation of a very ordinary event in the epic Ramayana portrayed with a bold feminist stroke, is a proof of how fiction mirrors reality closely, often unraveling truths that reality 'coyly' obscures.