A good story

Ever since a long time ago, I have been reading manga aka Japanese comics. I remember vaguely watching an anime called City Hunter, which narrates the story of a hit man. I could catch only few episodes on TV, but liked it to the extent of watching entire series online. It was based on a manga that goes by the same name. At that time, when I graduated from watching anime to reading its source, the manga, I did not know that this habit would consume me. It probably was a beginning of my manga addiction that I have come to suffer in the recent times. 

In the beginning I limited myself to reading well-known ones like Bleach, Death Note or romances like Kaichou wa maid sama!. When I began to run out of all popular ones I started reading randomly from one of the many translation groups. I found many good ones, too many clichés and very few amazing stories, which I glad I did not miss like Shiki no Zenjitsu by Hozumi and Fukuyadou Honpo by Yuchi Yayomi.

The stories were by no means extraordinary but the way they were expressed was.

Few months ago, I attended a conference on patents and copyrights. While explaining about copyright act, the speaker, an elderly man in his early 40s, said it is not possible to have an original idea as the core of any art be it literature or cinema, is universal. “It is how an artist expresses that makes an unique. So that is why we have copyright for expression and not for an idea itself,” he clarified.

It made sense to me now. Of all manga I have read, (trust me I have read enough) these two stories stood out. Fukuyadou Honpo is a story about a 450-year-old family run confectionery shop in Kyoto. The owner is a single mother and has three daughters. The story revolves around the shop, three daughters and the city itself. It gives a glimpse into culture, quirks of Kyoto natives and how customs and tradition direct decisions for these shops that withstood the test of time. There were no twists, no surprises and no drama. Circumstances were never extreme like in more popular manga and romance was never excessive. It is an everyday story, which you and I experience, insignificant and uneventful yet when we look back memorable. That was what made this manga endearing.

It portrays clearly insecurities and complexes very common in a household when you are growing up with siblings, expectations imposed and conflicts that arise when you try to defy them, first love, heartbreak, and the pain you go through. All these emotions were expressed nonchalantly, mirroring reality. This was what I liked about it and made me fall in love with this particular story.

Another favourite, Shiki no Zenjitsu by Hozumi, is a collection of five short stories. It possessed me right from the first story. If you want me to tell you what the stories were about, again, the idea is pretty simple.  Most of the events take place in a single day and conversations between subjects who may be a brother sister duo or twins, constitutes the plot. But narratives in mere 30-40 pages held meanings deeper than manga that run into hundreds of chapters or ones that go on for decades. One or two stories resembled Latin American author Gabriel Garcia Marquez style of writing like how he makes perfect camouflage of surreal elements in real world. Others seemed to follow simple story-telling method of Ernest Hemingway and Marquez again in the way they choose to convey deeper meaning in a single sentence than a story worth a full page.

Though One Hundred Years of Solitude is Marquez’s masterpiece, my favourite was No One Writes to the Colonel. Though it is a short novel and covers only few years of the Colonel’s life, you will notice that the story in fact dates back to decades. I got similar feel from this particular short story collection. 

I have always wondered what makes a story great. Why some are more popular than the others? 
With millions of people reading it what is great for some is no good for many. Even so few manage to surpass those obstacles to outlive writers and transcend time. For me, it is the literature that relay stories with characters and sentiments that people relate to, that make them think and connect the dots, make the cut. Because these stories involve readers, make them part of the story rather than a mere observer.

If I look back on my favourite books, author never puts into words about what happens but leave enough hints to help readers ascertain what happened without their knowledge. It is a mark of a good writer. 
I found those qualities in this short story collection, one that left a huge impact even days after I read it.

Accidental boredom

New haircut. Check. New clothes. Check. Books. Check. Junk food. Check.

No, I’m not travelling anywhere nor am I embarking on a new career or a new job. Rather, my feeble attempt at cheering up as I lay immobilised after a two-wheeler accident exactly a week ago on a sunny Saturday morning on the way to work.

What happened exactly at the time of accident was a blur but what followed was not all unpleasant. You get to experience all the perks, like having bed coffee thrust at you as soon as you get up; food in your bed; a bowl to wash your hand; enough time to catch up with movies and series you missed when you were busy working (lets assume) without taking a guilt trip. There is always someone at your beck and all, though after a point of time it begins to bore you. 

At the end of a week, I also understood that accidents will make you realise a lot things. Like how your neighbour of three years has 10-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, studying in Class V and not siblings with an age gap of 3 years like you assumed; or how the lady residing in flat opposite to yours has met with similar accident and had to undergo a surgery and assures you: “I’m fine and dandy now. You are young; it will take no time for you to recover you see.”

Or it might be your maid who blames all autowallas, who in part was a reason for my unfortunate fall and subsequent injury, even for the scratch she sustained while trying to cross the road on the way to work. Many even suggesting that road are no longer safe for two-wheelers and it is time you got a Nano or an affordable car.

It is not just neighbours, relatives too owe us the pleasure of their visit and generous advice on how to drive in Chennai road and why driving fast is a strict no-no. 
It is a funny world, where you need an injury to socialise with people you otherwise rarely visit or talk.

During those boring hours, when friends provide you respite through chats and calls, you try to make sense of what happened and vow to yourself that you will utilise the well-deserved forced holiday to the fullest. The vow remains just that: a vow in thinking only. 

For a self-proclaimed procrastinator like me, it is impossible to make use of holidays to the fullest. It could be a stand full of long-winded classics I procured on a whim, most of them unread. My abandoned blog, which I had started more than two years ago and never spared a glance in the last one year, and trying to be active, like now, writing this blog post. 
I still do not wish to reclaim those lost territories and rather lose myself in pointless rom-coms and fiction that hardly make sense, an escape to the surreal. 

As I embark on my second week to recovery, where again I'm stuck to bed and given leeway to step out of my bed with a promise of exercise, I feel that though it might not be so great an experience it remains to be one I'm not sad to endure.