Sunday Reading :Short stories by Mahendrasinh Parmar

Hello Readers,

              This blog is a part of my academic activity. In this blog I interpret these two Gujarati short stories "Intellectual Indubhai" and "ISI No Haath"  both are from "Polytechnic"- a collection of short stories published in 2016 by Mahendrasinh Parmar.

• 'Intellectual Indubhai': 

                                   The first  story is a wonderful work of imaginative truth. The story about one professor Indubhai, was very intellectual and kind hearted person. He was teaching lesson of humanism and teach the thoughts of gandhiji, Narsinhi Mehta, Meera, Eliot and Rilke. But one day he faced the cruel situation in which majority and minority communal riots happened and people killed and burned each other. After, seen that kind of situation Indubhai remembering the western thinkers. Here, writer of this story seems very knowledgeable because he reminds the western thinkers to the people. 

• Connection of Contemporary event:

                        When we read the words 'February a cruelest month', 'Majority and Minority' and 'Burning train' the Post-Godhra riots come in our mind. This story is about the Post- Godhra riots in which many people lost their lives, mass raped of the women, looting shops, burning children and women. Here, writer very wonderfully wrote that the books of Ramayana, Mahabharat, Krishna nu Jivan sangeet all are burned so it means all the moral thoughts are also burned in the mind of people. So, the story is presented with great imaginative truth.

• Mentioning of Western Thinkers: 

                        In the story, writer mentioned many Western thinker like Nietzsche, Darwin, Milton, Karl Marx, Rilke and Louis Pasteur. This all are connected with idea of Existentialism. This riots happened because of Religions and writer said that Nietzsche come and persuade them and also remember the modernist R.M. Rilke who was existentialist. Furthermore, he talked about Darwin who destroyed the idea of God and Louis Pasteur who have saved many lives ever since through his discoveries in prevention of diseases. So, here we can say that people blindly follow the religion without understanding the ultimate goal of life. In this materialistic life everything is absurd so why people killed each other in the name of religion. Writes remember all the thinker who worked on humanism and betterment of people. At last, I can say that the writer's words spoken through the character are eye opening which is conveying the reality of life that life is absurd and meaningless in the world of sheeples.

• ISI No Haath": 

                        "ISI No Haath" is very beautifully written in satirical way, here writer chosen the title of the story very interestingly. To read the title first thought may come in our mind is that a terrorist group of Iraq but actually the meaning of the title is the short name of the characters like 'I' for Ishvar Dabhi, 'S' for Sharad Joshi and 'I' for Indrajeet Dholakiya who were the delinquent of temple attack. The story about the one temple which is the cause of unemployment of the characters that the temple buy out the walk of life of the characters, and then this reason led into the crime.

                  Moreover, there are three

I- Ishavar Dabhi
S- Sharad Joshi
I - Indrajeet Dholakiya

 who lost their business because of the temple and one professor, his university's land turned into temple, so he could't tolerated this kind of land mafia works. Furthermore, policeman's son also lost his job because of the temple. So, every characters have anger towards the temple.

                 To conclude, we can say that the writer's way of telling imaginative truth is great, very wonderfully he talked about the real incidents through the imagination power each and every words and characters are appropriate to convey the reality.