Conversations with the Indignant Dead

Truly captivating.

After reading this one, I had to immediatley use the chowk ``Email to Friend`` service several times.

I hope you finish your play soon.

I remain

Lyahus Riman

Powerfully written. I was going to write more extolling its virtues, but find my mind occupied by the looped reel of this story, playing over and over again.

The author has an uncanny ability to induce vertigo in the unsophisticated reader as if he/she were himself at the edge of the precipice and contemplating jumping over!!

But, this morning, the sun was shining brightly and there was this heavenly spring rain pouring down, too and Ghulam Ali was singing, coincidentally,

``Mai barasti hai fazaa`on pe, nashaa-taari hai,

Mere saaki ne kahhee`n jaam ucchale honge``

So who is afraid of ... :-)

Sadhana

I read this 2 days ago, i am still reeling from the effect u wove.... absolutely brilliant!

interesting,

the point is not that death is an art. contemplation of death has been a favorite pass time of mankind and that is the imaginative art that the father practices. when you see the inevitability of your end, then you see that inevitability in everything around you. that is what frustrates man, a life to ephemeral for the rational mind to find a meaning in the chaos of things. it is in this helpless chaos that ephemeral life becomes a principle itself, one`s own great meaning. what else more ambitious for feeble man to exert than last and only ppower, the control of your demise.

maybe a little too deep.

good

The writer paints a vivid picture of events and his surroundings. His words take one into the realm of imagination where it becomes so hard to differentiate between a dream and a reality. It`s brilliantly written. However, he fails to elaborate the underlying message that ``death is an absolute end?``.

very touching...I almost believed it as a real life incident::))

keep writing.

Taimur.

Interesting, very interesting. I like your style of writing. Are you a professional writer, novelist...?

Powerful, and real. Reflects author`s depth of observation and imagination....

slink, nicely put!

thanks to all who took time to comment.

ali, it is actually part of a scene from a play i`m working on. instead of transcribing it into prose directly, i decided to play around with structure.

temporal, right, i guess one can`t put ice in a shot glass. there is a sort of shabby nobility in drinking from a shot glass in your own home.

shandana, thanks for the kind words. it is definitely not true; dad is alive and well, though he did stub his toe something painful last week.

this is a real story. i don`t know if it`s true, but it contains truth, the kind of powerful, angry, ugly truth that we call emotion because if we don`t seperate it from the rest of us we won`t be able to deal with it. so we call truth `emotion` and then we run around trying to `figure it all out`, but we can`t because emotion has to be filtered through the sentries of reason and understanding that we ourselves post (and the ones others who care post around us), and we lose most of it in the process.
we roll over for inertia, then we whine when it embraces us.
this story speaks to me of things i`ve pushed away.
thank you for breaking my `writers block`, and please keep posting on chowk.

shandana

neat indeed...but frankly, i cant sympathize with the loser who shoots himself to death!

acha likhtay ho sahab

regards

ACERBICJAZBATI

A fatalistic attempt to overpower the reader. I sympathize neither with the father nor with the son the protagonist. I feel bad for the mom, though. What a couple of losers!

Shan:

I have always maintained that hard hitting literary devices are difficult to carry in the first person. But here you seem to have pulled off a beauty.

KahaaN say sh’ru karouN?

You quote him three times. Two really, the third is only a continuation of the second. Interspersed with acute observations and surreal hints, his character comes to life in death. And then I realise it is not him, it is the protagonist. And then some doubts emerge.

Was he six (.... and his eldest walks in with a girl .... (and later) .... the second thing happens a few days before he shot himself... I’m six now .....) or was it a typo? And along the same vein, a shot glass is a measuring glass not a drinking glass? Just some minor observations that take nothing away from the main thrust.

And “.... flicking it over the balcony, condemning cigarette to my probable fate. I’d do it, too ..... but I’d do it.” hits like a 100 MPH brick truck out of nowhere especially when this comes after the “I’m lucky” bit. Even with your hints of the Love song of Alfred J. I felt the protagonist’s suicidal instincts could have been developed a little more.

And some more thoughts.....

Seconding Subuhi, where have you been? It has been a while since you surfaced here.......more later, perhaps.

regards

temporal

very interesting and touching piece indeed. Reality of death makes living hard and when the living is already hard death can be salvaging.

The thing which would comfort me is how would a dying feel and is there anything after it.What happens after death is a favorite passtime of the living,is it as amusing to the dead or not.

Living is hard indeed but dying is not the answer for me.

Is living the real reality or death is the actual begining,but then I can say many thing about living and would not know anything about the dead.But wait then,I can be fooled by what I know already and not know about anything.