Short Story Accepted.

A little Xmas Cheer!

My short story - Haram, has been accepted by Outofprintmagazine.co.india.

It will be published in their forthcoming edition in 2015.

SOLE2SOUL University of Leicester

A couple of my flash fiction stories will be showcased at this event.

SOLE2SOUL: A Project about Harborough Museum’s Falkner Boot and Shoe Exhibit.

COME TO THE LAUNCH OF OUR NEW DIGITAL RESOURCES

On Thursday 27th November, the Arts Council-funded Sole2Soul project will launch some new digital assets at Harborough Museum. The aim of the project was to get young people and “Silver Champions” (the over-55s) through the door of Harborough Museum to see the Falkner Boot and Shoe exhibit. The project commissioned 30 pieces of flash fiction / twitter fiction / poetry, a radio programme, photography and a new Falkner app. New writing was also produced during a “Future Curators” workshop and a creative writing workshop for “Silver Champions”.

  

You are invited to the launch of these new assets to hear writers’ responses to cursed shoes and abandoned shoe lasts, to listen to the voice of the deceased shoemaker William Falkner (the third) and to engage with the other new digital assets.

 Drinks will be supplied.

LIFE AFTER LIFE

I came across this article by Jayaram V, on Hinduwebsite.com, who has given a good explanation of life and death, and what happens to the soul after it leaves the body. I have edited the piece in places. He has taken the information from the Hindu scriptures and presented it in a simple and clear manner. I am posting this on my blog in the hope that it will clear some doubts and confusion that people sometimes suffer on the big questions of life. Even a lot of Hindus are confused about what happens after death and what is the purpose of life. This explanation gives a good account but as usual at the end of the day, it all depends on what you are prepared to believe. For some people this will make sense but for others it will fly straight over their heads.

Hinduism believes in the rebirth and reincarnation of souls. The souls are immortal and imperishable. A soul is part of a jiva, the limited being, who is subject to the impurities of attachment, delusion and laws of karma. Death is therefore not a great calamity, not an end of all, but a natural process in the existence of a jiva (being) as a separate entity, a resting period during which it recuperates, reassembles its resources, adjusts its course and returns again to the earth to continue its journey. In Hinduism, unless a soul is liberated, neither life nor after life are permanent. They are both part of a grand illusion. Death is a temporary cessation of physical activity, a necessary means of recycling the resources and energy and an opportunity for the jiva (that part which incarnates) to reenergize itself, review its programs and policies and plan for the next phase of life. Each life experience on earth and incarnation of soul offers the jiva an opportunity to learn and overcome its inconsistencies and blemishes, so that it can become the whole.

We cannot have likes and dislikes, preferences, prejudices and attachment and yet expect ourselves to be liberated. Even a preference for purity becomes an impediment at some stage in our lives. The soul therefore needs to be born again and again until it overcomes its state of delusion, achieves equanimity and realizes its completeness.

When a person dies, his soul along with some residual consciousness leaves the body through an opening in the head and goes to another world and returns after spending some time there. What happens after the soul leaves the body and before it reincarnates again is a great mystery, about which we can form an idea after studying the scriptures. 

The Paths of the Sun and the Moon

The Bhagavad-Gita describes two paths along which souls travel after death. One is the path of the sun, also known as the bright path or the path of gods.  The other is the path of the moon, also known as the dark path and the path of ancestors. When a soul travels along the path of the sun, it never return again, while those which travel along the path of the moon return again. (8.24). How is the path of the sun attained? Lord Krishna provides the clue in the following verses:

"Controlling all the openings of the body, with the mind established in the heart, fixing the prana in the self at the top of the head establishing oneself in the Yoga, uttering the monosyllable AUM, which is Brahman, who leaves the body remembering Me, he achieves the highest goal. (8.12-13)

In the same chapter we are also informed that all worlds including that of Brahma are subject to rebirth, but on reaching Him there is no birth.

The Fate of an Individual Upon Death

What happens to a soul after the death depends upon many factors, some of which are listed below:

1. His previous deeds. If a person has committed many bad deeds in his life, he will go to the lower worlds and suffer from the consequences of his evil actions. On the contrary, if he has performed good deeds, he will go to the higher sun filled worlds and enjoy the life there.

2. His state of mind at the time of death, that is what thoughts and desires were predominant in his consciousness, decides in which direction the jiva will travel and in what form it will appear again. For example if a person is thinking of his family and children at the time of his death, very likely he will go the world of ancestors and will be reborn in that family. If a person is thinking of money matters at the time of his death, it is very likely he will be born as a merchant in his next birth. If a person is thinking of evil and negative thoughts he will go to the lower worlds and suffer in the hands of evil. His suffering may either reform him or push him deeper into evil depending upon his previous samskaras( tendencies). If he is thinking of God at the time of his death, he will go to the highest world.  

3. The time of his death. The time and circumstances related to death are also important. For example it is believed that if a person dies on a battlefield he will attain the heaven of the warriors. If a someone dies on a festival day or an auspicious day, while performing some puja or bhajan in the house, he will go to heaven irrespective of his previous deeds.

  

4. The activities of his children, that is whether they performed the funeral rites in the prescribed manner and satisfied the scriptural injunctions. There is a belief that if funeral rites are not performed according to the tradition, it will delay the journey of the souls to their respective worlds.

5. The grace of God. God in the form of a personal deity may often interfere with the fate of an individual and change the course of his or her after life. We have instances where God rescued his devotees from the hands of the messengers of death and placed them in the highest heaven in recognition of their meritorious deeds.

Belief in many heavens and hells

The early vedic people believed in the existence of two worlds apart from ours, the world of ancestors and that of gods. They called these worlds bhur (earth), bhuva (moon) and svar (the sun) which occupied the lower, the middle and the higher regions of the universe. They believed that gods attained the highest world of svar because of the sacrifices they performed in the past and that men too could reach their world through similar sacrifices.

The gods represented the life forces and renewal of life while the demons who opposed them represented the forces of death and destruction. In the struggle between gods and demons, the gods won and became immortal, providing an opportunity and a possibility to mortal men to attain their status through good deeds upon earth. However, the notion of rebirth of human beings was alien to the early vedic people. In the Rigveda there is no mention of rebirth or reincarnation¹.

  

Once the souls departed from here, they lived either in the world of ancestors or of the gods for good. Their bodies were recreated in the higher worlds according to the merit they gained through the sacrifices they performed whilst they were alive. The Vedic tradition of offering sacrifices to one’s ancestors supports the belief that the ancestors would either stay in the ancestral world or ascend to the heavenly world through the sacrifices of their descendents. They would not return to earth again. If their stay was temporary, the question of making annual offerings to several generations of departed souls would not make much sense.

However, with the integration of new traditions into vedic religion, the Hindu cosmology grew in complexity and so were the theological explanations about afterlife and rebirth. The Puranas and later vedic literature speak of the existence of not one hell and one heaven but of many sun filled worlds and many dark and demonic worlds. Apart from these, each of the Trinity of gods has his own world, which is attained by their followers after death. Vaikunth is the world of Vishnu, Kailash of Siva and Brahmalok of Brahman. Indralok, the standard heaven (svar) of the vedic religion remained as a temporary resting place for the pure souls.

Pitralok is the world of ancestors while Yamalok is the hell ruled by a god called Lord Yama, who is also the ruler of the southern quarter, where impure souls are held temporarily and subject to pain and punishment until their bad karmas are exhausted. He is assisted by an attendant known as Chitragupt, a chronicler, who keeps a catalogue of the deeds of all human beings on earth. He reads them out as the jivas stand in front of Yama in his court and await his verdict. According to Hindu scriptures, both heaven and hell are temporary resting places for the souls from which they have to return to earth to continue their mortal existence once their karmas are exhausted.  

But the same is not the case in case of liberated souls. Liberated souls are liberated in the real sense. They are not bound to any place or condition or dimension. Different schools of Hinduism offer different explanations about the status of a liberated soul. According to the school of advaita (monism), when a soul is liberated it reaches the highest world and becomes one with Brahman. Simply, it exists, no more as an individual self.

According to other schools of thought, when a soul attains the highest world of Brahman or of Vishnu or of Siva, it remains there permanently as a liberated soul savouring the company of the Supreme Being and forever freed from the delusion of Prakriti or nature. It does not reunite with Brahman completely. Some of them may at times incarnate again on their own accord to serve humanity. Even then, they would not be subject to the impurities of illusion, attachment and karma. A liberated soul remains forever free and untainted even during the dissolution of the worlds and the beginning of a new cycle of creation.

The purpose of heavens and hell

In the ultimate sense, the purpose of after life is neither to punish nor reward the souls, but to remind them of the true purpose of their existence. In the final analysis, the difference between heaven and hell is immaterial because both are part of the great illusion that characterizes the whole creation. The difference is very much like the difference between a good dream and a bad dream. It should not matter to soul whether it has gone to a heaven or to some hell, because the soul is eternally pure and not subject to pain and suffering. It is the residual jiva, that part which leaves the body and goes to the higher planes after death, which is subject to the process of learning through pain and pleasure in the temporary worlds of heaven and hell. Once its learning is accomplished and the effects of its previous karma is exhausted it returns to the earth to continue its existence. 

A jiva which goes to heaven, will enjoy the pleasures of heaven and in the end realizes that seeking heavenly pleasures is not the ultimate goal since however intense these pleasures may be, they would not last long.  A soul which falls into the darker world gets a taste of the horror of the evil it tried to promote on earth, with a multiplier effect and with an intensity and severity that would make it realize the horrors of evil. 

Thus in either case, the purpose of heavens and hells is to impart an attitude of wisdom and detachment to the souls. However, how far these lessons will leave their imprint upon the souls and mould their future lives, we do not know because once they return to the earth consciousness, because of the power of maya,  they may forget much of what they have learned or unlearned and revert to their old ways. Hence the need for many lives and learning and relearning the same lessons, till they become an integral part of a jiva's samskara (education).

During the Afterlife A soul can exist in many planes.

It is not necessary that after death a jiva should go to only one world. Depending upon its activities on earth, it may stay in many worlds, one after another, before returning to the earth. It may stay in some hellish worlds before moving to the heavenly worlds or vice versa. Whatever may be the pattern, at the end of it, the soul should have learned some important lessons for its further journey on earth. Hindu scriptures are not unanimous as to what happens to a soul after it leaves this world. Vaishnavism, Saivism and Shaktism offer their own versions of soul's journey into the higher world after death based upon their respective beliefs. In general they suggest that after death devoted souls would go and live in the company of their chosen deities and other pure souls. 

The Bhagavad Gita declares that those who worship demigods would go to them while those who worship the highest Brahman would go to Him only. The Puranas suggest that Vishnu and Siva would rescue their devotees from the clutches of Yamaraj (Lord of hell) out of unbound love even if they committed terrible sins.

This is a reward for devotion and a reminder to all that they should surrender to God and remain devoted to Him. However the scriptures are not clear as to how long the souls have to remain in the other worlds before they reincarnate again. They also do not explain why we do not remember our past lives and what causes this loss of memory. One explanation may be that memory is essentially a function of the mind and that mind is recreated afresh each time a being incarnates.

Whatever residual memory and sense of identity the jiva carried after death is either exhausted in the other planes along with its previous karma, or further compressed beyond recognition before the jiva incarnates again. So a jiva starts afresh with no burden of the past memories, except some predominant memories and habits of thought and action that constitutes the main purpose of its present incarnation.

Belief in Ghosts and Spirits

Hindus believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits. These are considered unfortunate souls who because of some curse or who committed terrible sins remain suspended in the region between the higher worlds and the earth. Some of the spirits are good, awaiting the completion of their punishment and release from their current state, while other may continue their evil ways. They are believed to hang around desolate places, deserted buildings, ancient ruins, on the branches of old trees and in grave yards. They usually seek and trouble people of impure minds and unclean habits. 

Good spirits on the other hand loiter near the places where religious ceremonies are performed or discourses are given. They do not harm anyone and instead may even help the needy. Some of the tantric practices allude to the possibility of transferring a jiva's vital energy into a dead body in order to revive it temporarily for certain rituals, or taking control of a suspended soul to perform magic or cause harm to others, or driving away possessed souls using magic and rituals. The Yajurveda contains hymns to exorcise and ward off evil spirits and seek protection against evil spells.

Funeral Rites, the Last Sacrament

In Hinduism funeral is a sacrament just as the birth of an individual. It is rightly compared to a sacrifice and termed as the last rite (antyesti). Upon death, Hindus are not buried, but cremated according to an established procedure as detailed in the scriptures. This is based on the belief that a jiva is made up of five elements of prakriti (nature) which need to be returned to their source upon its death.  Of them fire, earth, water and air belong to the body and come from this world, whereas the fifth element the ether (fine matter) belongs to the domain of the subtle body and comes from the higher worlds. By cremating the body, the elements are rightfully returned to their respective spheres, while the subtle body along with soul returns to the worlds beyond for the continuation of its afterlife. 

Cremation however is not the only prescribed method of disposal of the body. Children below a certain age are buried upon death. In case of an enlightened master, his body is buried inside a tomb called samadhi while he himself is seated in a state of samadhi in lotus position. The body of a renouncer (sanyasi) is usually placed in a river, since it is customary for a sanyasi to undergo the symbolic act of cremation before taking up the life of renunciation. So a second cremation is not prescribed. While cremation is the standard procedure, Hindus prefer a watery grave for the departed in the Ganges, which is a sacred river that is believed to purify souls of their sins, or a cremation on its banks.

Hindu funeral rites have a twin purpose. They are meant to ensure a soul's happy migration and habitation in the other world and also save its family members from the after effects of pollution consequent upon the death of a kin. According to Hindu beliefs, when a person dies, irrespective of whether he is far or near, his family members are polluted by the very process of his death and remain so for some time till the soul completes its journey to the other world and till they are purified through rituals. So is the case with others who come to see the corpse or enter the house where it is placed. The family members of the deceased have to remain isolated and stay away from social engagements for some time before the situation returns to normalcy. The Hindu law books proscribe the recitation of vedic hymns near a corpse.

When a person dies, his body is given a final bath, usually in the house where he lived. It is then placed on a wooden stretcher and carried by his kith and kin accompanied by the chanting of the name of God, to the community cremation grounds. Unless there are compelling circumstances, the body is cremated usually on the same day of the death or after a day or two. The body is placed on the funeral pyre in such a way that its feet point towards the south (the direction of Yama the lord of death) and its head towards north (the direction of Kubera the lord of wealth). The funeral pyre is lit, usually by the eldest son, with a sacred fire created for the purpose or in case of twice born with the domestic fire. Wood, dried cow dung, ghee and other materials are used in the cremation of the body.

Three to ten days after cremation the ashes are collected into urns and scattered at various places. They are mingled with earth, water and air to signify the return of the body to its elements. After the funeral, the family of the deceased perform a ceremonial offering called sraddham, in which rice balls (pindas) are offered by the sons of the deceased to the departed soul. It is believed that the rice balls would help the departed soul to construct a body (annamaya-kosa) for its existence in the world of the ancestors. The offerings continue for ten days each day representing a month in the normal gestation period of a human embryo in the womb, by the end of which the ghost body would be ready. It is followed by another rite known as sapindakarana which facilitates the entry of the soul into the world of ancestors (pitrloka) and its continuation from there on. 

In south India there is a practice of offering rice balls to the crows near the cremation grounds to test whether the soul is happy or not with the rites performed. If the crows eat the rice balls, it is a confirmation that the soul is happy with the offerings and the rituals and settled in the other word. A function is organized on the fifteenth day after cremation and guests are invited for a meal. Members of the deceased usually do not celebrate functions and festivals for a specific period of time as a  mark of respect and also to avoid causing pollution to others. 

The Best way to reach God

According to Hindu scriptures, the solution to the problem of death is not heaven but liberation. The best way to attain salvation is through austerities, discipline, devotion, self-surrender and the grace of a guru and God. What a person remembers or thinks at the time of his departure from this world is also important because very likely he would attain it.

  

So a person needs to train his mind in such a way that like Mahatma Gandhi he would pass away remembering God or chanting his name. It is physically impossible to defy death. However through mastery of their senses and minds, many saints and seers gain control over the process of death and develop an intuitive awareness of when and in what manner they would depart from this world. When the time comes, leaving necessary instructions to their disciples, they leave their bodies, immersed in a state of samadhi or deep trance. In the Bhagavad-Gita Sri Krishna declares that at the time death he who concentrates his prana between the two eyebrows with the strength of his yoga and is engaged in devotion with an unwavering mind will attain the divine and transcendental Brahman (8.10). 

Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction

Source: openculture.com.

As I work to become a better writer came across this advice from Hemingway and George Orwell. Really good stuff.

Hemingway never wrote a treatise on the art of writing fiction.  He did, however, leave behind a great many passages in letters, articles and books with opinions and advice on writing.

1: To get started, write one true sentence.

Hemingway had a simple trick for overcoming writer’s block. In a memorable passage in A Moveable Feast, he writes:

Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.

2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.

There is a difference between stopping and foundering. To make steady progress, having a daily word-count quota was far less important to Hemingway than making sure he never emptied the well of his imagination.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

3: Never think about the story when you’re not working.

Building on his previous advice, Hemingway says never to think about a story you are working on before you begin again the next day. “That way your subconscious will work on it all the time,” he writes in theEsquire piece. “But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.” He goes into more detail in A Moveable Feast:

4: When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far.

T0 maintain continuity, Hemingway made a habit of reading over what he had already written before going further. In the 1935 Esquire article, he writes:

The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That’s how you make it all of one piece.

5: Don’t describe an emotion–make it.

Close observation of life is critical to good writing, said Hemingway. The key is to not only watch and listen closely to external events, but to also notice any emotion stirred in you by the events and then trace back and identify precisely what it was that caused the emotion. If you can identify the concrete action or sensation that caused the emotion and present it accurately and fully rounded in your story, your readers should feel the same emotion. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway writes about his early struggle to master this:

I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing truly what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced. In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me and I was working very hard to get it.

6: Be Brief.

Hemingway was contemptuous of writers who, as he put it, “never learned how to say no to a typewriter.”

George Orwell's writing rules                 

George Orwell, writer of Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm, began his career as an advertising copywriter. This experience helped him to create a few simple writing rules, which we can use to ensure our writing is clear, direct and effective.

1  Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print

INSTEAD OF ... cutting-edge producers

USE ... leading producers, the kind of producers that others follow, the industry's most original producers

2  Never use a long word where a short one will do

INSTEAD OF ... expeditive, accomodating or monumental

USE ... quick, helpful or large

3 If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out

INSTEAD OF ... Jessica Fletcher, Penguin's newest, freshest writer, is already exploring themes of great importance - faith, familial bonds - in her first two novels, Banjo Mansion and Yes, I Have Potato

USE ... Jessica Fletcher, explores faith and familial bonds in her novels, Banjo Mansion and Yes, I Have Potato

4 Never use the passive where you can use the active

INSTEAD OF ... It was understood by the team that Susan's visit was a great success

USE ... The team understood that Susan's visit was a great success

5 Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent

INSTEAD OF ... In the spirit of carpe diem, the management team blue-skied proposals on the aortic behaviour of cupid's arrow

USE ... The managers took the opportunity to think creatively about love

6 Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

Centre for New Writing — University of Leicester

Two of my Flash Fiction pieces titled, FOOTSTEPS and A CONVERSATION have been commissioned by the University of Leicester. They will appear on their website www2.le.ac.uk in July, and later published in an e-book.

The worthwhile project details are below.

The Sole2Soul project is creating new digital assets for the Falkner Boot and Shoe exhibit at Harborough Museum (Market Harborough). These include new creative writing (flash fiction, twitter fiction and poetry), photography and podcasts. The project is designed to increase Harborough Museum’s visitor numbers and to attract more online traffic to the Museum website.

 The project concept is best expressed as follows: wise souls talk to teen souls about shoe soles. Silver champions will join forces with writers and curators to stimulate teenage engagement with Boot and Shoe artefacts. In response, teenage pupils from local schools will produce a web-gallery of “Future Curators” pages about the exhibit. In December 2014, all participants will be invited to an event where the new digital assets will be launched.

Sole2Soul will provide new digital assets for the Falkner Boot and Shoe exhibit:

A mobile phone app for museum visitors (a downloadable application for smartphones)

“Future Curators” webpages by teenagers, accompanied by podcasts about their experience.

A radio programme about the project.

30 experienced writers will visit the Boot and Shoe exhibit and produce 30 pieces of creative writing in the following forms, which are best suited to digital transmission: story tweets, flash fiction (200 words) and poems. These writers will present these creative pieces on social media platforms such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.

A smartphone app is created and tested. The app will encourage museum visitors to access the project’s digital assets. Visitors’ physical location in the museum will prompt particular pieces of information or creative writing to appear on their phone screens.

Teenagers from local schools attend three workshops at Harborough Museum. Curators guide pupils around the Boot and Shoe exhibit. Pupils will be presented with all the creative writing produced about the Boot and Shoe exhibit produced during phase one (commission) and phase two (narrate). 

The Sole2Soul creative writing commissions will be showcased at the Literary Leicester Fringe festival in November 2014.

Harborough Museum’s new digital assets will be unveiled at a launch event in December 2014, to which curators, journalists, project participants and writers will be invited.

The writers will be able to list the commission on their CV (‘awarded an Arts Council-funded Sole2Soul commission, 2014’). 

They will be invited to showcase their Sole2Soul piece at the Literary Leicester Fringe 2014, for which writers will be paid a fee. 

All commissions will be published in an e-book, which will become part of the museum’s new digital assets.

PIGEONS AND THE CROW

TODAY as I sat on a bench to have my lunch a couple of pigeons flew towards me. They waited on the flagged paving stones for some scraps of bread. A party of pigeons sometimes sends a one legged or frail looking bird first in order to gain your sympathy. It actually hops on one leg in front of you, back and forth, then sits down miserably and stares at you. Who said pigeons were stupid? You are almost compelled to share a part of your food, unless you’re a greedy son-of-a-gun, and there are lots of them in the world as it is. As soon as you throw the bread, all the others rush down from the trees and the tall building ledges and finish the food. There’s a flurry of activity, flapping of wings, throwing up the pieces of bread with their beaks; the stronger one’s fighting off the weaker; yet in the frenzy they all manage to eat something.

I threw the bread towards the pigeons and the birds broke the bread in three pieces, then another ten or so birds gathered. As they were about to eat however, a crow swooped down and scattered the pigeons.

It was a very rude interruption.

The crow was a strong and very sinister looking bird, black eyes and beak. It started to peck at the bread; every time the pigeons tried to get near the bread the crow drove them back. I watched nature’s play. What would happen now? Would the poor pigeons get anything to eat?

The greedy and strong crow pecked at the bread whilst the pigeons strutted glumly in a circle. It surprised me that the crow was unwilling to part with any of the bread. It just wouldn’t let any of the pigeons eat. It all seemed so unfair and yet I decided to see what would happen without my intervention.

No sooner had I thought this, when from my right an old man appeared; his face furious at the situation in front of him, i.e. a single crow hoarding all the food. The timing of his arrival surprised me as well.

He moved towards the crow with his walking stick and forced it to flee; the crow even dropped the piece of bread in its mouth as it fled in a panic. Then the old fella stood guard whilst the pigeons started to eat in peace.

HEREIN I reflected lay several lessons.

1- If you’re struggling with difficulties and injustice and it appears that you cannot win or carry on; keep a little faith, keep fighting and be patient. Help will arrive. The higher powers will not tolerate injustice, they will send help in one form or another.

2- If you are blessed with power and wealth, then learn to share; otherwise it will be taken away from you. An old man will drive you away with his stick.

John Steinbeck's writing advice.

1-Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2-Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3-Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4-If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5-Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6-If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

But perhaps most paradoxically yet poetically, twelve years prior — in 1963, immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” — Steinbeck issued a thoughtful disclaimer to all such advice:

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

Steinbeck is one of my favourite authors and his advice given years ago in an Paris Review interview is as valid today as it ever was.

MAYA

“THE World is Maya, an illusion; fools, don’t chase after the transient, it will cause heartache. Follow the holy path, its difficult brothers and sisters but if you’re vigilant, nothing can delude you. You are free, eternal and full of bliss; don’t become attached to petty material objects. Look to me for inspiration, I’ve taken Sanyasa and donned the ochre robes. I’m only twenty-five with life before me and yet if I can succeed then all of you can!”

     Spontaneous applause filled the hall for the Swami, who had entered the monastic order just a year ago. He was an eloquent speaker, knowledgeable but he forbade anyone from touching him; this would have polluted his sense of worth. People fell at his feet from a distance. He was a strict vegetarian and berated everyone for their worldly attachments to relatives and wealth. Give them up! He exclaimed everywhere.

Of course people admired such detachment but complained that his advice was extreme. On several occasions the Swami had grown angry at this perceived weakness. He was an expert on the Bhagavad Gita as well as other holy texts. He read them to impress his listeners.

     In July, he came to a village. A young woman of nineteen was assigned to serve the Swami his food. She had large eyes, dark hair and comely hips. She placed the plate in front of him and would say nothing apart from ‘would Swami like anything else?’ He liked her sincere attitude and service. Each night after the sermon, he made her sit and gave her religious knowledge. She sat gazing boldly into his eyes.

The Swami extended his stay and the people were delighted. He wanted to teach the young woman more topics as she was an eager student. When he asked her after six days whether she had understood his teachings, she replied that she didn’t care for them at all. He was astonished.

She grabbed his hand and at the touch electricity passed through him. She had fallen madly in love she said and would commit suicide if he left without her. Then she embraced him and kissed him passionately on the lips. He tried to push her back without success.

The next day, villagers were shaking their heads in amazement. They saw the Swami skipping lightly after the wide eyed beauty in a field, happy and full of joy.

ps. This was a lighthearted short story I wrote and was selected in the Inspired by Tagore Competition. I hope people who visit this site enjoy it. Vijay Medtia.

Short extract from Balzac.

I liked this dialogue from that great fine writer Balzac. Something to lift my spirits in these dark days of winter.


The two men paced up and down the Luxembourg gardens.
 'It costs a lot,' said Daniel in his gentle voice, 'to become a great man. The works of genius are watered with tears. Talent is a living organism whose infancy, like that of all creatures, is liable to malady. Society rejects defective talent as Nature sweeps away weak or misshapen creatures. Whoever wishes to rise above the common level must be prepared for  a great struggle and recoil before no obstacle. A great writer is just simply a martyr whom the stake cannot kill.
If at heart you do not have the great patience and will-power required then give up this very day.'

 'You also expect to suffer great trials? asked Lucien.

 'Ordeals of every kind. Calumny, treachery, injustice from my rivals; effrontery, trickery, ruthlessness from the business world. If you are doing fine work, what do these setbacks matter?'