Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Magic Realism

This is not a post about Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa as I am yet to read anything written by him. In fact, I have just started exploring the genre of Magic Realism just some time back by reading the (short) works of his one time friend Marquez. If you have started wondering what am I getting on to, please continue reading.

This post is rolling in my head even before the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2010 was announced. But, in a different form; I was wondering how different my life would have been if facilities like Google and Wikipedia were available, I'd have easily found references authors, director, books or films (letting me know what all interesting things were there to read or watch) instead of the dictionary (yes some days only the dictionary was my reading material), which I'd read as a book looking for meaning of words without any context or reference (picked up in some weird random order).

After the news of Nobel came, my thought process changed a little; how would a writer approach my life story? He'd find it very difficult to tell it in a linear, logical or rational way. Because when I think back or go in the rewind mode I find some events there are nothing short of miracles (it'd be said that I worked towards it and it wasn't easy in any way, but, even in my head it sounds hollow). So, the writer would have to depend on elements of magic realism otherwise he will be at his wits end trying to find explanation for things, like a friend once asked 'you cannot sit steady on your wheelchair for more than a few minutes, then how come you hang like a bat behind your father on the two-wheeler and roam all around?”

There are such unexplainable events scattered around in every aspect of my life, be it education, employment, writing skill (however bad it is) and even my friendships, there seems to be the proverbial Hand of God phenomenon.

I just wish the last line of the story would be; 'then one fine day he got up from his wheelchair and started walking towards the toilet all by himself.”