GVK’s stories mostly depict the life of ‘ordinary people’ eking out their lives as
lower middle-class farmers, peasants, farmhands or people living in the margins
or the village folk that have migrated to the urban locales in search of greener pastures. A few of his stories examine the irrationality being perpetuated by religious zealots in different segments of the society. There are also stories that expound the spread of new ideologies/esoteric concepts in the society, particularly among the urban intelligentsia and the other side of their assimilation for practice vis-à-vis articulation. All his stories are exquisitely realistic—there are no exaggerations, life is depicted just as it happens everyday, all the time. Interestingly, most of his characters are found questioning themselves, questioning even their karma and all such critiquing sounds pretty rational too. Yet, their moves, often, veer off towards an unexpected trouble, confusion, or puzzle, at times defying even the rationale.
The storyteller, being a crafty wordsmith, provides his characters with unpretentious quality of dialogs—they are ordinary, of the street and never pop up bizarrely and this enables the characters just to get on with life as naturally as one sees it in real life. There is no melodrama, no grand statements, just a quiet focus on the life as a given and of course that makes the whole edifice look so natural that it tweaks our nerve chord—at times makes the heart squeak. A quick glance through his stories leaves an impression that ‘rationalism’ runs through—diffusing in the dialogs, as a suggestion in some stories, while in some others reflecting in the acts of the characters—all his stories as an undercurrent rather than irritating the reader as a rude intrusion.
|
