R. Radhakrishnan's Blog, page 16

The runaway groom (part one). A rural love story.

The year was 1994, we were rattling along a village road in Mandsaur chasing a NOC, a no-objection certificate to the uninitiated.

To set up a petrol pump you required a NOC from the District Collector. The procedure was that you applied at the District headquarters along with a blueprint, a layout drawing of your project.

The proposal was then forwarded to the local officials, the tehsildar, the local police and the fire station, the local Public works department etc. These people che...

The Locust Swarm of 1993

A fictional account of the Locust swarm that hit Mandsaur in 1993 based on my experiences and memories of those days.

I fell in love with the district of Mandsaur during my posting in Indore. It was the largest district and the furthest from my headquarters in Indore.

It had a wildness to it, an exotic feel for someone like me a total urban boy from Mumbai.

In winters the mist would hug the ground till early afternoon, there would be miles and miles of lush fields all around.

Th...

Marriage or Revenge. A short story.

Suresh hurried along the road, the afternoon heat reflected from the black tar, his threadbare mundu was folded up to leave his legs bare from the knees. A studious sensitive boy his frayed rubber slippers made a slapping sound on the road.

It was December 1976, the emergency had been in force for some time. The students were at the forefront of the opposition to the emergency. There were daily protests for the restoration of democracy and for elections to be called.

Suresh never took ...

The Drinking Demon. A short story.

Neemuch is a quaint little town in Madhya Pradesh on the border with Rajasthan and the furthest from my headquarters in Indore.

The roads were bad and the distance to Neemuch always seemed much longer than it was.

I was at the Alkaloid factory guest house, the best place to stay at Neemuch for people like me on Public sector allowances during the late eighties and early nineties.

Mandsaur District of which Neemuch was a part then, was the largest opium-growing belt in India. The Gov...

Writing stories

A storyteller mixes facts, fiction and illusion to create a story.

When I write about my memories they are the facts as I remember. But where I mention it as a short story that is fiction built on a layer of facts and experience.

I am a storyteller at heart. When I write my stories like Hate or The Well of death I mix experiences, facts, fiction and create a blend.

A good storyteller tells his story so that it is plausible and everything is seamless, believable and fun to read.

I w...

The Well of Death. A short story.

It was a local festival and the village was full of chaotic colours, crowds and noise.

There was a fair, a mela as it is called here, on the grounds beside the temple pond.

Manual wooden merry go rounds gaily painted competed with wooden manual Ferris wheels.

The local tehsildar was the chief guest, a young man a little older than me. I was in a way the co-chief guest as the local petrol pump was the main sponsor for the festivities. I was the area in charge and the pump was in my j...

The Emperor, the River and the Courtesan.

As per ancient Indian stories, everyone has a dharma. Be it a king, a common citizen, animals, trees everything has a dharma to which one has to be true.

If you are true to your dharma it can be used as a mantra to get nature to do your will. This is called an ” act of truth”.

Our stories are full of such acts of truth. An example is Sita sitting on the fire and saying “if I am chaste let not the fire harm me.” The fire accepts her truth and does not harm her thus confirming her truth...

A dress code and all that nonsense.

In the 70s there was a big agitation by students on a college campus near my home in Mumbai. I was in school then.

The bone of contention was the dress of students. The college management was composed of prehistoric self-righteous persons. Their ideas of dress were very conservative suited to a previous century.

The management, in the name of Indian Culture and traditions, banned skirts, jeans tight pants etc.

The kids rose in revolt and there were strikes, graffiti on the walls and ge...

The Golden Snake an ancient fairy tale.

We grew up listening to or reading fairy tales. Most of what we read were western fairy tales.

I would often find some similarities between tales from different lands and Indian tales. It was only much later that I learnt many of these tales had originated in India as per many scholars.

Most of us know the story of the Goose that laid golden eggs. We even had a poem in school where it was a hen that laid the golden eggs.

But there is an old story I heard long ago from a villager in Guj...

You hold the answers in your hands…an old Indian folk tale. Simple and yet profound.

The answer is in your hands.

Indian folk tales can be simple, most folk tales are. But the message they convey can be complex and thought-provoking.

I heard this story in Madhya Pradesh a long long time ago. A simple story but a story that tells us that most often the answer to our question can be found within us.

In a small village in Mandsaur, there lived an old old lady. She had no name, everyone called her Ma, which means mother.

She lived alone, a gentle, wise old woman and the...