This short story has been adapted from a brief sketch by O.V. Vijayan. I have not changed the sketch slightly, but just transported to contemporary Delhi. Any faults here are mine and is due to my incompetency in transliteration, translation and understanding.
Marx on the Rocks:
The winters in Delhi was explicitly cold, the air in Jawaharlal Nehru University, situated on the northernmost reaches of the Aravalli Hills was far nippier than the rest of the capital. The capital has the largest number of vehicles and the best roads in India but what made Delhi distinctive was its peculiar combination of power and impunity that it both exudes and offers as a public spectacle. The city echoed of violent protests for the rape victim who was mutilated, foiled and damaged on these very best roads. The desire to experience the trip of this impunity and power is contagious, and the closest that subaltern and marginalized groups can get to this is the feeling of control and power in a moving vehicle. Is the city and its repugnant inequalities, also accomplices in the crime?
Achintya and Shoma sat on the famous rocks of the campus. These rocks actually were older than the Mughuls, Prithviraj Chauhan or even the legend of Indraprastha, the fabled city of the Mahabharata. It is older than the Stone Age or even the Ice Age. It is 2,400 million years old, pre-Cambrian rocks actually, according to one of the Geography professors at the campus.
The lovers sat in a communion with each other, the full moon above them. He held her close. Their lips met.
“O, inconceivable.” she said, ‘there is something on my mind.’
“Tell me, precious’, he said.
“Have you read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital?’
“I have not, but have been intending for a long time.’
He began flipping the buttons of her kurta, trying to slide his hands to feel her tender breasts.
“Have patience’, she said. ‘Let us read Kapital. I brought it with me.’
He took his hand off her and said, ‘As you wish, dear’.
They switched on the torchlight from the cell phone and on the pre historic rocks, began reading.
‘………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….’
After many days and months, when they finished the four volumes of Kapital, he resumed his petting.
‘I love you’, she said.
The moon shone over them. Noise from a distant loudspeaker could be heard.
Post Script: Readers are requested to get hold of the four volumes of Das Kapital and fill in the blanks. If they do so, this little story will become the lengthiest Socialist realist novel in contemporary literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment