'But Constant Repetition ensured that it sank so deep into my Consciousness...'

Story Grammar | Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Stories have a formula, which we would call its story grammar!

Amitav Ghosh’s latest offering, Gun Island capitalizes much on this power of the story as a cultural text having its own grammar, and how stories integrate various lives across ages into a beautiful weave or a texture!

Just a few snippets from the book for y’all -

I don’t remember when I first heard the story, or who told it to me, but constant repetition ensured that it sank so deep into my consciousness that I wasn’t even aware that it was there. But some stories, like certain life forms, possess a special streak of vitality that allow them to outlive others of their kind – and since the story of the Merchant and Manasa Devi is very old it must, I suppose, possess enough of this quality to ensure that it can survive extended periods of dormancy. In any event, when I was a twenty-something student, newly arrived in America and casting about for a subject for a research paper, the story of the Merchant thawed in the permafrost of my memory and once again claimed my full attention.

Gun Island Uncovered... 

I don’t know what it was but there was something about the story that got into my head: it haunted me and I wanted to know more about it. ‘People of that sort will believe anything, won’t they?’

She glanced at me in surprise. ‘You really don’t like this story do you? It is perhaps too vulgar and common for you?’

This was near enough to the bone to nettle me. ‘I think you’ve misunderstood me,’ I protested. ‘I grew up with this story. In fact it was the subject of my research thesis – I’ve even published an article on one of the epic poems on which this performance is based.’

*****

‘Suppose a guy’s applying for asylum in Sweden – he’ll need a story to back him up, and it can’t be just any old story. It’s gotta be a story like they want to hear over there. Suppose the guy was starving because his land was flooded; or suppose his whole village was sick from the arsenic in their ground water; or suppose he was being beat up by his landlord because he couldn’t pay off his debts – none of that shit matters to the Swedes. Politics, religion and sex is what they’re looking for – you’ve gotta have a story of persecution if you want them to listen to you. So that’s what I help my clients with; I give them those kinds of stories.’

*****

‘Not necessarily,’ said Cinta. ‘There could be many reasons why whoever built the shrine wouldn’t want the story to be written down.’

‘Like what?’

Cinta smiled cryptically. ‘Maybe they believed the story wasn’t over – that it would reach out into the future?’

‘I don’t get that, Cinta,’ I said. ‘I don’t see how a legend could reach out into the future. After all, it’s just a story . . .’

She stopped me with a rap on the knuckles.

‘You must never use that phrase, Dino,’ she said slowly and deliberately. ‘In the seventeenth century no one would ever have said of something that it was “just a story” as we moderns do. At that time people recognized that stories could tap into dimensions that were beyond the ordinary, beyond the human even. They knew that only through stories was it possible to enter the most inward mysteries of our existence where nothing that is really important can be proven to exist – like love, or loyalty, or even the faculty that makes us turn around when we feel the gaze of a stranger or an animal.

Only through stories can invisible or inarticulate or silent beings speak to us; it is they who allow the past to reach out to us.’

‘Aren’t you exaggerating a bit, Cinta?’

‘No, caro, no. You mustn’t underestimate the power of stories. There is something in them that is elemental and inexplicable. Haven’t you heard it said that what makes us human, what separates us from animals, is the faculty of storytelling?’

More on this snapshot live from the book, for y’all –

And yes! the book is available on all famed e-stores on the world wide web! Please get for yourself a hard copy of the book through any of these e-portals and start reading it rightaway! 

Cos ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world, ain't it?

So much for the power of 'storied urns' and animated busts!

To be continued…

images: this blogger's ;-)