Fast Fiction

 We have all got used to "days" galore. There are all sorts of "days". Most of them can be downright trivial, too. As if that were not enough, now we have "months" devoted to some issue or the other. Recently I got to know that May is the Short Story month. As May ends tomorrow, let me discuss this much loved genre. 

Short story shares with a novel almost all the 'elements of fiction' (to quote Marjorie Boulton's famous title), except one, that is, the length. A short story is mostly around five thousand words tops which often would form a chapter in a novel.

Of course, there is a version of short story known as "flash fiction". It has very many sub-genres, too. The gem of this variety is the six words long "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn", anecdotally assigned to Ernest Hemingway, one of the best short story writers in the world.

Short story, in brief, is a vision, a deep comment on the realities of life captured through minimal characters and a tightly constructed plot. Unlike a novel, there would not be any subplot or secondary characters, et al. The setting in a short story is often the mode of mood creation. 

Unlike a novel, a short story is more "showing" than "telling". Often, it is the dialogues that carry the plot forward. The point of view in a short story, unlike a novel, is rarely multi-focal. It is a quickie of a read, literally a nutshell look at life.

It has been argued that short story emerged as the pace of life changed. Given this fast pace, readers would not have the patience nor could they spare the time necessary for a read of hundreds of pages. Reading chapters as serial publications would hardly be fun. Instead, a story you could complete as you commuted for about half an hour across the mega metro appeared appealing apparently.

Brilliant short stories abound in every language. Translating them is indeed the need of the hour as the majority apparently is obsessed with the X or insta or the wapp. In such tough times, tiresome length of a novel may not appeal as we live in times of "here now, vanished the day after" kind of instant celebrity-dom. To save souls from such barren scenarios, short stories must survive!

Pratima@Seven of my vignettes dealing with the covid context are published in an international anthology, while my short story "The Bride" made to the long list of a world wide short story competition conducted by the OUP in collaboration with the EoH. My Spanish story "Griselda:Una interpretación india" won the first prize in a literary concurso organised by the JNU. It is a happy feel that one contributes to the genre not merely in the capacity of a translator.