IN the short story Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage—in the collection of short stories by the same name—by Alice Munro, two young girls, Edith and Sabitha, the first callous and the second conflicted, play a mean prank that changes many lives. To kill boredom, they write hoax love letters to the lonely and plain spinster Johanna, forging the signature of Sabitha’s father, Ken Boudreau, a drifter who lives in another town.
It’s a delicate story of the casual cruelty of the young, sparse and hard life of the poor in the outback of Ontario, the small and simple hopes of Johanna, longing for identity and meaning. It ends on a note of optimism, Ken and Johanna are going to be married, but it may be that Johanna is only going from one life of hardship to another, maybe this time with a little bit of love.
This story stayed with me for many days. I would see Johanna in many people I knew, and in many other characters in books and films, like say in Iris played by the other-worldly Kati Outinen in Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s devastating film The Match Factory Girl. I love the short story. I love its distilled thought and compact form; the writer bringing to life characters and locations with just a few flourishes. I have devoured everything from the warm and humane stories of Anton Chekhov, O Henry and Guy de Maupassant, the stinging stories of Ambai (C S Lakshmi), the twisted tales of Italian writer Dino Buzzati (in the collection Catastrophe). Stories that can take place in one afternoon like Saki’s inventive The Open Window or Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter, or many lifetimes, like so many by Annie Proulx.
Denne historien er fra August 11, 2024-utgaven av Outlook.
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Denne historien er fra August 11, 2024-utgaven av Outlook.
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Criminal Amnesia
The focus may have now shifted to the Kolkata gang rape case, but questions about the sexual violence in Manipur since May 2023 remain unanswered
To Rape A Wife
Survivors of marital rape face twin hurdles: a lack of legal framework to deal with these cases and the social stigma that comes with reporting them
A City Violated
Public outburst of anger over the rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata has left the Mamata Banerjee government puzzled, worried
The Forest of Loss
From a legal perspective, justice appears to have been served in the 2017 Gudiya rape and murder case at Kotkhai, Himachal Pradesh. But several questions persist
Here, Nobody Speaks of the Wounds
Muhammad Iqbal Shah's 14-year-old cousin was gang-raped and murdered at Handwara town, Kupwara, in 2007. The family is still trudging along the long road to justice
She Must Have Been Afraid
The 2012 Delhi gang rape is reflective of a systematic failure to cleanse the societal malaise
The Burning Woman
UP has the highest rate of crimes against women, and the district of Unnao has seen some of the State's most gruesome cases
Naked (vs.) Justice
On March 14, 2006, Latabai and her son, six, were paraded naked in a village in Solapur. Less than six months later, four members of a Dalit family were paraded naked; mother & daughter were allegedly gang-raped
Songlines of Chambal
How do the residents of Sheikhpur Gudha, Phoolan Devi's village in Uttar Pradesh, remember her: as a survivor, a rebel, a leader?
Don't You Remember My Story?
A child gang rape survivor's 12-year long ordeal in Sikar, Rajasthan shows how calls for punishment of perpetrators don't always mean empathy for the victim