Skip to main content

The Artist Makes his Funeral Pyre



Fiction

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a kingdom.  The King was very particular about law and order, discipline and cleanliness, uniformity and conformity, and so on.  So he ordered that no one should criticise the administration overtly or covertly, explicitly or implicitly.  He had soldiers and spies throughout the kingdom to catch anyone who disobeyed his orders. 

Divyanshu was arrested by one of those countless, nebulous officers.  His crime was that he had painted a portrait of the King.  In fact, the King looked more handsome and imposing in the portrait than he really was.  The King was displeased by something about the portrait.  Divyanshu was never told what it was that displeased the King.  He thought he had made a magnificent portrait.  He had placed in his prayer room along with his gods.  But the King was angry.  Without even seeing the portrait.

Divyanshu was given the usual punishment.  He was ordered to set up his own funeral pyre before sunset.  At sunset he would be executed and placed on the funeral pyre.  He had the liberty to make the funeral pyre as beautiful as he wished.

With whatever pieces of wood he was given, Divyanshu began making his funeral pyre as beautiful as he could.  Being an artist he had a clear vision of how the funeral pyre should look like.  He made it on a platform.  He gave it the shape of classical tombs he had seen in pictures.  By the time his body would be burnt the platform would catch fire too.  The entire thing would collapse with a thud which he imagined to be loud enough to shake the heavens.  Artists have such big egos that they imagine heavenly participation in their funeral too.

“You idiot!” The soldier who was guarding him shouted.  “Finish it up quickly; there’s only an hour left for sunset. What do you think you are making?  A monument?”

What else?  Divyanshu asked himself.  Don’t I have this freedom at least?  What sort of an artist would I be otherwise?

The sun was beginning to show signs of sinking beyond the horizon.  The soldier approached.  He looked at the funeral pyre with some dismay.  “Beautiful!” he mumbled in spite of himself.


Labels:

Comments

  1. parwatisingariAugust 24, 2017 at 7:29 AM

    :) I was awaiting him creating a prototype of himself for the pyre while he vanished.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 24, 2017 at 8:07 AM

      Does our country today give room for such optimism?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
11 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...
10 comments
Read more

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...
8 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more