Skip to main content

Ugly Middle Position



Fiction

“How do you create a story?” The English teacher asked in the class. After listening to the answers from various students he said, “Imagine a character, give him a problem, and voila there begins your story.”

   The day’s lesson was John Updike’s story, Should Wizard Hit Mommy? In that story Jack tells a bedtime story to his daughter. It is a story about a skunk named Roger whose problem is his foul smell which drives away all his potential friends. “Children can be terribly insensitive sometimes,” the teacher said. “They are not as innocent as they are believed to be. Imagine our little hero being pooh-poohed by other children calling him Roger Stinky Skunk.”

   Jenny was sceptical as usual. Children, he said. Weren’t they animals? She didn’t like many things that her English teacher said in the class. She thought his views, quite many of them at least, were outlandish. He would say things like “Miracles are dying to be born in your minds; just change the way you perceive and watch miracles exploding like fireworks in the sky.”

   “You can all write stories if you wish,” the teacher was saying. “Just imagine a character and create a problem for him or her.”

   “You are my problem,” Jenny’s mind whispered. By ‘you’ she meant her teacher. “I shall write a story about you.”

   “The wizard changed Roger’s odious smell to the fragrance of roses,” the class continued. “The problem is solved. The story can end. But the story continues because the child to whom it is being told is not asleep yet. Or maybe Jack is not happy with the solution. So how do you continue your story?”

   “Create a new problem,” said the Einstein of the class.

   “Precisely,” the teacher said jubilantly as if Einstein had made a historical discovery.

   “That’s the problem,” Jenny’s mind whispered again. Precisely. “Haven’t you said a thousand times that there is nothing precise in life except formulas like a plus b the whole squared is equal to something? You are so self-contradictory! I’ll begin my story: John Sir is a contradiction of himself. Wow! That’s quite a thing to begin a story with!”

   “Jenny, you’re distracted,” said the teacher.

   She frowned. “No, I’m not,” she asserted.

  “Okay, tell me what I just said.”

   “Create problems,” Jenny said.

   “Fine. Do you think a skunk should smell like roses? A problem?”

   “Why can’t a skunk smell like roses if he likes that?”

   “Well, shouldn’t a skunk smell like skunks?”

   “You tell us to smile even when we don’t feel like smiling. If we can smile when we want to cry, why can’t a skunk smell like a rose?”

   “Awww, Jenny!” His usual histrionics again. She hated it. “That’s just the point, the ugly middle position that Jack finds himself in at the end.”

   The teacher went on. There is the fairy world of magic and miracles on the one hand, the world of the stories Jack creates for his daughter. Then there is the prosaic world of harsh realities where his wife is right now painting their furniture in spite of her pregnancy. Jack finds himself caught between the two worlds.

   “I’m caught between two worlds,” Jenny heard her mind whisper. “Between your drama and my reality.”

   “Inertia is the ugly middle position,” said the teacher. “Jack stands inert at the end, incapable of action. Action is what carries life forward. Pick up your brush, Jack, and paint your future, er... I mean, furniture….”

   “What action could I take when my dad left mom and me to live with another woman?” Jenny’s mind whirred. “You don’t know how much I long to go for a drive with him listening to the love songs he plays in the car. But he abandoned me. I’m so unlovable? And you tell me to smile all the time….”

   “If Roger wants to smell like roses, that’s his choice,” the teacher said. “He is in action, at least. Of course, he will have to face the consequences. Will other skunks accept him? That’s his mother’s question. When that choice comes Roger has to act again. Until then, Jenny is right, why can’t Roger smell like whatever he wants?”

   “Ugly middle position!” Jenny mumbled.

   “Yes, Jenny, you said something?” The teacher asked.

   “Is life full of ugly middle positions?” She asked.

   “Isn’t it? The problem is if you get stuck to inertia, my dear. You have to choose, you have to act, you have to go on.”

   Jenny stared at the teacher. A smile longed to bloom on her lips. But she suppressed it.


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. The teacher's solution is a wise one. Jenny will take time to come out of her ugly middle position. But she is lucky to get this teacher who can pull her out of inertia. Because life is not kind, a teacher like John is. Wonderful solution. Anyone can write a story if they know how to arrive at solutions for the problems they have created. How metaphorical is that to life as well! Genius piece.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm obliged.i know this story may be a bit obscure to those not familiar with Updike's story. But I had to write it. Was relieved to read your comment.

      Delete
  2. A fiction at eye's level and fact at head's level with a wonderful heart at its heart!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautifully written! Lot to fathom!I would read it my daughter. Loved the characters and the situation!

    ReplyDelete

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

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...