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

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser