Mushtaque B Barq

Myth graphic narrative

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From Ayesha’s Diary

The eagles up above the world of men were whirling. No, not in the manner a dervish circumambulates. The whirl was massive. All the eagles following the instructions were creating the ferocious circle in the backyard were on the beds of Gillsar dwellers usually dump their filth.

Ayesha lifted her head from the pillow and was greeted with that gargantuan whirl of birds.

“What is this?” she murmured.

The floor of her room registered her quiet footsteps. The whirl in the blue was appealing. She let her salt doll to take measures of the event. Her watchful gaze rested upon a sac. It was placed next to the dustbin stationed for a different purpose.

“What must be in the sack?”

Her multicity of presumption gained much adipose and before her was a heap of rubble with uncountable question marks.

In the meantime, a group of boys explored the sac for now eagles were no more in the blue but around the heap of filth.

Her ecstatic trance collapsed when in one voice the boys shouted “Allah o Akbar”

The slogans forced the late risers to lift the quilts from their dreamy eyes. And within no time a crowd surrounded the sac and blocked her wide awake eyes.

The tattered sac exposed a dead man.

The slogans died down. A strange silence took over.

Cops arrived, ambulance too. The matter in the sac was carried for scrutiny.

Stories started to fill the air. The dead man was able to dip deep into the very nose of the highly imaginative folk.

Late that night the newscaster announced, “An unknown dead body was found near Gillsar and the police are looking into the matter.”

The stories were different. Men had their own way to deal with the matter. Women had different narratives. Pathetic and passionate. The dead man had involved everyone.

These eagles are incredible creatures. They can see what man cannot. But they cannot narrate like men down on the surface. These flying machines can only detect and leave the rest for the man on the earth to do the rest.

Someone must have stretched his imaginations beyond the borders to create a tale that the dead man in the sac was a police informer. This was sensational. All of a sudden the narratives were erased, modified and redrafted within no time.

People create stories; they can go wherever their imaginations lead them.

“Can a storyteller afford to do so?”

A writer is bound by certain laws and means, a common man knows no laws to narrate. But both have stories. Stories are stories anyway. An expert handcuffs his wrist to put his observations on the paper while as a common man knows no chains. His hands can reach where his uncensored imagination wish to, but to a genuine writer, the fetters hold him, the structure binds him and above all the plot limits him. Despite these limitations, he finds his place in the storybooks while as a common man’s tale vanishes before it touches the tissue. Whatever be the story, everyone has tried and will keep on creating stories till he becomes a tale. It costs nothing to create a tale for a common man. He can make a dead man speak volumes. His flow is flawless for his head rests on the silken pillow to dream in the lap of a cozy comfort of his mattress. While as the flip side of the coin is a walk on the scorching sand giving up the most lovable muscle of sole along with a subtle sheen of his face. Whatever be the case people buy stories. A sensitive one buys it from the books while as insensitive from the market- places. But what matters is that both market and reading rooms are governed by characters of all sorts. Creating a heap out of a mole or thinning a heap to a mole is what at the end of the day makes a story. Stories are sweet. Sweeter is the storyteller. The sweetest must be found. Do we have readers who read sweet stories following suggestion? Do we have readers who read for they want to read for the sake of the reading? Do we have the readers who read for giving vent to their own stories? Do we have the readers who read to be read later on? A question to me as well. Where shall I place myself? Do I read what others recommend or do I read to connect my wayward threads with the line of the author or do I read to be read by others? My sincere and honest confession lies in the fact that I want to be read and recommended for I put what I observe like a common man but polish the flow like what is recommended by experts. I may have failed to satisfy the reader’s demand but then what makes me bleed on the paper is my continuous effort to improve and to learn from mistakes. A story is a mistake carried down the line. One picks it right at the cost of a mistake, intentional or unintentional and one distorts it for others have correctly accounted what at the end turns just a bundle of ideas only. Ideas are just like thin threads of a cobweb. They are easily oscillated by a mere gush of the wind but at times even a tornado fails to break this delicately designed the edifice.

Let it be. Come on who has not learned from mistakes. My mistake I must pick before others spoil the hard-earned thread of my imaginations, but before picking it out I must commit one. Being picked by someone seems harsh, but then criticism is the jugular vein that supplies serum of sustenance to the entire globe of existence. Let all the stories be stories worth valued and a happy gesture of gratitude aided with human sufferings and demands. Let all the story tellers purchase the matter for their scripts from the society they live in, from every human heart that throbs and from the rest of the creatures that constitute this mother earth.

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