A Story Too Short
February Story Series:
It Rained Stories
Granny’s Last Mango Season
Dear God
Run Baby Run
The Last Trip
The Birthday Party
Mum Again
The Haunted Tree
Six Feet To Six Feet
Tricky Journey
Hare And Tortoise-After Race
Rain Doused
Dream Home
Complete
Sharing A Meal
His Thoughts
Best Photographer
Growing Older
A Cloud Story
Day Had Just Begun
Growing Away
All OverAgain
That Local Hero
(Un)Fortunate Rainy Day
His life had come one full circle. Born inside a library, and now, buried in one.
One Book At A Time. That was the name of the library. It was located in a corner of a city which was considered as one of world’s most unsafe cities. Constant war like situation had left the city in ruins.
People came in to the library to escape the heat and the bullets. While they were inside, the owner read stories to them. He selected the stories carefully .
To men and women who seemed to believe in the extremist ideologies he read out stories of the power of love. To people who had lost hope of a better future, he read out stories of optimistic.
The number of people visiting the library was increasing by the day because it felt much safer inside. They were getting hooked on to the possibility of a better tomorrow. Some of the youngsters opened up reading nooks in other corners of the city.
But like all good stories, this one also came to an end. But this was too short a story. During a rainy night, the owner was shot dead by some extremists. He was born in that library during a curfew outside. Today, he lay buried there.
Comments
Even though the librarian dies in the end, the story of someone creating a library in a war zone is inspiring. Human nature has so much that’s lame or evil in it, but there’s something wonderful and precious in our tendency to rise up in defiance of the tragedies of life.
I love “celebrate the ordinary and beautiful self”. What a wonderful attitude!
Thanks Paul. Words can do what the sword can not.. The fact that there were more people who had followed suit and opened small reading rooms at various corners was such a relief fore me.
I am also amazed at how a story gets its own identity once it is written. I am looking at that story as a separate entity now. 🙂
“It’s own identity”. Yes, I believe I know what you’re talking about, Deepa. Does this make sense? As we write the story, we don’t see all the truths in it. Once written, we can pull back a bit to gain a more distant perspective and see things we didn’t see when our noses and eyes were right up close to the story while writing it. Any sense in that?
Absolutely. It makes more sense to me much later actually. I sometimes wonder if those words came from me… Lol!
Getting immersed in writing is like meditation. You never know where that energy comes from. As much as I would like to believe that the energy comes from within, it is overwhelming at times.
So true! When I was writing my novella length poem, “A Death in the Spring”, it took me ten days working seven to nine hours each day — but I almost didn’t feel it. I worked almost without breaks, and nearly completely immersed in writing it. I don’t know where that energy came from, but it was extraordinary.
Oh wow .. where can I read the poem , Paul..
Deepa, I would be honored! But please feel under no obligation to push through to the end of it if it at any point loses your interest. The poem is about an hour’s read. At least that.
It is also dark. I tried to avoid making it too dark, but it’s true to real events. There was no way to make the sun come out during the poem. Not without lying about what happened.
Here’s the link:
https://cafephilos.blog/2019/02/28/a-flock-of-sparrows-for-majel-a-death-in-the-spring/