To set the proper tone for this piece, I would (unwillingly) let you in on a childhood secret of mine… no not that one you… you strange person leering on the page/screen/HUD!
I used to watch Bollywood movies as a kid (still do, when feeling a little juvenile), and I used to BELIEVE in them, capital letters and all.
Not only that “(mostly) good triumphs over (openly) evil” or “the poor mother always had the wherewithal to make gajar ka halva for her unemployed son” and other such truths that I fail to agree to now. But also that these were actual events that happened in real-time, and someone, somehow, recorded the same for my viewing pleasure and moral upliftment.
That would be well and fine. That is if I did not have a problem of drifting attention, and had kept my eyes, and quite-limited processing power of brain, concentrated on the lead characters.
But no… young padawan, notice the background I did. (I know not why, the Yoda in me emerges when I least expect!)
My favored notables were the characters with no backstories provided.
The man in the jarring plaid suit in the party scene, nodding oh-so-knowingly while the characters in the foreground sang. (He must be truly enjoying himself, and given what I could garner about the quality of his choice based on his sartorial preferences, the singer needed music lessons asap).
The one dancer amongst the twenty behind the lissome lass of our hero’s dreams, dancing slightly out of sync but trying to ensure that her highly expressive face was seen as long as humanly possible. (She must be the heroine of some other saga, and which would be recorded separately and which would be immensely more interesting than the present sob-fest).
The thinnest goon throwing himself valiantly at the shirtless protagonist even after his coworker with more pronounced musculature has been the recipient of an authoritative enough physical punishment that would deter a lesser mortal. (A better model for perseverance and ambition would be difficult to find).
In fact after watching yet another multi-starrer with few of the same stars repeated from a hazily remembered cine-story seen earlier, I was convinced that I just saw the same incidents, but from a different perspectives. There were repercussions of this innocent gullibility. There was laughter, let me say, and I didn’t laugh along. And the entity that gently not-laughed was not Eric Clapton’s guitar #more-words-than-required.
Come to think of it, even Hollywood did that to me once. In my college years, a group of us had “rented” two movies, at least one of them starring Tom Cruise. We were the third or fourth group to get our dirty mitts on them.
This was during the medieval ages (yes I am THAT old!), when movies came in a set of two VCD’s (ahh… old times). So, we saw the first half. After being suitably impressed by our utter failure to understand non-subtitled movies in Yankee accents, we inserted the second CD, marked “CD 2” by the helpful pirate cinephile.
After about half way through this CD, we found our confounded-ness higher than usual. After embarrassingly whispered due diligence, we realized we had watched two movies, half of one and half of another. Needless to say, we, the sheepish Hollywood-aficionado-wannabe’s, did not see the balance bits of the aforementioned movies. All I remember of that linguistically-challenged movie-night is that Tom Cruise may have acted as a lawyer, in at least one movie in his career, and at least two Hollywood movies have lawyers as protagonists and may have been based on John Grisham novels.
OK… that’s enough of a digression. What I meant to start on, before my brain meandered away to embarrassing and probably incriminating piracy related memories, is that there is more interesting stuff hidden in the well-known stories if we try to follow them through the narrative view of a minor character or a major character when he/she/it is off stage.
Say, we take a well-known epic, which has now attained religious overtones over and above the moralistic entertainment it was meant for.
Next, we ask forgiveness of our parents, grand-parents and all those who shall abhor us and rue the day the gods decided to blacken their genetic escutcheon by causing us to be born.
We then, nonchalantly, assume that may be, may be the Good were just good, and that too not always, especially when they thought no one living was watching them (#dead-bodies=no-body), or better still know that they won’t live to tell the tale (#soon-to-be-dead-bodies=no-body) soon.
And more interestingly, the Bad were not that bad either.
After this major leap of cynical epiphany, we realize that one way to re-tell the tale and not get lynched is to tell it through the narratives of those who do not feature prominently in the publicly known saga. i.e. as Backstories to the Background characters. Let’s call this B2B for short. The posts
backstory |ˈbakstɔːri| noun (pl. backstories)
SOME SEARCH ENGINE, KGP KAA… SUNDAR SIR!
a history or background created for a fictional character in a film or television programme
background |ˈbakgraʊnd| noun
SAME SEARCH ENGINE, TEMPO HIGH… PITCHAI BHAI!
the part of a picture, scene, or design that forms a setting for the main figures or objects, or appears furthest from the viewer
So, thus I would like to start yet another of my attempts to sew together a definitive tale with a start and an end, from the various shooting-the-wind sessions I have had with the less judgmental of my acquaintances before all of them get discredited as being unoriginal. As someone smarter, and more persevering, than me got through writing it, and sold a few copies, or a few million of them to the populace, which is much less judgmental than I have expected them to be. been doing this for close to two decades now (yes I am THAT old!). Interestingly, my friends, with very few but notable exceptions, get more and more judgmental, longer and better they have known me. Does this mean something? Is the world sending me a message? Nah…
Some more context setting, this time truly contextual. We will have three simple rules, or should we say guidelines:
First, It’s Not Magic, Never. The approximate era is when humans had started building city states, when technology had not truly earned the right to be called so. Whenever there is mention of something that sounds too sci-fi to be true, it is precisely that: not true. Reasons may range from the over-enthusiastic embellishment that rumor and ego bestows or more mundane, sheer laziness on my part to be honestly diligent in this retelling. What can you expect, you are most probably reading this for free!
Second, Names Hide a Story. The names the individuals in long-remembered and told sagas are known and remembered of are more of descriptors or sobriquets (or both) rather than Names as we know of now. So a single individual can be called by many names, based on who calls and why. Similarly different individuals can be called by the same name, but normally not concurrently. We will try to follow the same. Names were either given or earned – sometimes in a quite roundabout manner. For example, if you are the shortest guy in the room, when someone shouts “Hey Shorty!”, there is little doubt who they mean by that. On the other hand, if there are three people sharing a small space, and one of whom uses a distinctive and not entirely pleasant-smelling unguent, the other two may refer to the third – clandestinely or openly – as the “sweet smelling one”. On yet another hand, someone may have been known specifically for being bestowed by a highly appreciated characteristic – say height. This someone had adversarial relations with another individual, who clearly either did not have the aforementioned characteristic or had it at a distinctly lower level. Post some turmoil, the first someone was no more able to correct the second someone (or his/her sycophants) from referring to the first someone as “The Not So Tall One”, then progressively, “The Not At All Tall One”, and finally “The Ridiculously Short One”. You may wish to read about A Handsome Prince!
Third, The Devil Lies in the Details. As all those amongst who has tried to lie convincingly would attest (while the rest of you persist to be economical with the truth), when you are least sure of the actual reality, and are most afraid of being caught, more descriptive you make your attempts to create the impression that you know about what you are talking about. For example, if you saw a cat yesterday at around 08 00 HRS, you would tell us that you saw a cat yesterday morning, who was kind of tabby. On the other hand, if you didn’t see a cat, and in fact have no idea how a feline creature looks like, you would describe how beautiful the sunrise was yesterday, and how while you were spell bound by the play of light on the verandah to your not-so-humble abode, you espied a cat, and were especially impressed by the fuchsia hues of its third tail and whose single eye reminded you of the time you read Homer’s Odyssey in a single sitting, that too in original Greek, when you were in kindergarten. Hi there Sid!
With that, let us start on the saga … wait… can we try something different. This time around each post would be a separate experiment in story-telling – a short story if you may – with or without a shared reality. Given my penchant with saga making, there may be cross-references, and those who read all may find common threads which enhance each story.
So let the experiments with untruths, half-truths and outright lies start.
They may not be happy. They talk of not the Victor’s. Nor of the Loser’s. They are the stories of the Nobody’s, you see. If not someone like you, then definitely someone like me 🥺 !
They definitely won’t be beautiful. Them being cousins to UGLIE stories, you see.
They most probably will be only marginally funny, or even patently unfunny.
They will definitely not be religious but may (if we try hard) be interesting.
So, let’s all do what Confucius cursed us with, Live in Interesting Times, or at the least Lie about them!
Random Mythoscopy 