Pisasu a Mysskin Disappointment

A zoom out shot insetting in its rectangular frame a young girl's dreamy visage with opened eyes and a lock soaked in blood suggesting head injury opens Pisasu. A shot very similar to the one in Onaiyum Aatukutiyum with the contrast of day light and zoom out but with bird's eye view credits the pattern that Mysskin uses to begin his narration. The indispensible autorickshaw, the Chennai streets, sub ways, apartment houses barge in to trumpet the style of Mysskin, that of late have canonised themselves with the crowning of "stereotypes". There is this trademark judo, karate and other defensive martial arts-pulped stunt sequence to hallmark the presence of the distinctiveness of the narrator-director. With all this paraphrenalia the director jumps onto the wagon to embark on a hair raising, spine chilling ghost adventure. Alas, the wagon swerves off of logic oil slick and dives into an abyss to pull itself over. Visually narrative scenes of the beginning shroud themselves of coyness and allow them to be usurped by blaring, vociferous vocal cannons of dialogues. The tempo of narration gets a limping support from scampering camera angles which only add woes to screenplay mobility. The one eyed hero, the other eye being covered by his falling hair, resmbling a cyclop, has also been caught up along with the 'sutra-dhari' in the muddled up situation of battling with logic. The detective faculty of the cyclop hero goes blunt when he is rescued from the thugs that come to rob money of the blind musician alms seekers whereas it sharpens to make him receive the dawning knowledge of the auto rickshaw driver's colour-blindness. The cyclop hero's mother and his neighbour never make ruckus of the beating of the malechavunist husband who invites the wrath of the pisasu by being cruel to the hero's mother. Logic helps with the end but not with the selection of the protaginist's domicile for the pisasu's shelter.

Morals of the story: Girls take only a split second to choose their lover and also to fall in love and are avowed to follow that lover even after death. Spirits especially those of young spinsters take refuge in the houses of their lovers and act as protective godmothers of the lover's family. Nothing could drive those young spinster spirits away from their places of stay, which is possible only when they choose to vacate. One can exterminate a spirit's existence by burning its body along with it. Spirits of young spinsters even pardon their murderers if the murder or killing is an accident and not planned and is committed by beaux. It is quite a disappointment for Mysskin lovers.

From Paper to Screen: A Stupendous Transformation of a Literary Work

A creative work is much celebrated by the public. The creator is treated on a par with God. The creator, familiarly known as author, enjoys a special status in society. What accounts the author to have been bestowed with such distinctive treatment? An author is special because in him or her is honed the skill of procreation: a magical talent of transforming the dreary, stultifying, drab world into palatable, scrumptious delicacy tailored to the taste of art gourmet: that consumes it with the necessity to fill the intellectual cavern of hunger, to quench the hogging fire of a dearth of artistic exercise and production and to revel in discussions, to forget the permeating illness of a surrounding that does suck the sap of energy in forms of humans. No doubt that a creative art form with such enormity of reception and energy to stir the minds and hearts of the readers and viewers, in the case of performing art forms, should never go unnoticed and should have had a greater reach into the masses. Such type of creativity and those that create them are not to be slighted. However, there runs the under current of a responsibility of choosing the creation, as all that is written are not special. Most are unpalatable, indigestible, unfit to be consumed and bring with them elements of toxicity to breath out bacteria that help with both digestion and securing nutrients. The onus of culling and glorifying a creative work of literature rests with the consumers for whom the literary work is especially tailored.

How does a work get created? Certainly, those that create populate the earth and share with the ordinary public the world that they inhabit. The milieu remains the same for both the author and the audiences. A work of literature gets engrossed with the reader when there is mutual sharing of experiences portrayed. It is not mandatory that the readers should hail from the same territory to imbibe the events depicted and characters' world of survival. Any literary work could have in it glimpses of daily life that match with the lives of readers, though there never is a chance of a complete matching with an individual reader's life. As the readers read a literary work, they simultaneously construct the world inhabited by the characters of fictitious origin. The readers voluntarily subject themselves to feelings of vicariousness and readily transform themselves as those of fictitious beings and travel with the imaginary characters and identify themselves with either one or more of those fictitious personalities. In the process of involving themselves in the creative work, the readers invent figures so personally configured, the milieu much akin to the place of their living and the application of logic that is whimsical and suits to the personal gains of the character of their liking. As works of art are engendered owing to the experience of their creator, the experience may be personal as the author is ready to share his travails of life or the author would have been a witness to a horrifying event which coerced him or her to react and rouse passion to do something about the catastrophe, their validity must be put to test. Those works of art that withstand the ordeal of screening and establish themselves as serious work of literature, have the capacity to penetrate into the masses and camp firmly in their hearts. At this juncture comes in the genre of film, that takes an interest in the literary work and is very much at transforming, mutating and decorating it in a new garb. Film is an extended art form of drama as it comes under the category of performing arts. Drama has a limited arena for its enactment, in other words drama is confined to four walls or during the time of Shakespeare to much limited resources for production both in terms of props and actors. Film can be called a stage that has the magical feature of accommodating much in its length and breadth and also can tour and adopt to seasons. Films rely much on script for the screen which is otherwise known as screenplay. Screenplay is the story teller or the narrator that decides the sequence of events and their queue. When a popular literary work attracts the attention of a film maker, he or she would occupy in writing a screen story. A salient feature of movies that is films is the use of camera as stage which has an independent capacity, non dependability, either on the actors or on dialogues for narrating the story. The involvement of the camera actually requires a screenplay as there is the possibility of narrating the story sans dialogues. The transformation of a written literary work into a moving picture is stupendous as the black image of letters on white sheet incarnates into animated forms, often with much support from backdrops and variegated display of fine colour. As the written work takes the avatar of a movie either in black and white or colour it comes into clash with the readers' vicarious world, as there is no guarantee that the movie maker's fantasising goes in accordance with any reader's creation of the virtual world of the black letters. No sooner does the reader see the movie than he/she is caught with mixed feelings of either nausea, aversion if the screen version portrays images contrary to their visualisation or a slight discomfort if some anthropomorphs go well with their virtual story.

For a raw viewer, one who is a stranger to the written version, a well made movie that has absorbed in itself the grammar of a movie, looks quite nice in terms of its making. However the raw viewer disqualifies himself/herself from participating in thorough critique of the screen version as the ignorance on the part of the raw viewer prevents a knowledge of changes and liberties taken of it. A major motion picture could succeed in eliciting remark as it surpasses in its screen version in successfully transforming the tenets of written composition into visual nuances where images and angles of camera usurp characters and act as conveyance of theme and subject. Pier Paolo Pasolini presents the gospel of St Mathew in neo realistic style and his portrayal of Oedipus is tinged in modern crisis. Those two are examples of how a known and popular fiction could be put to an entirely different treatment on the screen. As the genres have in them complex variations and could also allow themselves to be amenable to rich, powerful, innovative ways of treatment of subject matter and theme, the audiences are in for two different banquets on decorated platters of magnificence.

Warring Sexes

The Mother of Pondicherry first met Sri Aurobindo in 1914 when she came to Pondicherry. Mirra Alfassa, who became the disciple of Sri Aurobindo and later referred to simply as 'Mother' wrote volumes of letters and essays and her spiritual talks had all been combined for a special edition of publication. Mirra had to leave Pondicheery, immediately after reaching it in 1914 due to the first World war. She took asylum in Japan where she happened to meet Rabindranath Tagore. Her sojourn in Japan was productive as she spent her free time in writing essays and letters. 'Woman and the War' is one of her interesting essays that were written in Japan that show how savvy Mirra was in current affairs of her time. The essay begins with a self-imposed question to put Mirra's idea on Feminism and its recent developments. Mirra compares the first world war's impact with the growth of feminism. The war is seen as a dispenser of scum that has been masking the eyes of the world. It has peeled off the pseudo upper layer to show the world how the sexes could complement each other for a better world. The war shows the world of the uselessness of the fight between the sexes and reserving jobs for the woman folk. When men were at the front, the women stepped into their shoes perfectly. Women were considered an object of pleasure, a distraction to productive work and a tender of family heretofore. The war provided an opportunity to women to prove their mettle and calibre. When women could assist the wounded at the war front, could they be termed as the weaker sex. Mirra quotes of the ancient Indian life where the women were allowed to govern and she also reflects that such a system is also in vogue in France, when it comes to administering the house-hold chores. However women are not allowed to hold public offices and govern a public body. She ruminates on a true incident that happened at the time of the first world war. An American society had requested its English counter part to help to save a few villages from famine that were on the Belgian soil under the German occupation. The request fell in the deaf ears of men. Fortunately a nurse heard it and with tremendous skill and organisational act she accomplished the act with her woman friends. Mirra is not too proud of the capabilities of women. She is wary of their weaknesses too that also get exposed by the first world war. She wants women to extricate themselves from the grip of emotions and sentimentality if they want to succeed in their position. Of course women are capable of love and humility and abstain from brutality and vulgarity. However they must getaway from passionate nature and partisanship to sustain themselves as successful administrators. Mirra appeals to the world to include women to achieve more. Women are for the interior and men for the exterior shall no longer be fructifying. The sexes must be put together for a sustainable progression. The hostility between the sexes must be put aside in the obsolete category. The war has destroyed the old structure and in their places must rise structures that are jointly built by men and women. Mirra feels that it can only be achieved through spiritual energy. All humans ought to grow spiritually. The Dhammata, the divine world of Buddhism is at the basis and on it is built other structures that sees all equally and does there remain no distinction. The feminist problem is spiritual problem and in recognising the spiritual equality can it be solved.

Feminist Poetry - Glimpses

'The Other Side of a Mirror' is a poem by Mary Elizabeth, the great great niece of the great romantic poet, S T Coleridge. The poem presents a morose picture of the figure in the looking glass. A woman looks herself in a mirror which reflects her inner self. The speaker of the poem claims herself a conjurer and creates a visual in the glass. Instead of reflecting a lively, gay woman, the mirror shows the figure of a sullen woman. The figure has an unkempt hair and the face is want of beauty that once filled itself with jealousy. The face is an aureole of distress. The figure's mouth is agape and lips are parched and nothing comes off it. Her eyes gleam but express a dying desire in her. The face stands for a hopeless dream. The emotions of revenge and jealousy possess the face and are responsible for the dying flame of goodness. The vision is obnoxious and the woman pleads the vision to die out and never to return. The woman is so sure of the uncanny form in the mirror and whispers out to it that it stands for herself. The poem reflects on the distressful state of the narrator. The use of words that stand for contrary feelings suggests that the narrator is in the state of quandary and oscillation. However the line 'She has no voice to speak her dread' clearly states that the woman is enduring an unspeakable suffering and voicing of which would put her in jeopardy. The poem is an example of subjugation and torment of inner self. 'The Doubt of Future Foes' is Queen Elizabeth's poem, is believed to have been composed between 1568 and 1571. The poem depicts the queen's skill in rhetoric too. Queen Elizabeth faced hardship as any monarch would have, during her rule, to her throne. The poem written in the background of the rising of Queen Mary of Scotland up against Queen Elizabeth stands testimony to Queen Elizabeth's valour and administrative excellence. Queen Mary took refuge in England in 1568 by abdicating her Scottish throne that resulted in the movement of putting the Catholic Mary on the English throne. There were a number of attempts to throw away non-protestant, not-catholic Queen Elizabeth who took up a middle path by distancing herself from both sects. The queen is much worried about the prospective attack on her kingdom that makes her subjects concerned and worried. She tells them that if they apply their reason then they will not get worried. She comforts her subjects that all the perilous attempts of their foes will be thwarted by her force.The eyes of the foes have been covered with pride that blinds their vision and makes them miscalculate her strength. She warns that the person who sows the seed of ill-will would get disappointed as peace will eventually conquer. The land of Elizabeth never fosters traitors that would stay to prevent the entry of the aliens. Her sword would see to it that the enemy gets destroyed on their entry. Elizabeth Cary is the first woman English playwright whose work got published. She also holds the credit of her biography being written officially, the first ever of an English woman writer. 'The Tragedy of Mariam' is the first play in verse by an English woman. Cary took the story from the Hebrew tales that got translated by Josephus. The story is about king Herod who leaves his wife Doris for Mariam. The king is helped by his sister Salome. In this prescribed piece the chorus speaks about the duties of a wife. It is not enough that the wife shuns herself away from committing evil. She must also exercise precaution from getting herself plunged in the suspicion of others. She should restrict her free will and practice restrain. Though there are liberties allowed legally, a woman would not indulge in themselves freely. She is forbidden from letting personal things go to a second ear, that would blot her honour. A woman has to give herself completely to her man. She must not allow her mind to wander and offer only her body to her man and must not let free will to takeover her mind. This may ruin her chastity and make her impure. Thus the chorus advises Mariam who has committed the act of snatching Herod from Doris. Lady Mary Chudleigh, a seventeenth century, self educated genius of a writer, discusses the patriarchal supremacy in the prescribed part of her poem 'The Ladies' Defense or a Dialogue between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loveall, Melissa and a Parson'. Melissa answers about the duties of a woman, as earmarked by the men. She is a representative of the female world and is dissatisfied with the position and treatment of women in the patriarchal society. The men hate women and never allow them to the secret of that which attracts men to women. The menfolk prevent women from education and knowledge and accuse them that they are incapable and fit only for household chores. It is denial of opportunity and forced branding that the women have to face. The world has turned its head away and the women have only to plead to heaven. The world is spiteful and vengeful. Even those who pity women's status do not realise their true strength. The men think that it is enough for a woman to know how to dress and dance and to their impervious heads it never occurs that women are for far better prospects. Melissa then calls out to all women to snap the strings that attach themselves to a puppeteer. They must wake up to knowledge, throw away novels and take history books instead. Women must immerse themselves in all nooks of knowledge and practice humility. These acts will fetch them respect, fame and will silence men and they will be in the affable company of other women and more importantly it will make them withstand the malice of men and stop their yearning for them.

The Balcony

Jean Genet's 'The Balcony' is an eponymous title. It is the name of a brothel house run by a woman named Irma. It is an unusual brothel house where one's physical gratification never gets fulfilled. It is a place where one goes to gratify one's desire. The desire has nothing to do with one's physical urge. It is to do with one's hope of life, one's ambition and one's hankering for power. The whole play could be viewed in the aspects of desire for power, temporary loss of power and retention of the lost supremacy. The characters are the Bishop, the General, the chief of police and the judge who visit Irma's phantasmagoric studio where their inner desires get fulfilled by Irma. She supplies props and also characters and creates situations and executes their intentions. The characters or personalities turn to Irma to compensate their loss in the real world. The whole play is set only in the studio of Irma where most of the action takes place and the audiences are fed with information about the coup d'etat of without now and then with the arrival of characters. Genet works out the transformation fantastically as the members of Irma's clientele get in to ease them and with a sense of unbearableness of their loss. As the play progresses, there is gaining of power by the insurrectionists and as it reaches its denouement they are put under control and power gets restored. Irma appears as queen and faces the audiences and addresses them. It is not clear whether she puts on the role of the queen or she appears as queen. However she confirms the disbelief of the audiences by stating that things will be very strange in their real lives in their houses. The play ends with this final speech of Irma/Queen that is addressed to the audiences and not to the characters of the play. Through this play Genet confirms the 'play' of supreme powers in the lives of humans and its permeation everywhere.

Sisyphus - an Existential Man

Albert Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus' is a four chapter book that deals with many of the modern philosophical issues concerned with life. Camus discusses the possibilities for a human to commit suicide and the functioning of the individual's brain and its abetting in the act of committing suicide. The fourth chapter retains the title of the book, 'The Myth of Sisyphus'. Sisyphus, a righteous kind, committed the act of divulging a divine secret for water. He chose to enjoy what the Earth could give rather than what the divine decide. Another version puts him in the list of callous men who acted as a highwayman. Yet another version calls him a recalcitrant who chained the powerful Death and made Pluto angry. However all these versions agree on the punishment meted out to him; rolling a boulder to the pinnacle of a mountain whence it would roll down to the abyss of the underworld owing to its weight. Camus considers the mythological Sisyphus a representative of modern man. He compares the unproductive task of rolling the big rock to the pinnacle of a mountain to the day to day labour of men. Only when the labourers get conscious of their activities and their meaninglessness they get frustrated and their day to day life will be torturous. What causes this frustration is the teeny weeny sapling of hope that clings on to this harsh physical activity. Sisyphus is never conscious of his absurdity until he hopes not of positioning the rock on the mountain. When the hope of stationing it on the pinnacle buds in his heart, he is sucked into the vortex of disappointment. He will find himself in the position of doing a useless labour. According to Homer, Sisyphus is condemned by the Gods to this state which according to Them is the most poignant punishment. The strain is only physical until the condemned is not aware and not thinking beyond this hard labour, which turns to be a mental trauma once the victim begins nurturing hope. Camus takes up this Sisyphus who has committed himself to hard labour without an inkling of its consequences. This acceptance of one's predicament as it has been a product of one's own acts eliminates the possibility of a higher destiny. Camus presents Sisyphus as an existential man who never bothers with the ideology of the existence of God. For him everything in

the world exists and interests. Camus is concerned very much with the descending Sisyphus whose contemplation gives energy to his existence and whose reverie puts him in the position of deciding his fate in the world.

Woman of Moral Stories

She had a very unhappy childhood. She lost her mother when she was eleven and saw her suffer when the mother had to give her daughters in adoption owing to their dire straits living. She had a good patron who paid dowry on behalf of her to have her live happily, which turned out to be a severe disaster. Her husband was dissolute and her marriage got annulled after two years. She was Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, the French woman writer of the eighteenth century. All her personal suffering gave her resource for her writing and made her a writer of didactic tales for young people, especially girls. Beauty and the Beast is one such tale of hers and she uses it to instruct the young girls. The writer believes in right upbringing, possession of righteousness, simplicity and moral uprightness amongst young people as traits to be honed for decent living. Most of her tales reflect all these notions of hers. Once upon a time there lived a merchant. He was very rich and had three beautiful daughters. Of the three the last one was very kind and simple and helped all. She was not haughty and carried herself in all humility and treated the rich, the poor, the invalid and the healthy alike. The people of the town began calling her beauty and soon it became her name. On the contrary her two elder sisters were unkind, rough and in possession of stolid temperament. It so happened that the merchant all of a sudden lost all his wealth and chose to live in penurious condition. Beauty did all the chores as there were no servants whereas her two sisters were busy finding suitable matches for them. They got rejected by wealthy gentlemen who had been rejected by the two sisters when they were rich on the ground that those gentlemen were not super rich. The two sisters were of the opinion that Beauty was meant for menial life only and never partook in daily chores to help her. One day the merchant got information that if he could take a trip he would get back at least half of his lost wealth. So the father bade farewell and departed with the intention of satisfying the requests of his daughters. The eldest needed a diamond necklace, the second needed a suite of pearls and Beauty simply needed a white rose. The journey was fructifying and the merchant could find the requirements of his first two daughters and was in disconsolation as he could not find any white rose. He was taking his trip back and found a palatial house with fine garden overlooking and an avenue of lemon and orange trees.

Boccaccio's Love Tale

An interesting idea also an useful one to survive. Ten Florentine youth, seven women and three men to escape the Black Death, decided to flee to a remote villa in a country-side called Fiesole in Italy and stay there until the disease got subsided. Each evening they narrated tales to kill boredom and ennui except one day that dedicated to house-hold chores. On the tenth day, they were amazed to find them in possession of one hundred tales with them. The title of the book literally means 'Ten-day Event' (The Decameron). Boccaccio's 'Federigo and Giovanna' is the penultimate tale of the fifth day's narration. Boccaccio started composing this work, the one hundred tales, probably in 1350 and took one to three years to complete it. This interesting love story is about a young man of Florence, the son of Messers Filippo Alberighi. He is Federigo degli Alberighi. Federigo is in love with a very beautiful woman of Florence, Monna Giovanna.

Federigo was head over heels in love with the woman that he did everything to attract her. He took part in Joust and Tourneys and threw parties extensively and invited the gentle folk of the town. This unstinting love was snubbed by Giovanna who held up her chastity and threw no glance at this man. Federigo never stopped his activities and soon became a victim of penury. He sold all his wealth and chose to endure his poverty by staying on the only remaining farm of him in Campi. He held in possession a Falcon and that comforted him during his moments of dismay. In the meantime, Giovanna happily married and gave out a male child to the world. She was living happily until her husband fell ill and made a will to bequeath all his property to his lovable son, and made his wife heir to the property lest the son could die without legitimate children. After her husband's death, the widow came to spend sometime on one of her farms in Campi. There her son managed to hook up a friend-ship with Federigo and became a great fan of the falcon. One day the boy suddenly fell ill and day by day his illness aggravated. Monna was worried and wanted to mitigate his illness by doing what the boy really required. Knowing that the boy wants to possess the falcon of Federigo, Giovanna with all humility decided to visit him in person and with shame would ask for the falcon. On seeing Giovanna at his doorstep, that she never condescended to visit him when he was rich, Federigo became happy and decided to give her what he could. She expressed her interest in dining with him and unfortunately the poor man could not afford a decent meal. At last he killed the falcon and made a fine curry and served her with all happiness. Afterwards he felt bad of doing so, as the visit of hers was to have the falcon alive for her son. Reconciling with the fate, Giovanna returned empty-handed and the son of hers died owing either to the disappointment or the unrelenting illness in a few days. Giovanna was still young and rich and her brothers compelled her to marry and she decided to take the gentlemanly Federigo as her husband in the end.

The Uruguay Melody

A sheer poetry on screen from South America. This Uruguay movie is set in a small town of Melo abutting the Brazilian border. Some men of this village occupy themselves in contra banding goods (even household items) from the other side of the border to make a living. The movie is set in 1988 and based on the visit of the then Pope, Pope John Paul II, to Melo. There is much hoopla and hype about the turn-outs for the liturgical service that the Pope would hold in the small town. The villagers borrow money to set up stalls for the attendees. The protagonist Beto wears his 'Think-hat' and builds a toilet by doing service to the local don, who lets him pass through the border by bribing the watches, much to the agony and opposition of his wife. His daughter who has dreams of becoming a TV reporter dislikes her father's profession and at times acts indifferently towards him. Beto suffers from knee-pain and ignoring it, he gives a final trial to his inception of the toilet. With the saved up money of his wife, as the good-angel in him comes alive, for their daughter's higher studies, Beto buys a Western-type toilet mug and reaches his shanty abode at the last minute. On contrary to the expectation, the services end early and only a very less turn out has been seen from the other side of the border. The whole of the stall-holders is disappointed and is further deprived of expected wealth. The movie ends in a reconciliation between the father and the daughter, who realises the fatherly commitment and steps into her father's shoes to help him.

A Collage of Poems

Wanted: A Broom is a poem by the Tamil poet Chandrakanti. It is a simple narrative poem that describes the pangs of a woman, who details out her suffering. The poem voices the opposition to ‘Sthree-dhanam’- a kind of groom-price offered by the family of the bride to the groom at the time of marriage. The speaker of the poem is a woman. It seems that the woman was in love with a man. When they were in love, the man did not much ponder over the prospect of money. However, when he has decided to enter into the conjugal bliss with her, he enumerates the things that he expects from her or from her family. The list includes gold, money, utensils and goes on to include a broom to sweep the floor. Much angered by this act, the woman says that it is too much and she definitely needs a broom to sweep him off her heart and put him in trash. The woman considers such type of conjugality is only a corporate venture and not life. She is not crazy or a fool to cement such business tie with any male.

Street Dog is a poem by the Punjabi writer Amrita Pritam. It details the failed conjugal relationship between a man and a woman. The separation happened a long time ago and the speaker of the poem, the wife, keeps in her memory only a gruesome act that the separation went to engender. The poem begins with the act of separation. The pair decided to go on their separate ways and to do everything that would leave no trace of their past union. The woman ruminates on the events that happened as they decided to part. They put up their house on sale and started vacating it by scattering their things on the verandah. The woman felt that those things gazed at them and some of them, kept topsy-turvy, decided to cover their heads in shame. She looked at the vine that they had reared and thought that it was trying to say something to them or making a complaint to the water tap. The wife says that none of those things strikes her now and then; conversely she is often reminded of how a straying street dog that had entered into their empty home and was trapped inside and was found on the third day lying dead, when the wife went to show the house to a prospective owner. She is smitten by that sin often, which also serves as an appalling reminder of her erstwhile married-life.

S Usha is a popular Kannada writer. Her prescribed poem To Mother was translated by the notable Indian poet A K Ramanujan. It is a simple narrative poem that speaks out a woman’s mind. The speaker of the poem is a young girl who rises against tradition. She confronts her mother and pleads her to listen to what she has to say. According to the daughter, the traditional fixtures act as a veil to her rising. She wants her mother to take the sari of tradition off to pave way for sunlight and greenery. The mother snubs the daughter of often as the girl has reached seventeen and should not flash her dress in the street, should not look into the eyes of men and should put on girlish character. The daughter pleads to her mother not to play that tune that has been played for years by generations of mothers. She says that she cannot do things like circumambulating the holy plant in the yard, drawing kolams to go to heaven. She wants to go unleashed and unchecked and heed to only her raw energy and to live very different from her mother. The poem ends with the phrase, ‘let go, make way’. The tone of the speaker is one of exhaustion and dismay.

The Handicapped Caught in a Camera is Raghuvir Sahay’s poem that highlights the plight of the differently-abled in the world of able-bodied men and women. There is masochistic pleasure for the strong in humiliating the handicapped. The poet portrays a television programme in which a poor blind man is asked hurting questions. There are questions that want the blind person to answer how he has got that handicap, how it pains and hurts, and how he feels himself a deprived in the world of marauders. The presenter of the programme has only the intention of making the programme interesting. By putting embarrassing questions to elicit response from the participant, he succeeds in reducing him to tears. The success lies in making both the eyes glint with tear-dews. The show takes a nasty turn as it blows up the handicap several times big by close-up angles. The television channel will then gloat at creating awareness after gruelling the poor soul. The poem has an aversive tone that dismisses all these cruel practices in the name of modernity or creating awareness.

Guido Cavalcanti is a Thirteenth century Italian poet. His are simple nature poems with picturesque descriptions. Concerning a Shepherd Maid is narrated by a man who happens to meet a maid in a copse. She is a shepherdess and very beautiful, fairer than any star. She holds a wand in her hand to which the sheep magically oblige. She is rosy and cheerful with waving tresses. The speaker of the poem greets her and is amazed at seeing her all alone in the valley and she replies that she is lonely and when the birds sing she desires for company. At that moment, the birds begin to chirp rousing the maid’s longing for a company. The speaker decides to assuage her longing and offers himself for her kissing and embracing. The remarks of the poet has made her amorous and with a comprehensive willingness she takes him to a natural, flowery abode, where they make love and the speaker could sense the very presence of ‘love’ there.

A Rapture Concerning His Lady is the second of Cavalcanti’s prescribed poems. The poem talks about a good-looking woman. The speaker describes the furore that her presence does. The arrival of her makes the place bright and tremulous. No man could have a gorging sight to ogle her wholesomely. The speaker wants ‘love’ to discourse on her beauty and her looks on the left and right sides of hers. She is of such nature that in the eyes of men all women look ugly. All the virtuous things are under her command and all beautiful things on the world consider her their deity. The men have never been granted this boon by the greater power that they would know her perfectly.

Ode to Retirement is a philosophical poem by the sixteenth century Spanish poet Luis De Leon. The poem features places that promise everlasting happiness. The speaker of the poem is of the opinion that the person who flies away from the noise and cry of the mundane world would be happier, who has chosen the way that leads his soul to virtue and God. He will be calm as he has seen the eternal glitter of the abode of God. In order to reach the feet of God, one has to adhere to the following. One has to disdain flattery and the trump of fame, pageantry of power, and the gaze of the crowds. Having been tormented by all these, the soul wants to escape and fly to God. The prayer of the speaker to God is to lead him from the frowning eyes of the rich that see poverty indifferently and to live all alone in comfort that the heaven could bestow. The dream of the speaker is to live in a garden by the mountainside that is watered by the cascading rill and being amidst the flowers and chirping of birds. However, there at night the howling wind renders the timber and cries rise upward, though they fail in rousing fear in him, as he has given up all earthly things. He reclines in natural abode trying to catch the heavenly tune orchestrated by the master-hands.


Pirate’s Song is another of Spanish poems by the nineteenth century poet of fame Jose De Espronceda. The speaker of the poem is a sea-pirate, who ridicules the customs of the people who never take to sea for their livelihood. The ship of the pirate is known as ‘Dreaded’ by all and she has ten cannons on her board and she is known for greater speed. Its course is towards Istanbul, an historic Turkish port. The ship is dauntless as she has the mettle to face all. The captain of the ship, the pirate, sings that he has conquered a score of ships and hundreds of lords have surrendered to him. He says that his credos are that liberty is his god, the ship is his treasure and the sea is his governed. He considers the land as trifle. He gloats at how others on seeing ‘Dreaded’ veer off the course. He laughs at death and considers howling wind as players of lute. He lulls to sleep by the roll of thunder and growl of the winds.

The Cow is a beautiful ballad by Victor Hugo and has been rendered in English by William Frederic Giese. The setting of the poem is a farm at noon. It is an idyllic scene with clucking hens and mongrels. A cow of superb reddish brown skin and huge in size stands nearby the old man who has chosen to amble in the afternoon heat. She leads her fawn and deliberately lets a group of urchins follow her. The udder of the cow is pendent in shape as it has passed the time to milk. The urchins that have marble teeth and unkempt air squeeze the udder and spurt the milk onto their faces in an attempt to drink. The derelict maid would be without the afternoon quota of milk. The cow is not perturbed as it has allowed the greedy mouths to drink from its udder. She has done it deliberately as a fecund nurse would feed her offspring. The poet finishes the poem with the remark that the cow’s gaze wanders in regions void of thought unmindful to the furore there.

More Strong than Time is a poem by Victor Hugo that depicts the strong will of the male-lover. The male lover who also is the speaker of the poem is courageous to encounter ‘time’. He enumerates the things that have made him achieve such virility. The lover has enjoyed the lips of his lover, has laid his pale face between her hands, has known the soul of hers and its bloom by allowing himself to travel into it. He has also listened patiently to the voice of her heart as it has spoken of its mysterious things. He has also enlivened by her sorrow and happiness. He has seen and imbibed the star-light of hers hanging over his head. More importantly, a rose petal from her heart and days has fallen to him and he has secured it. All these things give him courage to say to the passing time that he will never grow old and as he has a rose in his heart that can never be plucked by the passing of time. The wings of time may hit him but it would never spill the cup fulfilled with love. The poem ends with two remarks of the speaker. He says that his heart more fire and more love than time could frost and make him forget respectively.

Samson and Delila

Samson and Delila, a 2009 Australian film that won the Camera dOr at Cannes in the same year, is a film featuring the lives of three Australian Aborigines. There is an upcountry Aborigines settlement very interior into the deep part of Australia. The small settlement has power connection and people live in a kind of 'antediluvian' open tenements, however has been made up of modern material, that have only a roof over them. Delila lives with her grandmother who suffers from senility and old-age diseases, for which she is getting treated in the mobile-makeshift hospital. Samson, our hero, has the unusual habit of sniffing petrol very often, on one occasion, he steals petrol from a car and does not use it when his vehicle runs out of the fuel. He wakes up every morning and sniffs petrol and comes out of his house to snatch his brother's guitar and plays on it blaring. He is enamored of Delila, who lives on the native art of making rugs, quilts and mats, along with her grandmother.

Samson follows wherever Delila goes. The old woman also suggests her of accepting him as her husband. All of a sudden the old woman dies, in her sleep, and the girl performs the act of cutting her lock, and is get beaten by neighbourhood woman for not caring the old woman. Samson steals a car of the neighbourhood and takes Delila with him to some city. There they meet an Australian vagabond who lives under a bridge and who also offers them food. They try to live out the days by stealing from a departmental stores and making attempts to sell Delila's decorated wall hangings and rugs. One day as they walk by, a group of white young men kidnaps Delila, rapes and leaves her to her fate. On another occasion, she is hit by a car and fractures her left leg. Unknown of her whereabouts, Samson resigns himself underneath the bridge and swoons out of fasting. Delila returns in a car to carry him to her native tenement, that is not the one she has shared with her grandmother, and the movie ends Delila doing everything to keep the almost invalid Samson up.

Samson seldom speaks in the movie. He deprives himself of his handicap of stammering when he is forced to utter his name for food from the vagabond Australian, the only occasion he has had the opportunity to speak. The movie portrays some of the customs of the aborigines, as Samson also cuts his hair as he has not found Delila as she has met with the accident. The final ritual of burying or cremating the dead is not shown in the movie. The dead grandmother is left there in her bed as the scene jumps to Delila cutting her locks and is getting beaten by the neighbours. The movie also includes scenes that show how the aborigine Delila is finding her art-works difficult to be sold. Whereas a 'Native Items Stores' display quotes a high price for the quilt that Delila's grandmother has made, along with her photograph. As far as the writer of this article is concerned, the movie gives out an opening into the livelihoods of the aborigines as they are torn between their nativity and the invaded cultural traits.

Why was i in a kind of hiatus?

Why was i in a kind of hiatus? These are the reasons.

LOSING

Losing anything is good. As a matter of fact the loss would put anyone in the state of regression and try to take a reversal of the progress. Many would contradict. A sudden loss of life of a bread-winner of a family would never be a good thing. It is costly and will never be easily supplanted. Still it is good. It would definitely pave way for some new blossoms and horizons. Losing something would surely upset one's rhythm, i.e. the rhythm of the kind of routine that one has learned to adopt for a period of time. The routine would never be congenital and would be dismounted at any time. One picks up a style of routine, on many occasions unconsciously, by periods of doldrums. However the act of losing or for that matter losing itself will seldom be goodness as a whole. It comes with a mixture of things. It sometimes puts the losers stagnate and rooted to ground and makes them ponder over their immobility.

'La Belle Noiseuse'

Honore de Balzac's 'The Unknown Masterpiece' is the title of his French short story 'Le Chefd' Oeuvre inconnu', in English. Nicolas Poussin is a young and upcoming painter who is not sure of his talent and has had an obsession of indescribable nature with his success as a renowned painter. The story opens with Nicolas sauntering before the chateau of a famous painter Porbus. He is reluctant to get in. His poverty is one of the reasons for his stagnancy. It is the Paris of 1612 that has drawn the poor painter from his native place hoping to find a foothold in the world of artists. One of his friends, who is rich enough to support him has seen to it that Nicolas reaches Paris safely. It usually happens to gifted individuals in the world. Within a very short while from his arrival, he is spotted by a very beautiful, rich young woman Gillette. Gillette is that sort of a young girl who would do anything for a poor artist who wants to realise his dream. She falls in love with the young man and sheds all her riches to be with the hapless artist. His intention to meet Porbus is to get inspiration and promotion in the field of art as he has nothing but a few canvasses, pieces of chalk and charcoal and not palette with paints and brushes.

A stranger overtakes Nicolas on the flight of staircase and knocks at the atelier. It is opened by an emaciated man and Nicolas gets a feeling that the figure is Porbus. The stranger is old and bald-headed and has a promising visage and spirit in his eyes. The stranger looks at the canvass at the easel, that upholds a recently done portrait of St. Mary of Egypt at a boat with a boatman. Porbus is all ears as the old man begins a discourse on painting, use of light and tint and bringing life into the painting. He dismisses any painting that merely copies things as they are, which is nothing but a prising of objects off nature and making them lifeless. He wants the veins of women in portraits blush with flowing blood. Nicolas is roused by the criticism as he finds the portrait promising. He intervenes with a raddled face to praise the painting. The old man wants Nicolas to prove his mettle as a connoisseur of art and Nicolas draws a line drawing, a reproduction of St. Mary of Egypt and signs on the canvass as Nicolas Poussin. The old man and Porbus admire his talent and approve him of a painter and the old man begins his lesson of improving the portrait of Porbus. The old man is Frenhofer, a student of a great artist, Mabuse. Mabuse taught him about the employment of light and shade on portraits. Frenhofer was rich enough to sponsor Mabuse and learn everything from him. He starts working like a possessed spirit on Porbus' portrait and improves it with his magical brush-strokes.

Frenhofer's talent is admirable and uncanny. He compares this with his life-time work, 'Belle Noiseuse', as he has been working on it for ten years, and it titles itself to be his masterpiece. It is a portrait of a courtezan, Catherine Lescault, that remains incomplete as Frenhofer is incapable of combining light with shade and cannot produce shape of the body successfully. He does not want to show the portrait to his hosts, as he takes Porbus and Nicolas for a drink to his studio, where Nicolas is flabbergasted by the portrait of Georgina, as he considers the figure of the woman as his lover, he her creator, lover and husband. Three months pass and the man could not finish his masterpiece, as his efforts to perfect it on seeing the paintings of great masters and he is in dire requirement of a perfect model. Porbus meets him and tries to strike a deal with him. Gillette is conveyed of Nicolas' admiration for Frenhofer and his masterpiece and is requested by Nicolas to pose for the completion of it. Gillette does not want to do so. However her love for Nicolas and the future of Poussin drive her to accept the proposal. The deal of Porbus is that Frenhofer should show his masterpiece as they swap women, Gillette for Noiseuse.

Though Poussin initiates the suggestion of Gillette posing for the portrait, he rues for his decision as he sees the eyes of the old painter gain unusual energy on seeing the silhoutte of Gillette's body. She wants Poussin to wait outside the studio with a dagger in his hand, strongly clutching its hilt and rush in if hears a squeal from her. After waiting for several hours, the gentlemen are let in to find a hazy, foggy portrait, that Frenhofer claims shrouding the figure of a fantastic woman. Poussin and Porbus point out the artist's failure that Frenhofer refuses to accept and accuses of them trying to cheat him. The artist Poussin is distracted by the cry of Gillette and the lover in him wakes up to take her out of the atelier. Frenhofer is discombobulated and bids a nasty farewell. The story ends the very next day when Porbus discovers that Frenhofer died the previous night after setting his portraits on fire including his masterpiece.

In 1991, Jacques Rivette, a French director made a film La Belle Noiseuse, a very liberal adaptation of Balzec's twenty page short story. It is a near to four hour film extensively detaililing the recuperative artistic energy of Frenhofer. The film begins in a village inn with Marianne and Nicolas (Gillette is Marianne in the film), as they are waiting for Porbus to take them to the chateau of Frenhofer. Marianne is interested as Nicolas talks a lot about the painter and has given arresting looks while looking at the portraits of him. She does not know much of the painter nor has she been acquainted with his paintings. The painter lives with his ex-model wife Liz, who has been the painter's model for many of his famous paintings and he has later confined her beauty to himself by not letting her pose after the marriage. Marianne is good looking and lures the painter's chances of reviving his effort to produce the la belle noiseuse masterpiece. Unlike in the story, Marianne has many a modelling session with Frenhofer for almost a week, visiting the chateau everyday, much to the discomfiture of Nicolas from the third day onwards. In the film, Liz warns Marianne not to see the finished product and which is snubbed by Marianne. The finished masterpiece is not shown to the audience and is known only to Marianne, who gets angered by the portrait, Liz and the servant-maid's daughter. Frenhofer seals the portrait with bricks and mortar on a wall and shows the nude back and buttocks of a woman as his masterpiece. The director takes a lot of liberty with Balzac's story as the film has a model-ex-lover to Nicolas. The film ends with a scathing opinion of Nicolas on Frenhofer's masterpiece as a lampoon and anti-climactic comic relief.

A great feature of the film is, it depicts real-time sketching of portraits with the lending of hand by the painter Bernard Dufour, a French painter notable for abstract painting.

The Bull

The Bull

See an old unhappy bull,

Sick in soul and body both,

Slouching in the undergrowth

Of the forest beautiful,

Banished from the herd he led,

Bulls and cows a thousand head.

Cranes and gaudy parrots go

Up and down the burning sky;

Tree-top cats purr drowsily

In the dim-day green below;

And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,

All disputing, go and come;

And things abominable sit

Picking offal buck or swine,

On the mess and over it

Burnished flies and beetles shine,

And spiders big as bladders lie

Under hemlocks ten foot high;

And a dotted serpent curled

Round and round and round a tree,

Yellowing its greenery,

Keeps a watch on all the world,

All the world and this old bull

In the forest beautiful.

Bravely by his fall he came:

One he led, a bull of blood

Newly come to lustihood,

Fought and put his prince to shame,

Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head

Tameless even while it bled.

There they left him, every one,

Left him there without a lick,

Left him for the birds to pick,

Left him there for carrion,

Vilely from their bosom cast

Wisdom, worth and love at last.

When the lion left his lair

And roared his beauty through the hills,

And the vultures pecked their quills

And flew into the middle air,

Then this prince no more to reign

Came to life and lived again.

He snuffed the herd in far retreat,

He saw the blood upon the ground,

And snuffed the burning airs around

Still with beevish odours sweet,

While the blood ran down his head

And his mouth ran slaver red.

Pity him, this fallen chief,

All his spendour, all his strength,

All his body's breadth and length

Dwindled down with shame and grief,

Half the bull he was before,

Bones and leather, nothing more.

See him standing dewlap-deep

In the rushes at the lake,

Surly, stupid, half asleep,

Waiting for his heart to break

And the birds to join the flies

Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, -

Standing with his head hung down

In a stupor dreaming things:

Green savannas, jungles brown,

Battlefields and bellowings,

Bulls undone and lions dead

And vultures flapping overhead.

Dreaming things: of days he spent

With his mother gaunt and lean

In the valley warm and green,

Full of baby wonderment,

Blinking out of silly eyes

At a hundred mysteries;

Dreaming over once again

How he wandered with a throng

Of bulls and cows a thousand strong,

Wandered on from plain to plain,

Up the hill and down the dale,

Always at his mother's tail;

How he lagged behind the herd,

Lagged and tottered, weak of limb,

And she turned and ran to him

Blaring at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming maybe of a day

When her drained and drying paps

Turned him to the sweets and saps,

Richer fountains by the way,

And she left the bull she bore

And he looked on her no more;

And his little frame grew stout,

And his little legs grew strong,

And the way was not so long;

And his little horns came out,

And he played at butting trees

And boulder-stones and tortoises,

Joined a game of knobby skulls

With the youngsters of his year,

All the other little bulls,

Learning both to bruise and bear,

Learning how to stand a shock

Like a little bull of rock.

Dreaming of a day less dim,

Dreaming of a time less far,

When the faint but certain star

Of destiny burned clear for him,

And a fierce and wild unrest

Broke the quiet of his breast,

And the gristles of his youth

Hardened in his comely pow,

And he came to fighting growth,

Beat his bull and won his cow,

And flew his tail and trampled off

Past the tallest, vain enough,

And curved about in spendour full

And curved again and snuffed the airs

As who should say Come out who dares!

And all beheld a bull, a Bull,

And knew that here was surely one

That backed for no bull, fearing none.

And the leader of the herd

Looked and saw, and beat the ground,

And shook the forest with his sound,

Bellowed at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Wating for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming, this old bull forlorn,

Surely dreaming of the hour

When he came to sultan power,

And they owned him master-horn,

Chiefest bull of all among

Bulls and cows a thousand strong.

And in all the tramping herd

Not a bull that barred his way,

Not a cow that said him nay,

Not a bull or cow that erred

In the furnace of his look

Dared a second, worse rebuke;

Not in all the forest wide,

Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen,

Not another dared him then,

Dared him and again defied;

Not a sovereign buck or boar

Came a second time for more.

Not a serpent that survived

Once the terrors of his hoof

Risked a second time reproof,

Came a second time and lived,

Not serpent in its skin

Came again for discipline;

Not a leopard brght as flame,

Flashing fingerhooks of steel,

That a wooden tree might feel,

Met his fury once and came

For second reprimand,

Not a leopard in the land.

Not a lion of them all,

Not a lion of the hills,

Hero of a thousand kills,

Dared a second fight and fall,

Dared that ram terrific twice,

Paid a second time the price. . . .

Pity him, this dupe of dream,

Leader of the heard again

Only in his daft old brain,

Once again the bull supreme

And bull enough to bear the part

Only in his tameless heart.

Pity him that he must wake;

Even now the swarm of flies

Blackening his bloodshot eyes

Bursts and blusters round the lake,

Scattered from the feast half-fed,

By great shadows overhead.

And the dreamer turns away

From his visionary herds

And his splendid yesterday,

Turns to meet the loathly birds

Flocking round him from the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Ralph Hodgson


Ralph Hodgson is a Georgian Poet. Georgian Poets are those whose poems have been published in anthologies named Georgian Poetry. There have been five anthologies under this title and the major poets include D H Lawrence, Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves. Hodgson is not much of a celebrated poet of the Georgian School, however has reached greater depths in his selection of themes and presentation. He went on to teach English and poetry in Japan in Tohoku University. He is credited with the theme of being more pastoral in his poems. ‘The Bull’ sketches the poignant life of an old bull, that was once sturdy, powerful and a ruler of a herd. The poem is more of a depiction of the agony of old age and the loss of support.

Adaptation

'The Man in a Case' is one of the beautiful stories of Chekhov. It begins late at night in a sleepy little village of Mironositskoe. Two gentlemen found lodging in the barn of the elderly man of the village, Prokofy. One of them is a school master who is well acquainted with the life in the village and begins discussing the wife of the elder. She is Mavra, an extremely well read and talented woman, however has confined herself to the village. One of the other gentlemen, a veterinary surgeon, expresses wonder on knowing that the woman has not seen a town or a railway line. Poked at that the school master begins describing a colleague of him known as Byelikov who almost lived all by himself. He always wore galoshes and kept every object that he used in a case. He was idiosyncratic as he was obsessed with the fear of violating rules and regulations. He made the whole of the school under himself as he expressed much fear in every possible act of both the masters and the pupils. He lived on the same storey on which the school master Burkin lived. His bed chamber was completely covered with mattresses and curtains and he used the curtains to sleep on in his bed and cocooned himself to a kind of atavistic behaviour of the primordial ancestors.

Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, intercedes with the philosophy of life to the narration as he is of the opinion that the whole of the world and its populace spend their day to day existence in the same manner. In the case of Byelikov, it is an exhibition of extremism, as the man had the habit of visiting his friends and their colleagues in their tenements and spent an hour or two sitting glum and quiet observing their routine chores and exited with no manners. He is surprised to know that this figure of ridicule almost got married. A History teacher came to the school with his sister, who was almost thirty, however did not subject herself to the work of time on her beauty and complexion and retained a girlish behaviour. It only struck the acquaintances of Byelikov that he was very old enough to have got married and they too woke up to that on seeing a slim chance of uniting Byelikov with Varnika. The mill of marriage had begun its grinding and put the two together in the name of parties and outings. Byelikov procrastinated the marriage as he thought too much about family responsibility. The History teacher hated his intrusion into the private chambers and the deafening silence that he exhibited at such visits.

A naughty person came with a rue to make things public. He drew Byelikov and Varnika together under an umbrella and sent the pencil drawing to everyone. On one occasion, Byelikov, while walking with Burkin found the brother-sister duo cycling their way somewhere. He got horrified at the sight as he thought such an adventuristic display would create in students a tendency to freak out. He left school early the very next day, an act that was un-Byelikov, straight to Varnika's house to explain things and tender his apology for the pencil drawing involving himself and Varnika. The History teacher rose in temperament as Byelikov broached the matter of bicycling and gave a push to him from the top of the flight of the stairs. As he tumbled his way down off the balcony, found him a source of ridicule for Varnika, who came into the house while he was recovering himself from the fall. He became ill three days later and found himself in the bed of angels.

Wendy Wasserstein, a playwright of American fame, wrote a one act play, 'The Man in a Case' an adaptation of Chekhov's story. She makes use of only two characters in her play and alludes to the brother of Varnika. Wendy introduces them as joggers and meeting in a garden of the village of Mironositskoe. Varnika comes with apricots given in honour of the Greek and Latin school master Byelikov. He is annoyed at the fact that she goes on informing about their marriage to everyone and apricots give him hives. Varnika has fallen for him as he keeps everything in confinement including the leftover vegetables and fruits in covers. Byelikov is enamoured of their meeting and notes it down in his diary that he would place lilies on this day on his love's lock every year. As this requires celebration, Varnika wants to go to her brother's house on her bicycle and bring some cream. Startled to know about Varnika's arrival on bicycle, he sends her off on the pretext that he wants to work on the translation of Virgil's Aeneid and even tears the note that he has made a while ago down. Varnika leaves and the lights fade as Byelikov is found garnering the strewn pieces of his note. The play puts up a feministic reading of Chekhov's story and Wendy's adaptation never violates the original and gives a new thrust to the story on the contrary. Both texts provide a good reading.

Worldly Wisdom 2

‘The Umbrella Man’ is an enjoyable story of Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl is a British writer of Norwegian origin. He was a fighter pilot during the Second World War and served in the Air Force of England in prominent designations. He started his writing career in the 1940s during the war. He is a popular writer of children’s fiction. His popular novels include ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘The Gremlins’. He is also credited with a lot of short stories too, written with the objective of reaching the children in mind. ‘The Umbrella Man’ is narrated by a twelve year old girl who accompanies her mother to a dentist in London.

The story has values to be imbibed by children. The mother of the twelve year old girl often concentrates on teaching her child through participation in life-events. The girl emphasizes her ability to adjudge people rather better than her mother through the revelation of her height in the story. Her mother is thirty-six and not much taller than her twelve year old daughter, an indication of mental growth of the girl. One fine afternoon, the mother and daughter duo embarks on a trip to London with the mission of filling in the tooth of the daughter. The girl is much pleased with the work of the dentist as she has felt no pain while the doctor filling the hole of a tooth. On their way back home, the duo enters a café and the girl enjoys a banana split. As they come out at about six o’clock in the evening, the rain begins its act of drenching the city of London. The mother has not brought an umbrella and wants to catch a taxi to take them home. The daughter relishes the idea of sheltering in the café and having another of her favourite banana split. Then a little old man approaches them as they are standing on the pavement and fancy themselves whisked away by an un-occupied taxi.

The mother always caution her daughter about strangers and her advice to her is if the stranger is more pleasing then she must be more wary of the stranger. The girl comforts herself on looking at the shoes of the stranger, since, as per her mother, one who wears a fine pair of shoes is a gentleman. The man is very old and has a fluffy mustache. He is holding a silk umbrella very high over his head. The mother puts on an expression one of hauteur as she considers such a one is right in dealing with unknown people. The old man has informed that he is not such type as the one who stops gentle ladies on road side and demand money. However, today he requires money to get back home in a taxi, as he has forgotten to come with his wallet. The mother is not pleased and enquired how he has come there. The man has informed her that it is his habit to take a stroll in the evenings and get back home in a taxi as his legs would not stand him for long. Since he has walked long already, he could not go on foot further and he is ready to offer the silk umbrella, worth twenty pound, for one pound and it is not gentlemanly for him to accept money from anybody. The daughter is upset with the offer as the mother could exploit the situation to grab the costly umbrella for a pittance. The mother is seen thawing and in the end gives out a pound and praises the act of the old man who is considerate enough to offer them the umbrella to shield them from rain.

The old man has accepted the money with gratitude and is only found hurrying on his legs. The act has upset the duo and the mother is pricked with the sense of disappointment of being cheated. They choose to follow the man who evading the evening crowd gracefully enters into a pub. It is not decent for women to enter into the pub and duo stations outside and peers into the glass on the man. The man reaches the bar and gulps treble whiskey for the pound and comes back to the dressing lounge to take one of the umbrellas put there by the pub-users. The mother and daughter are shocked by the act of the man and the man further travels to the very place where he has just now sold the silk umbrella to find another one of his victims, this time a man with no protection of a hat or coat from rain, to sell his stolen umbrella for a drink. Further, he chooses not to go back to the same pub this time. The duo is flabbergasted by the strategy of the old man for a draught. The story ends with the duo finding themselves recipients of worldly knowledge and wisdom.