The Dictator’s Curse (A Novel) Part: One

 

      By: Kaleem Butt

                                           Chapter 1: Room No: 26

                        No sir, whosoever you are….!  

Sometimes I wonder that the toughest job on face of the earth is to begin a story, all the scenes and characters run in your mind but one is unable to find that one beautiful sentence to start the story, the magical sentence which catches the attention of readers. A story without that beautiful is like a damsel who is fully grown-up and she has good looks, but unfortunately she is flat-chested.

Pardon me, you may consider the above remark as a sexist remark, but you would agree with me that a woman is the most beautiful creature in this entire world, and a good story is as beautiful as a woman, and that starting sentence is like round breasts hanging on some beautiful lady’s chest, a guy is simple attracted to the lady just glancing at her fully grown and round breasts, as I was attracted to round breasted Madam Afshan, she teaches us modern literary trends, She is forty-two years old and has joined our university after completing her doctorate in creative writings from Kent University. She likes to be called a ‘free spirit’ and according to the restroom gossips at the boys’ hostel, she is having three affairs at the same time, one of them being a young faculty member, when he came to know that his beloved was having affairs with two macho students, becoming jealous of both of them he failed them in his course ‘Introduction to Literature’. However, I am in the waiting list of lovers waiting for one chance.

  Leave it, at this precise moment I should be thinking about that one beautiful sentence to start my story. This story is important for me in many senses, one of them is that three days ago on Tuesday Madam Afshan after finishing her lecture called me to her office.

‘Stop asking favours from people,’ she said in a harsh tone: ‘and concentrate on your work, the world of art and literature is merciless you cannot survive in it if you don’t have talent. If you try to enter it without talent you end in committing suicide. You have fifteen days to submit your assignment, a story that should be thirty pages in length, must contain postmodern element of metafiction and it should be an original work.’

I glanced her with blank eyes. Yes. My father is a landlord possessing thousand acres of land near Sukkur and an influential man, so what if he asked someone to do a favour for his son, why is she so upset with that even if she has come from Kent University, where she used to discuss literature with greatest writers of our time, She shouldn’t forget that she is teaching in a private institute for arts and literature at Karachi, where children of elite class take admission to pass time before leaving the country for Europe or America. In past ten years our prestigious institute has produced only one such student, who is now a renowned critic, while the rest left the country to become investors, business entrepreneurs, while some gays and lesbians, who were not allowed to practice homosexuality in the country rushed to Paris opting for fashion industry.

   As you have come to know that I am third year student of literature at a private institute of Karachi, and right now I am thinking about Madam Afshan’s assignment, so it is not important to tell you where I am? It is obvious that I am sitting in hostel room thinking about the first beautiful sentence to start my story. Every one of you knows very well that campus life is divided into two major parts, as a student you spend your half day at campus, while you spend the rest of the day at hostel. So, I don’t think that it is necessary to tell you that I am sitting in front of my Apple laptop with silver casing on my study table at Room No: 26 of Van Gough Boys’ Hostel, trying to find out that one beautiful sentence from where my story would start, and I have to find it before Vicky returns to the room. After his return, I would be unable to work on my assignment. Vicky is my roommate as well as my classmate; he is specializing in film and drama production. He’s of the opinion that no one in this God forsaken country knows how to produce an art film, he also believes that he’s the lost son of India’s greatest art film maker Gulzar. Vicky, who is raised by a wealthy widow mother, believes that one day he would make a masterpiece that would win an Oscar and Academy Award every year! Leave him, when he will come, we’ll face him. I wish he brings bottle of sapphire, so that we could enjoy our weekend!

 Once again I start thinking about that beautiful sentence, to please Madam Afshan, I have to write a story having meta-fictional elements. What kind of world it has become, meta-narratives, meta-physics or meta-humans weren’t enough for this world; with all these metas in our bag, do we also require metafiction! And these western scholars have crossed all the limits by adding meaningless words like meta or post before something and introduce a new theory.

‘Say hello to meta-modernism folks!’

We, the eastern people are usually unable to grasp what the westerners are trying to say, and in retaliation claim:

‘We don’t find western theories applicable in our societies, we must produce literature that is useful to our society, ours should be literature for sake of life, and not literature for sake of literature. There is no need to be inspired by West, after all, we were the rulers of the world when the West was in its dark ages.’

People of East have nothing to do with metafiction. The reader here is told:

‘Story must have roots in our society, the aim and objective of a story should be to propagate moral values to the people…. A writer who doesn’t do that is misleading the entire nation (even if hardly one percent of entire nation reads books, and out of that one percent, majority has never read any book other than what is suggested in the curriculum) and such writer is a courtier. Long live revolution…! Let everyone hear your slogan….that’s creative literature for us… all such nonsense that was left behind centuries ago is still deeply rooted in our hearts.

  This reminds me of my discussion with Huma at our campus canteen, it took place two weeks ago, Socialist Huma, is a tall and skinny girl, with a beautiful round face, but nature has played a big joke when it comes to her breasts, we often joke about her bra size saying: ‘companies are still researching to find out actual size of her tits to make a bra fitting them’. According to Samar, Huma uses cotton to fill her bra cups, while some evil-mongers spread the word of she being a transgender. Two weeks back, she along with Samar and Vicky was discussing on her script. Socialist Huma seeing me approaching them closed the script and shouted:

‘Waderay Ka beta…. Main Hoon Waderay Ka beta! (Landlord’s son… I’m a landlord’s son)!’

‘Huma,’ Vicky shouted: ‘why have you closed the script?’

(To be Continued)