Trunk

it seems you and khamkhwa are competing for mediocrity and lame attempts........you win.

Yeah, shobig.You`re my ,er, man/woman.You GO.Despite your pak penchant for the morbid and the bizarre and compared to the other drivel you WIN hands down.

We indians like everything fluffy and gooey.Sorry for not being able to appreciate the subtle nuances of your masterpiece, other than the obvious morbidness!!!.Chuss.

its very well written definitely....

but I do need to take a Prozac now... :(

``Instead, he felt as if his soul was itself an empty trunk and it were the phantoms of his aspirations who were bashing hard against the periphery of his existence, attenuating it further. ``

I envy those writers who come up with sentences like these. Very nice read. Not the least because it involved Sialkot - a city with a special place in my life.

Whatever others say, its a good theme. It conveys the message and thats what is needed.
During WW2, the demand for coffin boxes was far more than the supply. Not only trunk makers but a complete nouvelle rich class of contracters came to the fore. Many of them picked second wives and were the subject of many short stories in the 50s/60s.

It is also a common story of a poor to low middle class family in Pakistan. There are so many who suffered this way. Away from home, toiling in an alien land; at the dame time fostering spoilers back home. Its all too familiar.

Good!
Cheerios

Shobig Sifar

Your morbid masterpiece provoked me to ink out the following poem:

Six by Two

OZER

A ``trunk`` is the tentacle of timeless confine
A ``trunk`` is a tantric tale of terror
This trunk seeketh only the divine
Yet recoileth in horror

The reverberant clock of our narrator`s youthful passion tolls
With a zealous sudden stroke our pigeon flies to Dubai
Yet the ``ajnabi miskeen`` from Pakistan`s finest
flute fails the cracks between racist flagstones

Our Sialkoti searches the sky.
Yet sees menacing clouds
Still pursuing his golden dream
Of a sunken desolate ancestral empire
One Receded to the relics of hoarse despair.

A serenely singing bride
Picking up shards of his broken glass
Yet in his infinite pursuit of glory
He demurs Forgetful of her steps that
Cry behind him

His cardiac arrest drifts him slowly down from a waking dream
To even thinner ice
Death, among jonquils, told him a freezing ``metal`` secret.
A cloud blows over his ``truncated`` eyes,
he ponders Mother earth.
He sees in the world a forest of sunlit jonquils:
A slow black ``trunk`` of poison huddles beneath the mirth.

Unplumbed worlds approaching
Unforseen trunks coming
A Sialkoti
A sudden glissando
A sinister movida

A dirge of uncried tears
A drift of wind-torn petals passeth before him
Not in a trunk
But in a coffin
That ominous ``coffin`` of life

Down cobbled streets of laziness come his sons
Down huddled stairways arrives a crooked business partner
Through carven deadly doorways comes an eager investor;
Through ``metal trunks``
They all enter
Six by two

From freezing rooms as stern as rock.
The curtains are drawn across deserted windows.
Earth`s dreams stream out of the shovel; the pebbles knock.
Child labour in Sialkot
Rock around the clock !!

Our trunkman sorrowed, but could not atone;
Ancestral empires flash over depths of terror,
Yet are blown away like windflung chords of music,

A white van carrying a huge wooden box with a detachable lid.
Sees the shadow of death in many faces,
Limp and squalid

He desires immortal music and spring forever,
And beauty that knoweth no change.
Yet now he is domiciled

Six by Two feet under.....

Shobig:

In my little hometown, next to the local railway station there was an area where the local metal trunk (cottage) industry was concentrated. Your story brought back some of those memories – especially the sound of hammering (not too pleasant back then, and perhaps if I were to face it again, still something to avoid, were it not so firmly attached to other (more pleasant) childhood memories). Of course, the people running and owning those businesses were too busy elking out a living to worry about where those trunks will end up being used!

Your plot started out well and continued well, in part because in many ways it is representative of the aspirations, successes, and failures of countless individuals who have underwent similar experiences of one kind or another. You pretty much ruined it at the end, where you twisted its natural flow to artificially force your (subtly implied) anti-war ideology – perhaps only sub-consciously. The ending appears totally out of synch with the rest of the story – made artificially so to jerk a few tears from the usual (similar thinking but too chicken to fess up) crowds here, and to elicit a few crocodilian tears from highly unconvincing emotional parasites (Ozer vigorously leading the pack (another bit of janitorial common-sense: if people like Ozer like it, be very, very suspicious!)) with zero substances of own. The janitorial reasons are simple – for example:

(1) the main character being a business partner, would have known fully well in advance what the trunks were to be made for – so to imply that the shock killed him is highly ludicrous. Perhaps the cumulative toll of his past mishaps in life, plus his precarious health would have provided a more rational explanation.

(2) the main character has a track record of being a fighter – not a quitter, and only quitters would chose to die in the face of success. The other type is of course the class of turkeys which is all words and no action – never did a day of real work in life, so sees no value in success obtained through hard work! People who value their work don’t quit and die! Pure and simple!

I wish you would have made it end on a positive note, with a certain amount of optimism as the take-home lesson for the reader. Then people could derive some USEFUL inspiration from it. I think you squandered an opportunity. You are not the only one singing such morbid tunes around here, of course!

raka, i feel the same way now too! :(

however, big shoe, a good read!!

sifar:

i was going to discuss this at length...thank you janitor!...you saved me the trouble;) ......and only quitters would chose to die in the face of success.... being a minor disagreement...with an otherwise fair post...

the guy had a history...so he suffers a massive convulsion and the once mighty pump gives in...and he finds a home...albeit a temporary one...in his dream...

(not to factor in other mitigating considerations for sifar;)....the length of the story already past chowk guidelines, his evening date ....ok am speculating...he had to bring a closure...so the ending...)

rgds

t

Thank you Kauray (for making some sense at least for once in your life ;) ), Cayenne, Raka, Malik99, Ijaz and Aimie for your feedback and comments.
#6 Ozer I am absolutely speechless! That is awesome indeed! Thanka lot for your kind effort.
#10 Unkil T, I can keep secrets, and I thought you did too1 ;)
#9 Beejay, I am afraid you, somehow, have missed on the real essence of the story. It was simply his one big dream that had kept him surviving through all his mental and physical afflictions. When, in the end, he achieved it, he lost it one way or the other, and hence, nothing was left to live for or live by. He didn`t give in, and it wasn`t a shock of triumph that he lost to, a fighter that he were. It was the power of his dream that made him confront and turn down the call of fate and the ultimate, when he lost it, he lost his crutch. As Emma Goldman would say
``When we cannot dream any longer, we die.``
regards

Nicely written. The theme revolves around reality with regards to expatriates especially in the Gulf region.

Dear Shobig Sifar

Thanks for your spirited answer. Please keep on gracing Chowk. This site needs brazenly morbid and thought-provoking work like yours.

Warmest

Ozer Saeed Khalid

very well narrated and superb depiction of reality.

thanks

really nice. some might call it morose, but i feel it has a wistful property.

i really enjoyed it.

Happy now???? ;)

i was being honest. i do really like it.