Remember that girl who boards the same bus at the same stop at the same time daily? You know her face but not what she does. So you weave a story around her. That book she likes, the jacket she wears, the bag she carries in the commute or how she lip-syncs to music on her earphones. You read about girls like her. Remember that woman who begs on the street? What is her story? Is she poor or abandoned? Betrayed by her own? In your head, she has a family who refuses to look after her. She becomes that random character namelessly existing in the corner of your story. Remember how every missing piece of an unsolved puzzle in the world has conspiracy theories? How someone is not dead because we found no body. How someone spotted an unknown creature in a desert. Theories become our closure stories to things we can't answer with science yet. Remember that book where you pictured a rebellion? The author had penned a slogan or purpose. Made up stories to highlight atrocities. Little did he know that fifty years later someone would come along and read his work. Little did he know it would inspire many to take to the streets and fight. His slogan echoed through the air of rebellion. His sense of freedom turned into the nation's most patriotic song. Nothing in this world is just fiction. Everything has an ounce of truth in it. Be it yours, that of the writer's, a mass belief or the society in general. That is the beauty of fiction.
© Suranya
Why I wrote this:
আনন্দমঠ (The Abbey of Bliss) was a revolutionary work in fiction literature back in 1882. It was based on the Sannasi rebellion of 1770, the first rebellion against British collection of taxes after the drought hit Bengal (ছিয়াত্তরের মন্বন্তর). The rebels in the writer's imagination sing a patriotic song, Vande Mataram (All hail Mother), while preaching Hinduism. The idea of a country as mother in a figure we know now as Bharat Mata emerged from this very novel, which had to be banned for all the popularity it gathered from the "anarchists". It talked of equality, women's empowerment and sacrifices that were preached through aspects of religious movements during the rebellion. Fifty years later, the entire nation was echoing "Vande Mataram" as a call for freedom. The fiction Bankim Chandra imagined coming alive in every street of a free nation as its national song. That is the beauty of masterpieces. Not all fiction is just fiction. They stir you, move you, make you aware and rebel.
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