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INTRODUCTION This Study Deals with the Prominent Themes That INTRODUCTION This study deals with the prominent themes that appeared in'^The Illustrated Weekly of India' ( Henceforth referred to as ' The Weekly' ) from January 1971 to December 1980." The Weekly' published 415 stories during this decade. These stories covered various major and minor themes. This study deals mainly with the analysis of those stories which contain one of the following themes — sex, marriage, the east-west encounter, bureaucratic tendencies and personality crisis.The seventh chapter of this thesis deals with some minor themes like revenge, avarice etc. I have divided this chapter in the following six sect ions. (i) The concept of short story. (ii) A thumbnail history of the short story in India and abroad (iii) Relationship between periodicals and the short story followed by the assessment of short stories published in 'The Weekly' during the seventies, (iv) Some observations on the ethos of translation of stories written in regional Indian languages to English and published in 'The Weekly' during the seventies. (v> The differences between the traditional Indo-Anglian short story and th» modern Indo-Anglian short story (vi) Evaluation of the Indo-Anglian short story <i) THE CONCEPT OF SHORT STORY The apparently simple genre of the short story poses various problems for a comprehensive definition. Literally^ it means a story that is relatively short in length. In reality, it takes various shapes and acquires different characteristics. Inspite of its protean nature, literary critics like H.E. Bates, Brander Matthews, Ellery Sedgewick, Flannery O.' Connor have attempted to explain it. Bates says, "I can make the axiom that the short story can be anything the author decides it shall be. It can be anything from the death of a horse to a young girl's first love affair, from the static sketch without plot to the swiftly moving machine of bold action. In that infinite flexibility indeed lies the reason why the short story has never been adequately defined". Bates's definition of a short story embraces everything from a short composition to an artistic piece of writing. A dictionary of the world literature provides information on the origin and development of the short story. It says, "Short story is a collection of short prose narratives bequeathed to us by the ancient Egyptians. Brevity dictates the structure of a short story. The writer conceives a certain unique or single effect that he wishes to create and proceeds to invest such incidents and to clothe them with such words as will produce it. Totality of effect is the objective. Appropriateness and economy of incidents and style are 2 of technical means." H.G. Wells, who was a prolific writer of modern fiction demands a single vivid effect. According to him, the story should seize the attention of the reader at the outset. It must explode and finish before interruption occurs. The above explanations point to the various significant features of the short story. The short story touches almost all topics, characters and styles. It is never opposed to experimentation. The lucidity, brevity, concentration and readability add to the effectiveness of the form of the short story. The truncated length of this form necessitates an attractive beginning, sustained interest and satisfying closure. A short story in various countries has its roots in the territorial myths and the ancient collective conscience of the race. In her introduction to 'Re-reading the Short Story' the editor Clare Hanson mentions that this genre has been a 'marginal' one. She attributes a mysteriously 'unknown' dimension of subjective experience to the short story. According to her^ "The short story is a convenient form to losers, loners, exiles, women and blacks.... writers who for one reason or another have not been part of the major 'narrative' or the experimental framework of their society." Edgar Allan Poe, the father of the modern short story considered the form as "a structurally "^unified whole' like a watch or a mosaic. From this whole theoretically at any rate nothing could be taken out or nothing can be added without weakening the overall effect or indeed destroying the very purpose for which the story was conceived and in terms of which it was 4 produced." The above views make it obvious that there are deviant stances regarding the nature and scope of the short story. The term 'short'has no specific inherent meaning to it. After all what matters more is the deeper meaning of the work of art and not its length. The short story can never be a novel in a nutshell. The novella is distinguished from the genuine short novel by its limited number of characters, its less varied setting and its simple plot. The short story has a limited canvas. One story can not portray a variety of incidents, characters, themes and locales. The short story needs to be enjoyed and experienced. It need not be critically appreciated with dozens of evidences from the text. It defies heavy loaded philosophy of life. It gets crushed under verbiage. A Sanskrit scholar Kolahalacharya has defined short story as ''~^W<s'iJr3hc<Rt ^V^lcJ^JfTF^rr <^(j11 : '^^^fT' 7^: I 5 According to this scholar, imaginary construction with a grain of truth in it is called story. (ii) A THUMBNAIL HISTORY OF THE SHORT STORY IN INDIA AND ABROAD (a) The ancient Indian short story Our classical literatures in Sanskrit, Pali and Ardhamagadhi uiere replete with tales, parables and allegories. Although it is impossible to ascertain the authorship of all these stories, it is an acknowledged fact that they played a vital role in the expansion of religious doctrines. A. K. Ramanujan observes, "Before writing was known in India, the village story -teller, the Katha Vachak, the Yogi with his ektara (single stringed instrument) travelled from village to village. The story-tel1inc included visual pictures, puppets and mime presenting a holistic view to the listener." The Vedic Literature was full of tales denoting the wisdom of our ancient sages. These tales instructed and entertained our ancestors for a long time. Eventhough Vedic philosophy was challenged by Jain and Buddha sects, they preserved and honoured Vedic stories. Ravisena's Padmapurana, Jinasena's Mahapurana and Churni stories contained Jain philosophy of asceticism and non-violence. Jataka Katha and Awadan stories demonstrated the Buddhist philosophy of compassion and public good. These scriptural tales belonging to the pre-Christian era were mainly didactic in aim and prescriptive in nature. Even today these anthologies are called a treasure house of knowledge and philosophy. The other noteworthy collections of short stories in the Pre-British India were Kathasaritasagar,Vishnu Sharma's Panchatantra, Narayan Pandit's Hitopdesh. These volumes show a slight shift in emphasis.The scriptural tales of the past were exclusively religious ; these volumes contained stories on worldly wisdom. They were able to transfer our attention from celestial altitude to mundane reality. Birbal's quibbles,Tenaliraman's tales and Kalidas' stories demonstrated the worth of India's creative talent in the generation of short stories. These tales included characters from everyday life. Illiterate villagers, maid servants, beggars, farmers, widows and court servants all found place in these stories. The uninterrupted journey of this short fiction for nearly two thousand years is commendable. During the course of time, restrictions on the selection of characters and themes were loosened and discarded. The high-sounding phrases and argumentative language of the past were also replaced by the everyday utterances. The 17th and 18th centuries in India are marked by; conspicuous scarcity in the field of short stories. The war-ravaged land of the ancient religions witnessed ghastly scenes of bloodshed. K. R. S. lyenger comments^ "No serious attempt was made - or could be made in the prevalent conditions - to bridge the widening gap between the few still surviving centres of traditional learning and teaching illiterate millions. Ar unutterable lethargy, at once physical, intellectual anc spiritual possessed the body and soul of the Indian people and the stream of Indian culture seemed to have lost itself in the parched desert of the national enslavement." (b> The short story in Indo-Anglian literature In the nineties of this century, the Indo-Anglian short story is barely hundred years old. It has been a confluence of various forces. As far as its medium is concerned, it came from England along with the rulers. The initial readers of this form were mostly the Englishmen in India and abroad. Only a handful of its readers came from India. Its writers included people in the East India Company's service and some England returned individuals from India. The history of the Indo-Anglian short story could be roughly divided into three broad periods i) from its beginning in the eighteen eighties to the nineteen twenties ii) stories that originated with the freedom movement in India iii) The post Independence stories. The title of the first known published collection of the short stories is "Stories from Indian Christian Life" (1898) by Kamala Sathianandan. The similar collections had also appeared before 1878. i) Realities of Indian Life —Stories Collected from the Criminal Reports of India by Shoshee Chander Dutt ii) The Times of Yore-Tales from Indian History by Shoshee Chander Dutt iii) Dengaliana - A Dish of Rice Curry and Other Indigestible Ingredients <1898) iv) P. V. Ramaswami 8 Raju's 'The Tales of Sixty Maharajas (London 1896) and Indian Fables (London 1887) v) Khetrapal Chakravarti- Sarala and Hingana - Tales Descriptive of Indian Life (London 1896) vi) B.R. Rajan Aiyar's 'Miscellaneous Stories were some of the we 1 l-^tcjnp).^ col lections before 1898. But all these were published in England. There are some prominent features that characterize the first phase of the short story in India.
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