Junot Diaz's "Monstro" - A Compelling Short Story!

I was eagerly awaiting this week’s copy of “The New Yorker’ as it contained Junot Diaz’s short story titled ‘Monstro’, and it was worth the wait! I read all of its eleven pages in less than an hour and in one sitting.

Junot Diaz claims he’s “been fascinated by end-of-the-world stories, by outbreak narratives, and always wanted to set a world-ender on Hispaniola”, and so he did in 'Monstro'.  The story is “set some years in the future and concerns a mysterious “black mold-fungus” infection that starts showing up on poor Haitians in Port-au-Prince, bewildering the international medical community.”  Despite a dual storyline, Diaz builds up the suspense surrounding the ‘monstro’ pretty rapidly, mostly because Diaz provides vivid descriptions of what the ‘monstro’ does, creating within its victims “a berserk murderous blood rage’ leading to ‘an outbreak of homicidal violence’ even amongst those who had so much as never ” raised a finger to hurt in anger their whole lives”.  Diaz’s story, though enchanting has him treading haloed grounds with a futuristic setting where the world is on the “cusp of a catastrophic ecological collapse”, which immediately has the reader thinking of similar settings created by H. G. Wells, Arthur Clark, and Asimov. Consequently, my first thought after reading Diaz’s story was that it reminded me of P.D. James’ dystopian novel “Children of Men” (which was also made into a film by Alfonso Cuaron).

 Diaz’s depiction of the ‘possessed’ is  riveting as these strange beings spew forth horrific violence and destruction. In a parrallel storyline there is Alex, a nineteen year old student from Brown visiting his ailing mother in DR (Dominican Republic).  There was an immediate sense of deja vous when I encountered Alex, Diaz's protagonist; he shared so many traits with Oscar, the protagonist of Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer award winning novel in 2005, “The Brief and Wondrous Life ofOscar Wao”.  Like Oscar, Alex is an American college  student seeking encounters of the heart on his home island of Hispaniola. I was not particularly drawn to or intrigued by Alex.  I think he falls prey to the more dynamic though elusive ‘invaders’, the ’possessed’, or even the ‘forty foot tall cannibals running lose on the island’ that had ‘destroyed Haiti’ and were perhaps responsible for the ‘dead zone that had opened over a six-hundred mile chunk of the Caribbean’. Alex is somehow disappointing, and appears, in my opinion, a work-in-progress.

Junot Diaz is a master storyteller, and ‘Monstro’ is proof of that as it both grips and enthralls the reader.  Inspite of the weak protagonist, I enjoyed the story very much, but I do have reservations about what Diaz plans to do with this enthralling story.  Apparently, Diaz plans to expand Monstro into a novel even though, as Diaz himself admits, “The danger always is that by expanding on context, you rob your story of content.” Given that ‘Monstro’ is Junot Diaz's maiden venture into ‘speculative fiction’, and a pretty successful one at that, perhaps he should just let 'Monstro' remain the short story it is.  However, if he does “cobble the courage together ...to finish the book” then he will be contending with the likes of Orwell, Tolkien, Heinlein, and other such stalwarts in this genre, and I wonder how and if 'Monstro' will be able to hold its own.    

As for now, those of you with a penchant for page turners, ‘Monstro’ is definitely a must-read.  

The Story Protests!

I am; when I am told,

  from another’s point of view.

And then I'm penned

only to rest on a 'to-read' list. 

My shape and size are not my own.

 Delivered and designed I am

by one who thinks I am his to own.

I am set, evolved, and dissolved  

- in a city, barn, café, even on a star,

in bygone eras and countries afar.

Embroiled and embedded

in conflicts that I'd rather disown.

 Spun by a stanger's imagination
and colored by alien wit and biases,

I'm housed amid characters
playing me out to a climax
one that I dread, even abhor,

because that sounds my death knell.
Now it’s the resolution that follows!

And from experience I know

it’s time for me to go.

It’s a curtain call I’m made to take,

so I don’t take the bow.

Dharun Ravi Sentence - Will 'Justice' be Served, or will he be the Sacrificial Lamb for a Society Unable to Deal with the Winds of Change?

What Dharun Ravi did was wrong, but will justice be done if this young man serves a ten year prison term for the wrong he did, is clearly debatable! If punishment accorded to the guilty in a court of justice aims to improve society, then the Dharun Ravi case does not appear to qualify.

By definition, society is a work in progress. With the passage of time social norms change, as does the social ethos, especially when new ideas and trends make their way into society; women’s suffrage was one such idea, cinema was another, and in recent times it is the advent of the internet that provides quick and easy dissemination of news and information. Our society is blanketed by this technology, and at times reels under its weight, especially that part of society housing the forty plus age group.  However, the same is not true about the younger generation; they have become adept users of trendy technology and at times use it with indiscretion, as did young Dharun Ravi. Youth by definition is foolhardy, and oftentimes falls prey to bravado and peer pressure; this may have been the case with the eighteen year old in question.

It isn’t just the fast changing technology, but also new ideas and new trends that frazzle us. One such trend being the need to acknowledge and recognize gay and lesbian rights unequivocally, and as a nation we are still grappling with this trend. I say grappling because until 2004, same-sex couples couldn’t wed anywhere in the country; however, now, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and most recently New Hampshire. Nonetheless, it is still 6 states out of 50 that have a clear resolution on gay and lesbian relationships!  In the light of this statistic, would it be fair to expect an eighteen year old Dharun Ravi to be nonchalant about what he witnessed in his dorm room?

Clearly, Dharun Ravi’s case illustrates the limitations of a justice system that along with a puritanical bias  often times selects juries with limited exposure to advanced technology; the Dharun Ravi case is an example.  The wrong of Dharun Ravi is ‘modern’ by definition; nevertheless, deserves punishment as it embeds a wrong, but it also showcases the ills and challenges of the 21^st century which will not be recognized or/and addressed even after Dharun is sentenced because the justice system lacks the know how.  Unfortunately, it is still wearing blinders from the century before.  Our justice system, like our society, has some growing up to do, and expeditiously, so that offenders such as Dharun Ravi will receive punishment that is crime appropriate.

 Every now and again society is confronted with an idea or event that is avant-garde, and it is then that the flexibility and adaptability of a society is tested; the Dharun Ravi case is doing just that. The question here is not whether Dharun Ravi committed a crime with bias; maybe he did, but where did the bias stem from? Is this young man's proclivity unique to him, or do we all share in this prejudice which we often hide by feigning ambivalence? This, is the more significant question the jury and the justice system need to address: Do our fellow gays and lesbians enjoy equal status in society?  Until we, as a society, provide an unequivocal answer to that question, we cannot conclusively sentence a Dharun Ravi whose wrongdoing mirrors the predisposition of his family, his immediate community, and this society at large.  His biases, his thinking or his lack thereof, are a direct reflection of his environment, and yet he, an eigteen year old just out of high school, alone stands trial.  Dharun Ravi is scheduled to be sentenced in May this year, and the chances are he will be put behind bars, for a couple of years at least, with hardened criminals, and all this while a felonious society looks on. Dharun Ravi's wrong doing, a 'webcam case' of invading a dorm-mate's privacy, could well have been regarded as a teenage prank, were it not so closely associated with the larger issue of gay and lesbian relationships about which we as a society are still 'ambivalent'.

On The Fall of a Leaf - "killing time without injuring eternity"?

Another leaf falls.

A testimony

That I am.

To what end?

I know not.

I continue to be;

absorbed.

In a charade,

of chores,

until..

another leaf falls.

A reminder

that

this too shall pass

like it did

the day before.

Forget I will,

like I did

the day before.

While

another leaf falls.

A fear

Will another be?

Just as green?

With flowers

for company?

And then what?

A new canvas?

A new pallet?

With hues familiar

to ponder upon?

Just as..

another leaf falls..

I react.

To move the plant

into the sun.

And water it.

Even talk to it.

For it must grow!

Healthy, happy, tall

And…

Another leaf falls.

'Kahani' - Sujoy Ghosh's Classy Thriller

I have watched one too many Indian movies churned out of the Bollywood film factory where one size fits all, and one story reads all! 'Kahani' broke the status quo!  Indian cinema seems to be coming of age.  Sujoy Ghosh's two hour Indian movie, with English subtitles, had me glued to my seat enthralled.

The female lead, Ms. Balan has done a remarkable job! She is a very versatile actress and is to be commended for her outstanding performance as the overly pregnant Mrs. Bagchi from London looking for her missing husband, who came to Calcutta a month ago, at her insistence, on an assignment with the National Data Center.
A movie not to be missed!