Story Bazaar

When I was little, every time there was load shedding at night and when we had done our homework and couldn’t yet sleep because of the heat or the general feeling of insecurity in a house surrounded by giant trees and illuminated by a single candle, my mother would tell us stories. Usually, they were stories from the Quran or old Siraiki stories that my mother had been told when she was my age or even younger. A lot of the times, me or my siblings would interject to ask questions and Ammaan would answer, or try her best to do so. But if there’s one thing children are good at, it is being insistent in their unending curiosity. Inevitably our questions would lead us to a metaphorical cul-de-sac which Ammaan would jump over by either saying that asking too many questions regarding religious characters isn’t advisable or that she simply didn’t know because when she was a child, the mere telling of a yarn was a luxury and the thought of interrupting it by asking questions and threatening to hinder the activity had never been a matter of consideration. And that is the trouble with stories. They mustn’t be questioned.

As humans, our lives are dictated at every passing moment by stories. We tell each other anecdotes to pass the time and break the ice. We tell fictional stories to others for entertainment, and fictional stories to ourselves to make up for our own inadequacies. The moment we are born, our parable begins writing itself, in the book of Fate by the ink of your actions and the hand of…well not us for sure. But that isn’t the only story associated with you. Your story overlaps with others’ stories. And there are stories of you that others have written conveniently for you, sometimes out of good intention, mostly out of some need of their own. Our parents write our stories for us. After miscalculating plot points and ending up at a rather anticlimactic ending, they wish to erase the unassailable ink that swells the characters of their story. But it cannot happen. Our stories only progress linearly in one direction. And so, in a desperate attempt at reconciliation with their ego, they push and prod and try to write our stories for us. We, too, are criminals of similar natures. Envisioning stories for ourselves in clouds, when the paper is crumpled and the pen is quite frankly not in our control. We escape from our stories with more stories. In dreams and nightmares, our suppressed stories come to fruition. Plot holes that we pay no heed to enlarge and coalesce to form absurd dreams, amorphous characters living on the fringes of our imagination take shape into nightmare creatures and recurring references to an old tale keep coming back to us in the form of the same dream again and again.

It makes me happy in a guttural sense to realize how aspects of old mythologies are fundamentally the same if you squint for long enough. The Earth goes through geographical cycles that appear the same, and thus there is a possibility of multiple Great Floods occurring. But the romantic plausibility lies with the event happening only once in the history of humankind, and then being retold as different stories over the millennia. The idea that ‘Everything changes but nothing is truly lost’ is common to many philosophies and stoics have reflected on it too, specifically talking about how the world has always been the same. How humans and human emotions, virtues, and vices have remained the same since time immemorial, only the exact mechanizations have changed. And that such changes can easily be considered and shouldn’t hinder the application of a philosophy or a general understanding of human nature for it always remains the same. The emotions of grief at the death of a friend echo similar sentiments through the Epic of Gilgamesh as they do in Greek mythology and as they would today in real life. The characters from Norse mythologies may have been streamlined into digestible superhero characters but it doesn’t take away from the fact that they are still remnants of stories told from generation to generation and their foundations exist in the names of everyday appliances like weekdays. What makes all mythology so succinct isn’t the might of a god or two or the entire pantheon, but it is their power reflected against the mirror of humanity. Therefore, these stories still live today in our hearts and minds. For they are not stories only of gods and ancient beings, but they’re stories of humans. Despite all his strength, Zeus is never the protagonist of the story. It’s Achilles or Hercules or Jason or Odysseus or Helen. It’s humans. Or well, half-humans if you want to be itty gritty about it. But humans nonetheless show the same spectrum of emotions that we are capable of if prejudiced to express.

Some people peddle stories too. And it’s not always the worst thing in the world to buy a story. When faced with the unending void of free will and choice, the nausea takes hold of us and we are forced to attach labels to ourselves in the hopes of never having to face the consequences of our decisions and have them dictated to us based on the spiel we believe in. It only gets troublesome when you start thinking your story is better than someone else’s. That your story is the only real story and all other stories must not exist. Maybe then it isn’t a story after all. For all stories maintain a figment of fiction, and to believe so completely in fiction demands a lack of logical countenance, a predisposition to stupidity. The best stories are the ones that never end. That is why a lot of tv shows with good stories end up being shit because they do not know when to stop. The human mind loves to jump to conclusions. It loves playing detective. We observe stories and continuously experiment in our own heads about how they will end. How a movie will end? How a book will end. How a race will go. How we will score in an exam. How we will die. To us, the neat ribbon-tied packaging of the ending is the biggest indicator of how good a story is. When someone dies in a less than ideal manner, there is always speculation about how they unpleasantly met their end. We ask God to take our lives peacefully, in our own lands, near our loved ones, in our home, rooms, beds, of old age, hand in hand with our beloved. Because to us, the destination matters more than the journey.

And so, the open-ended stories always hold more allure. Therefore, religion is such a hot seller. Nobody knows what happens and nobody can confirm, or deny the claims that can be made. So, you can choose to believe a story about what happens at the end of the end, and avoid the anxiety of the emptiness. Or you can pull your hair out one by one trying to figure out a narrative for yourself, one that you can believe in.

But that is the trouble with stories.

They cannot be questioned.

Must not be questioned.

For if you question them too strongly, they fall apart at the seams and you see them for what they are: charade by a master swindler. A menagerie of stereotypes and ambiguous plot points. The stories you make, are the ones that are easiest to question. Because you made them. Like an artist you know where the faults lie and where the strokes of the brush careen over the frame into reality, indistinguishable. And the stories you buy from the bazaar are less likely to show such unreliable behaviour. Simply because they’re bought. There has been an investment in them. There is less contentment in a bought story, but you have the guarantee of countless others and amazing as well as scathing reviews of the same product. We hesitate from questioning these mass manufactured stories because if they worked for hundreds of others, they should work for you too. If they don’t, maybe you’re using it wrongly. Did you read the user manual? Read it again. Read the 52 translations. And then the transliteration at the end. The fine letters between the lines. If it still doesn’t work, some repairmen will fix you. Not the story. The story is perfect. It worked for everyone else. It should work for you.

If God forbid you to find yourself in an alleyway, with the realization that the story doesn’t work. That too much of life has passed and your imagination has leaked out of your pockets. And you lack the ambition to make stories and crave too much autonomy to loan it from your parents or your friends. You find yourself at this pathway, envying the believers who in their naivety have at least the comfort of companionship, an end to gesticulate about, a journey filled with struggle compliant with their character arc, and a neat conclusion as the dessert. Then it might be too late for you to buy stories anymore. Check your pockets once more for any spare change. And if you find any, go buy the cheapest, easiest chronicle. And believe in it. Because writing stories for yourself is hard.

I would know because I haven’t written any this year. Only poems of wistful passion borne out of necessity and the comforting scourge of love that knows no outlet.