"Mr. Konrad, Józef, have you considered the possibility of a white man who will never be the captor, the master, the colonist? Of your own possibility?"
I really enjoyed reading this. I love stories where real literary characters appear in imagined scenarios. Keep it going Tanuj! Maybe one day, the esteemed writer Tanuj Solanki will be a character in your own stories too :)
This story usually divides opinion. For those who know Tagore (and there are many who are convinced they do so comprehensively), it becomes impossibile not to lapse into enumerating the impossibilities of what I have conjured here. Likewise, there is a constituency of reader for whom it is difficult to reconcile with Conrad (rightly so), and for some in that constituency the young, unsure Conrad I show here is a blatant misreading, owing to ignorance or malice on the writer's part. For me, the only tragedy is that like many other stories of mine (including 'Appropriation', or 'Repetition', also on the Substack, or 'The Desire of the Detective', in that detective anthology edited by Tarun Saint), this one is too standalone to ever find itself in a collection, given the fact that the world now prefers story collections that, if they are not linked narratorially, are at least thematically consistent.
To list the impossibilities of what you have conjured is to be limited in the vision of the story as possibility. People will read stories about space travel and multiverses, but an imagined meeting between two later-to-be literary titans cannot also allow for imagination as to who they were? Tagore is like Gandhi, everyone has their own idea of him and a lot of people are possessive, I guess. I have not read the detective anthology but will look out for your piece. I shall also read Repetition. Regarding the point about it being too standalone, maybe you can slowly add a dozen more stories with a dozen other writers (Naipaul, Bolano, Rushdie etc etc) and voila! - there's a collection. Easier said than done, especially when the saying is by someone not doing the writing :)
I really enjoyed reading this. I love stories where real literary characters appear in imagined scenarios. Keep it going Tanuj! Maybe one day, the esteemed writer Tanuj Solanki will be a character in your own stories too :)
'esteemed writer' - haha!
This story usually divides opinion. For those who know Tagore (and there are many who are convinced they do so comprehensively), it becomes impossibile not to lapse into enumerating the impossibilities of what I have conjured here. Likewise, there is a constituency of reader for whom it is difficult to reconcile with Conrad (rightly so), and for some in that constituency the young, unsure Conrad I show here is a blatant misreading, owing to ignorance or malice on the writer's part. For me, the only tragedy is that like many other stories of mine (including 'Appropriation', or 'Repetition', also on the Substack, or 'The Desire of the Detective', in that detective anthology edited by Tarun Saint), this one is too standalone to ever find itself in a collection, given the fact that the world now prefers story collections that, if they are not linked narratorially, are at least thematically consistent.
To list the impossibilities of what you have conjured is to be limited in the vision of the story as possibility. People will read stories about space travel and multiverses, but an imagined meeting between two later-to-be literary titans cannot also allow for imagination as to who they were? Tagore is like Gandhi, everyone has their own idea of him and a lot of people are possessive, I guess. I have not read the detective anthology but will look out for your piece. I shall also read Repetition. Regarding the point about it being too standalone, maybe you can slowly add a dozen more stories with a dozen other writers (Naipaul, Bolano, Rushdie etc etc) and voila! - there's a collection. Easier said than done, especially when the saying is by someone not doing the writing :)