Musings of an Anonymous Indian

Before I start talking about Fiction, I must say what I mean by the Fiction.

Origins of this love

My love for story-books and novels would have started when I was in womb. When I was a young child, I was given a lot of picture books to read and enjoy myself. I was also curious and used to find them easy to read. Seeing me enjoy books, made my parents and relatives (who has seen me from my childhood) to comment that my love for books might have come from my mother who used to read when I was in womb. I was told when I was growing, that my mother was preparing for her BA (Bachelor in Arts) when I was in womb. I am grateful for my mother to read and study when I was in womb. Well, the story of Arjuna telling a story about chakravyuh to his wife when she was with his son in her womb, and later that son entering chakravyuh just because of that story heard by him when he was in the womb, kind of made me believe what my parents told me. But I was still not aware that I was curious to know more about fictional people and their stories. Also, I liked the mystery and whodunit stories, which were fast paced and gave the readers ample time to solve the mystery. Those were my favourite type of stories, trying to know what will happen, getting by the intuition or gut feeling. Even the movies that my parents introduced me to, the old Indian ‘masala’ movies starring Amitabh Bachchan, were liked by me. Oh the young me! I was also introduced to many good non-masala Hindi and Bengali movies starring many versatile and good actors, having plots that now seem ridiculous to me. I was still not aware of my love for the stories and Fiction then.

Journey through Fiction

My love for Fiction grew over the years. My teachers and relatives had made this impression on my impressionable mind that reading story books and novels are much better for mind than watching any films and movies. I did not forgo movies and films and shows and cartoons altogether, but I did not re-watch them as well. I started to read any physical book that I came across. I was a fan of Mystery series and Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. I used to read comics and magazines which were sold in Railway stations whenever I used to travel by train. I would take comics and magazines under the big umbrella of Fiction because they also tell us stories, although they were short stories. Also, I used to be crazy about the books that were sold in Railway stations, that was the only time I could afford new stories without my parents nagging at me for buying so much.

I started to read books whose text were published online when I was in class 9, because I was not getting any physical book. I also came across manga and manhwas that broadened my love for Fiction. Along with that came Anime, which I enjoyed watching. Actually it was because I used to watch Anime, that made me read manga. Anime and manga had many different stories that introduced me to Japanese culture, even though I used to read mostly shoujo and josei genre manga, meaning manga for girls and women. Watching anime and reading manga made me realise the whole big world of Fiction which is there in internet. I still preferred reading to watching though. I used to read mangas and then watch anime. Because of this, I think I completed reading Naruto and used to watch the anime. Even though I watched some anime before reading the manga (Naruto, Nodame Cantabile, Sket Dance, Tekkaishi and K-on‘s initial episodes), I have also been faulty of deciding to stop watching an anime so that I could read the source manga. This has been the case when I decided to stop watching Coppelion. It all stemmed from my inability to enjoy the source when I am able to enjoy their visual media counterpart. The television stopped working around my class 10 days and thus stopped my visual media consumption. My activity of scouring through online texts of physical books increased. I came across Young Adult genre books and that used to be relatable. They were about USA schools, but used to feel relatable to me, because it catered to same age group of people in which I was, and kind of made me aware of my coming-of-age story. But they also made me aware that I was just a boring person living through so many fictional lives. Fiction became my life-saviour, a kind of Life Teacher. And then I started to consume some questionable books, that made me feel that I have become older and made me feel cool because I knew about them. This is the part where I feel bad for consuming some questionable stories and I am guilty of it. But, I must say, that just made me realise in hindsight that there are lots of books out there and it is the readers who have to choose the books that they want to read, wisely. Class 12 kind of made a break on my Fiction reading. But still that made me write a story about a future that I was not thinking of earlier when I was in Class 10. I was already in a path, that would make me feel less thankful to the Fiction. Writing out my naïve fantasies as fiction was a practice in writing stories, which were altogether bad. I was already by that time writing poems and was invested in poetry for expressing my emotions. Or opinions, or whatever that was going on in my mind. That’s why my love for Fiction was a little dubious at the time when I was in class 11 and class 12, my age being 16 and 17 respectively. I did read some notable fiction books (physical) in my class 11 and class 12, like a book written by PG Wodehouse (I don’t remember the name of the book), and a book written by Paulo Coelho. But much of my fiction consumption now happened in visual as well as fiction from internet. This was the time when I also realised that I am interested in the Stories, whatever form they may be, whether they are in visual media or in the form of traditional books or in the form of short stories. And thus, formed my thoughts on Fiction being an umbrella term for all the Stories that I have consumed since my consciousness.

And also, started my consumption of visual media without feeling any feelings of snobbery on it. I started to enjoy and appreciate films and movies and shows much more when I entered college, in my nineteenth year of my life. I had a course in World Literature and Cinema and enjoyed it immensely, with the lecturer being passionate about the coursework which he was teaching. Unfortunately, it was only for one semester and that too online. *Sighs at not being able to take that course in further semesters*

Even before that course, I was mostly immersed with visual media, that is shows and movies (Movie Club in college that used to show movies every Friday). I realised that I like Fiction, whether they be in the form of movies, or episodic and seasonal shows or short stories or novels or story books or comics or manga. I started to be appreciative of those art forms that tried to communicate human emotions and situations and stories to the world, irrespective of the language or the medium. The course definitely helped in making me understand more about the process of filmmaking that goes on behind those movies and shows. This course happened this spring semester, and was recent. Obviously, it helped me in understanding the K-dramas that I had started to watch from previous year and the use of camera along with the cinematography and the cuts and scene replacements. My knowledge is on a very basic level, but I am understanding this form of Fiction, that I used to undermine in my childhood, but equally enjoyed. I also started to see Youtube videos that helped me in understanding the world behind Cinema and movies, that help bring stories and Fiction to a large mass of people in India, where many of them are illiterate.

Why do I like it?

People are always in search of stories-whether they be fictional or factual. My love for fantasy, my love for the stories of other people and wanting to connect to them and relate to them, made me love Fiction. Some stories are just supposed to only entertain us with their rich, fantasy world, and we travel along with the characters in their wonderful world. Some stories sometimes make us look at our life and make us think about our existence. Some stories make us think about the world we live in and the reality in which we exist. Some stories hold a mirror to our society, and some stories at first glance is not like our world, but when we go through it in detail, we see our society reflected. It would be a lie to tell that Fiction is not part of our real world; they are, and often it seems to me a parallel universe just like ours and mirroring ours. Fiction is something which writers and the creators tell us about reality but it seems some other reality in other universe out of the other multiple universes.

Fiction, which has been a big part of my life since my consciousness, has now become a thing which I look to when reality becomes unbearable. It was the case when I was in my school, as well as now. Sometimes, I look into Fiction and stories to search for answers to the existential questions that I struggle through. I do not get the answers most of the time, but they do seem to motivate me in keeping up with my life and to understand it. For me, Fiction does not only mean an escape from reality, it also means accepting reality, as sometimes Fiction gives me a better perspective of the real world. This reminds me of Mother of 1984 and Animal Farm, both books a commentary on society., which I read recently. Former book does it by showing the process of grief by a mother for her youngest son who is dead and latter does it by making an analogy of sorts with the Animals being attributed human characteristics and showing an animal society and their interaction with Humans. Both were enlightening read for me, with possibilities of a bigger discussion, keeping in mind the reality of the world and India in general. Even though they were written in different time period, they still feel as relevant to me, specifically as we see the world and society now.

Nowadays, Fiction brings with it different perspectives as well. Like, there are some fans and lovers of those world that even write fan-fiction stories (also called fan-fics) to fulfill their wishful thinking. Sometimes, there are perspectives of characters in the fan-fics who were supporting characters or antagonists in the actual story. I used to read fan-fics of Harry Potter with Draco Malfoy’s viewpoint. There were many writers in the world who wanted to explore his character, who was supposed to be a part of the story’s villain’s team in the original story. Even though the story does not show his viewpoint, we get perspective of Draco Malfoy in those fan-fics, and get to understand him. In the original story, for me Draco Malfoy was not a villain, it was Voldemort. Draco was always an antagonist, a person who was supposed to foil things for our protagonist Harry Potter, and to be the opposite of whatever our hero does, but he was never a villain. Same with Severus Snape.

My decision of writing on this topic was because I am currently reading fantasy genre book The Name of the Wind simultaneously with Circe, a book based on Greek mythological characters. This also made me remember that Myths are probably the world’s first stories, which might have been based on some real characters at that time. They could have exaggerated the powers and the conditions, but the stories were orally communicated to a select people, and then they were transmitted by mouth-to-mouth. Myths were probably first stories and first fiction, which were communicated and told orally. Nowadays, the movies and shows are the most accepted and widely consumed form of the stories. Being a lover of stories, I also consume them and have consciously started to take them under the umbrella term of Fiction, even after knowing that fiction means prose. But as we see through the history and time, we have noticed the stories being told orally and then after the invention of writing, books were produced to tell the story. After the invention of the films and camera and their development, the stories got another medium to be shared, and that also widely throughout the world. How the stories are told have evolved, and just like that, my understanding of the stories in different form of media is also evolving. I still love reading fiction, and now I term the label of Fiction to my evolving search and love for different stories in different media. I should have titled this blog post My Love for Stories, but I want to say about my love for fictional stories, and they are different from the real stories. Thus, the umbrella term, Fiction.

My search for stories in this situation of pandemic, led me to write about my love for Fiction and stories in general. The Name of the Wind also deals with the stories, and reading that book (have not completed that yet) have made me realise my love for stories and Fiction again. And thus, I wrote.

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie”

Stephen King