Two Short Stories by Prof. Mahendrasinh Parmar

Hello friends , 

This Blog is a part of Sunday reading tasks.  This Sunday I have  read  these two Gujarati short stories "Intellectual Indubhai" and "ISI No Haath" from "Polytechnic"- a collection of short stories published in 2016 by Mahendrasinh Parmar.

Mahendrasinh Parmar 's famous short stories collection - "Polytechnic".

        Let's we have discuss about two interesting short stories.

1. ISI no Haath: 

In this Story writer talk about that how religion effect on peoples mind.Into this story talked about impact of religion on the mind set of the people. Religion converting as ATM. Religion become way of money making. On the name of Religion people ready to do any thing. This thing also reflects in to this story. In this story talked about the power of religion who ruined life of common people by ruined their business. The meaning of ISI not belongs to any terrorist group. It has different meaning :

I - Ishvar Dabhi 

S - Sharad Joshi 

I - Indrajit Dholakiya

So it's about the people whom life ruined because of the temple. 

     Ishvar was Junk Man or Scavenger Or Scrap Collector. Hee collects old newspapers but when this Temple build they told the people to gave the old newspaper to them. So people think that it would be good to gave newspaper to temple so on the name of faith and religion people don't gave old newspaper to Ishvar so because of that his business was broken.  

     Sharad was coming from poor family. His mother was good cook. His father and his mother feed people and urning money. But because of the temple their business was broken because temple provide food to people in 600 Rs per month. Sharad father can't face the reality and died. 

 Indrajit was professor. He talked about the profession of the religious people. Temple become the profession for urning money He talked about the land on which the temple build. This land was given by Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji for education purpose but later on this land taken by religious people to build temple. So how religion ruined the education. 

Religion make people blind. Here the son of Police inspector goes abroad. There he was blind flooded by religious people. He decide to left his engineering and join the work of temple. After build the temple religious people left him form there. He faced many problems and couldn't got job. 

 So, this story highly satirised on  the religion. 

Religion become business to make money nothing than that. This types of thing harmful in our society. 

Compare with comtemporary event :

We can compare this story with Swaminarayan Temple 's history in Bhavnagar . The story is a satire on the building of Swaminarayan temple near university, which covers all the area included under the University. And no one takes major step against it because of Power and money.Maharaja Krishan Kumarsinhji donated this land for Education purpose .

Whenever I read this story that time i compared this situation with my college . Because my college" Yogiji Maharaj Mahavidhyalay "- Dhari is built on Swami Narayan temple's money . Before 28 years ago in Dhari Saheb Dada who is a main Saint of Anupom Mission.They has decided to built grand temple of Yogi Bapa's in his birth place . That time Sahebji said no we can built some unique in Yogibapa's birth place . We can made one girls college because Dhari is a rural area and no one  college for girls. That time they thought about girls education and made a college for us . That time I thought different types of peoples in our society . Some are gave more importance for education.  And some people gave more importance to religion .In now a days people built temple for business purpose .They forgot education is necessary for society .

2.Intellectual Indubhai :

 In this story writer satire on word "intellectual".Intellectual means, a person possessing highly developed intellect. Like critics, Camus, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud etc, who satirized on Political system, religion and many more subjects. In a way writer makes satire on high class intellectuals.

In this story we can find that we feel that Indubhai is really intellectual person but after further reading we feel the reality.After that he remember western thinkers name . 

Here intellectual mind is also one imaginative truth.The writer has included names of many western philosophers, thinkers, critics. In a way he makes satire on Elite class writers. He makes satire on the theory of Charles Darwin about the evolution of human beings, that if we all human are evoluted from same species then why the society makes difference between the majority and minority, it doesn't makes any sense. 

Intellectual Indubhai stands for the middle class, minority class who is unable to do anything. He wants to stop these all things but can't. And only stands as a passive observer. He even cannot stops his students whom he taught in class the moral values.

Compare with contemporary event :

We can compare this event with Godhra riots. This story is a satire on  Godhra riots(2002) which was a massive destruction of human lives. Riot between the majority and minority group.The writer has successfully highlighted the major problem without direct addressing to those groups of society which belongs to minority or majority. 

Writer took examples while describe Majority and Minority crises as "April as cruellest month". In this people burn the houses and trains. Also the Holy books like Ramayana and Mahabharata , krishna nu jivan Sangeet.

    The writer has great ability to connect the real life situation and imaginative stories together. He wrote not only about the incidents but also minutely wrote about situation of people and effects of that incidents upon the mind of people.

Thank u....