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The Storyteller
The main character, Purnachandra, named after the ‘full-moon’, is born as mentally challenged and unformed. He tries to cope up with the other children of his age. His parents try every possible treatment, scientific as well as unscientific. In addition to medicines, as per the village beliefs, he is branded with hot iron rod on his stomach but to no avail. Nevertheless, his parents are a big support to him who shower love and care on their son. The boy gets influenced by a celebrated hero of the village, Mr Rao, and after a concerted effort develops a keen insight and a flare for storytelling. His friends refuse to listen to his stories. It is after being hospitalised due to a typhoid disorderthat he comes across small children in the "other" part of the hospital, whose life has been measured short due to cancer. The doctor, who treats Puranchandra, lost his wife and is about to lose his daughter, Sarada, who also suffers from cancer. Puranchandra succeeds in lending a smile on the girl’s face in her last days who is otherwise forlorn and refuses to see anyone. All the children in the ward are mesmerised by his stories. Puranchandra, despite his neurological disorder succeeds in graduating and finding the job of a schoolteacher. The mind of the mentally challenged, as represented by the writer, is one of "the true repositories of wisdom". It is undefiled. Puranchandra’s response to the poem, when asked by his teacher, is: "I had a picture of joy that the flowers and the plants must have had on their faces when they broke open in to a world filled with light, after being confined to the dark world of the soil. I saw their smiling faces as they greeted each other in joy". It shows the depth of the boy’s imagination untouched by any impurity. The novel brings to the forefront a sensitive issue of the lack of maturity on our part to learn to respect the disabled in our society .We fail to recognise those "who can actually touch the life around with lightness, spontaneity and compassion" and rather view only those "who mouth the rigidity of organised thoughts and elitist merits". Parallel to it, the writer voices a concern for cancer patients. The deaths accounting for in developed countries is 21 per cent of the mortality. Cancer, in India, is one of the 10 leading causes of death and there are 1.5-2 million cancer patients. On a lighter note, the writer also conveys that the children who used to enjoy bedtime stories have long lost their magical touch in the lure of television. On the whole, The Storyteller reminds us to dream and aspire for an innate potential.
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Mithin