It was the last Saturday of August, and words held captive in the shelves of G.P. Birla library started flowing freely. This metaphorical literary river had many things in common with the actual holy Ganges and one could not stop drawing parallels between them throughout the second edition of Abhivyakti.
Though it was only the second time that Abhivyakti was hosted, the crowd had swollen to more than thrice the attendance of the first edition, much like the Ganges in the monsoons.
The agenda for the day was Harishankar Parsai’s Inspector Matadeen Chaand Par. Parsai was famous for his satirical take on the society and subtly slipping his message and frustration between his hilarious writing.
This story about Inspector Matadeen, who is chosen to represent humanity on the Moon, is a take on the abject institutional corruption in the government machinery.
In this universe, the Moon is inhabited by humans and has a functioning society, but not a functioning police force. So they call upon the humans of Earth to send them a tutor and off goes Inspector Matadeen.
Given that this story was written in 1968, and Neil Armstrong only set foot on moon in 1969, it was actually ahead of its time. As soon as Matadeen lands on the Moon, he starts Indianising the Moon’s police force. Their salaries are cut which forces them to make more arrests, cases also start closing faster as he teaches his lunar counterparts the art of manufacturing witnesses and evidence.
The society eventually starts to fall apart. Moon human’s empathy gets replaced by fear of prosecution and people stop helping each other. So, Matadeen is expelled from the Moon.
Like always, Sutradhar’s Vinay Varma’s personal touch took the story to another level. There were many words and references in the story which would not have been understood but for his anecdotal explanations and examples. The texture of his voice clubbed with his insights into the wisdom hidden between the lines caught the audience’s attention for the entire forty-five minutes.
Everybody there agreed on one point that participation of children must be encouraged going forward, since this generation desperately needs an introduction to this wonderful thing called library.
