"What makes a short story short?"

A brilliant teenager once told me "the trouble with literature is that you have to read it". How true. I love to read and the habit has got me a passing acquaintance with the world of literature. My formal schooling in literature is limited to high school reading assignments and a course I took on Twentieth Century Literature at IIT Bombay as part of the required quota of humanities courses. Twentieth Century Literature was conducted by an elegant, erudite lady, which fact, I suspect, accounted, in large part, for its popularity. My biggest contribution to the study of literature to date has been a question I asked while the class was discussing the various forms of literature: What makes a short story short?. The rest of the hour was devoted to pondering this deep question and it even got Mrs Saxena , after the class, to treat me to a cup of coffee and batata wada at the canteen. Largely unschooled in literature that I am, if you ask about the things that give me joy, the reading of literature would be pretty high on the list. So what is the relationship between being schooled in something and deriving pleasure from it? Mahendra Singh Dhoni, captain of India’s cricket team, has a private mantra for raising his performance on the field. In his mind, he says, he harks back to the days when he played cricket for the fun of it. The simple atavistic arcs of the ball and the bat resonating with swinging arms and dancing feets. The schooling, he says, fades into the background, pleasure takes over and the zone, that so many sportsmen talk about, is reached. All of us are schooled in a few things and most of us make a living out of the things we are schooled in. But find those few among us who can put the schooling in their chosen field into the background and approach their art anew everyday and you will find fulfilled people making a real difference to the world and the practice of their art form. The other side of the coin of this simple mantra is that great pleasure awaits you when you approach any activity in which you are unschooled. In fact, if you think about it, the human pursuit of leisure, recreation and entertainment is governed by this core principle. Dive a little deeper into the relationship between knowledge and pleasure and, I suspect, you will come up with many pearls. Wisdom and pleasure are two sides of the same coin? Unlearning is, at least, as important as learning? Before you jump in though do not forget the diving suit and the oxygen supply. Happy hunting!