More tales from Rumble Belly

Dear friends:

Here is my second, and probably final, collection of short stories, entitled 'More tales from Rumble Belly: Fantasies from a middle class mind'. I am giving below my introduction to this project spelling out where the ideas came from and if they mean anything at all. The table of contents gives you a flavour of the diversity of themes in this story collection.

Do take a look if the mood strikes you, and don't forget to write your comments, the more critical they are, the better!

????????????????????? Introductory notes?

As I near the end of this second, and probably final, volume of short stories I am racked by guilt and a large dose of self doubt. Many friends who took the trouble to read the first volume bitterly complained about the suddenness and abruptness of the endings. ‘These stories are fine as they go, but why do they end just when the plot and characters get going full blast’ seems to be the common chorus. The second complaint was the lack of female characters in these stories. ‘Where is the romantic interest in these pages? Is the author some kind of misogynist or what?’. Finally there arises the question, where do these varied plots and characters come from? Are they a product of author’s personal experiences, both in life and in the jobs he did they wonder.?

Since this is perhaps my only chance to address these questions, the reader is forced to postpone the pleasure of reading the second set of stories ever so slightly. These stories are what I would call uni-dimensional, in that they portray just one aspect of the protagonist’s life, or experience or philosophy and that is about it; they don’t pretend to cover anything beyond it, meaning what happens to the characters after the story ends is left to the readers’ imagination. There is of course an underlying, unstated motive behind these stories, which is to make the reader think deeply and that can be onerous for some.?

About the lack of serious female characters, I have to own up and accept guilt as charged. However, I do wonder why an activity, I mean the whole romance and sex business, which actually takes up so little time in human lives, should occupy so much of our thinking time. Anyway that is a question for another time.?

Finally, where do these story ideas come from? They are an amalgam of over-active imagination, leavened with observed behaviours, reported experiences and yes, personal prejudices. These story ideas had been marinating in my mind for a long time, keeping me awake in the early hours of the day. The characters are largely drawn from people I have encountered in real life, primarily for the centrality of their personalities, mixed with some traits borrowed from others. And their names? They are of people known to me in my long work life. For example Karun Kumar Katur was the first senior to rag me at IIT Kharagpur where I joined in 1969. Sreekant Sambrani was a professor at IIM Ahmedabad during my time there.?

Len Deighton once famously said that it is only when you begin your second book you signal your seriousness about being a writer. I am not so sure if Deighton is right. Being a writer I mean. While I enjoyed, in a rather selfish and self absorbed way, the whole process of writing these stories, allowing a lot of latitude to the characters in them and putting words in their mouths, I am conscious of a gradual drying up of imagination. Perhaps some more years of experiencing and imagining things would change that. I hope. For fiction writing is the ultimate in unalloyed selfish pleasure passing off as creative activity.?

A V Ram Mohan.

14th April 2022 Chennai 18?

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?????????????????????contents?

1. A Dramatic Encounter in Delhi 15?
2. An Interesting Life in the Professions 25?
3. Chitradurga Lakshmi Narayana IAS 34?

4. Freedom Fighters or Ageing Revolutionaries? 47?

1. The Future Feeling Sorry for Itself 48?
2. Stormy Goings on in the Seminar 52?
3. Violence, Turmoil, Division and Disease in the Air 57
4. Preliminary Moves to Attract a New Recruit
5. in a Serious Plot 62
6. Thoughts on Recasting the Constitution 65
7. The Final Product: An Accessible Constitution
8. Fit for Purpose 71
9. Final Consensus on Action Plans 77
10. Official Moves Against the Group 81
11. Collapse of the Old Order 85
12. An Unusually Sure-Footed Interim Government 89
13. Rebirth of a Newly Independent Nation 95

5. A Corporate Life in the Recent Times 99?

1. Life at the Lower Levels?
2. One More Chance?

3. A Final Shot at a Great Opportunity 110?

4. Unexpected Turnaround in Fortunes 116?

6. An Uneducated Man’s Dilemma 122?

7. A Top Class Civil Engineering Talent 129?

8. A Question of Value Systems: Are Some

Law Breakers Justified? 137?

1. A Meeting of Minds 138?
2. Stepping on a Downward Slope 144?
3. The Fall Following a Spectacular Rise 149?
4. The Final Fade Out 155?
5. Following the Law, an Alternate Point of View 161?

9. Educating Young Indians: Hope Springs Eternal 165?

1. A Disillusioned School Teacher 166?
2. A Distinguished Educator in Engineering 172?
3. An Accidental Movie Maker 177?
4. An Unusual Block Buster 180?
5. Final Impact of the Documentary 184?

10. Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the Rescue 187?

1. New Tools to Fight Corruption 188?
2. Tentative Applications of AI 193?
3. Initial Impact of the Scandal 197?
4. A Cunning Plan in the Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools?

11. Miscellaneous:

1. Lessons from Mishandling Corporate Debt: Is
2. There a Principal-Agent Problem? 203
3. Nirad Chaudhury, an Overdue Re-Appraisal 208
4. A Critical Look at ‘Era of Darkness’ by Shashi Tharoor 215
5. Raghuram Rajan’s Interview with Karan Thapar 222?