Childhood, mystery and the idea of a self in Uday Prakash’s memoirs

Abstract

This article focuses on some very short stories by Uday Prakash published as ‘autobiographies.’ Three of them are in the short story collection Tirich (“The poisonous lizard”) first published in 1989; five autobiographical sketches are found in the collection Aur ant meṃ prārthnā (“And, finally, a prayer”) first published in 1994. The focalization on the child character produces an indeterminacy that engages in a delightful game with the final ratiocinations of the first-person adult narrator, especially when the child faces traumatic experiences. In these micro stories, time, space and emotions scroll like a film, moving from within the memory and shaping the self in very mysterious ways. At a metanarrative level, writing appears as a journey on the path of memory, from the past towards the present and perhaps even leaping into the future.