Telling The Truth

Thank you so much to Susan and the ASSF team for inviting me to contribute to this panel. My story ‘Threadbare’ in the ‘Relatively True’ Anthology is told by an unreliable narrator. There’s a clue embedded in the story that tells us that the entire narrative she is constructing is an elaborate falsification. Can you find the clue? And how does that change what you believe about what she says?

I have been struck by the adversarial and combative nature of much human interaction over the past few years, intensified by the pandemic, enforced isolation and partisan politics. People develop versions of history, both public and private, usually self serving or self justifying ones, and aggressively promote them. We have come to expect that truth is fluid and negotiable, instead of being fixed and absolute. We award the prize of credibility to the best told story, as if to a gladiator in a jousting tournament.

In my story, the narrator expresses mounting indignation at a woman whom she judges to be profoundly fake: a charlatan. The story she tells encompasses a tragic arranged marriage which unravels over time. But we see very few glimpses of the narrator herself, until the end.

Here we see her as a lovely woman dutifully arranging the family altars and tables for a celebration of a major religious festival - Diwali, which just commenced a few days ago, in fact. She probably looks to the observer as demure, respectable, domestic and serene, with her measured movements. But there is rage in her heart. A righteous rage. Or is it?

Her dilemma is that she is not allowed to curse anyone. So how does she achieve the outcome she wants, and still remain within the God and Goddess’s manifest will for humanity? She asks that all impurities be burned out of the person she dislikes. And it’s not her fault if the person in question is riddled with impurities, and lacks redeeming qualities! Their suffering will be proportionate to the impurities that are being burned out. For the good of all! Right?

I have had the honour of seeing my work published in 3 of the 5 brilliant Indo-Australian Anthologies of short stories edited by Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle. The very first anthology, Fear Factor, explored Terrorism.

My narrator in the story ‘Packing Heat’ also had a fire in her heart.

Sharon and Meenakshi over the past 12 years have collected stories on 5 major topics of contemporary culture in these Anthologies: Terrorism in ‘Fear Factor’, Displacement and Exile in ‘Alien Shores’, Technology in ‘Only Connect’, Tolerance and Intolerance in ‘Glass Walls’, and now Truth and Falsity in ‘Relatively True’.

Thank you to them both for their patience, insight and excellence as Editors, and their encouragement of the short story form - perfect for the lower attention span we have today, and the time deficient lives we live!