Good lord, that was really good! That was
so good. I can’t believe how much I enjoyed that.
My surprise comes as a surprise even to me.
I think – no, I know – that I didn’t
expect these stories to be any good. Stories in magazines rarely manage to
captivate me; short stories even more so. But this one was, unexpectedly, amazing.
Featuring only three characters – and one
barely there - throughout the narrative, the story has a strong beginning,
middle, and end. Aslam, whacked with a ruler by his mother at a very young age
for surreptitiously reaching for food, never forgets that moment. His
relationship with gluttony and, as an obvious consequence, with abstinence,
totally defines his life. Growing up with the idea of fat as an ugliness that
he must get rid of, Aslam defines his life in terms of how physically fit he
is.
After
years and years of being the fattest man in the room, Aslam had finally
sweated, ran and dieted away the extra chub.
This obsession affects his relationship in
other ways as well: he falls for Amna, who understands dieting and self-restraint,
who has also practised eating less in order to stay in shape. But while the
relationship is happy, and content, there is another, darker consequence of
their happiness that makes it harder for both of them to co-exist. Faced with a
steady diet of romantic bliss, both start putting on weight again. In an
absolutely great twist on the ‘love swelling you up’ notion, both characters in
Hashmi’s story gain weight as they progress, and that weight is not nothing; it’s
another character taking up space in their love story.
A
normal man may have reacted to this with fortitude. What does it matter if
you’re a tad overweight, so long as you’re happy? But Aslam wasn’t a regular
man. He had spent too much time sweating and suffering to lose weight. He had
sacrificed way too much.
It’s very hard to not actually give the
ending away, given that the story is so short, so it’s imperative that I stop
here. But I feel like this was one of those instances of storytelling where the
short length wasn’t an injustice to the subject matter. When people used to say
that a story was ‘short and sweet’ or ‘just the perfect length’ I never
actually understood what that meant until I read this piece by Shumaila Hashmi.
Well written and with great control over the language, this story has something
to say. Definitely recommended.