SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 15, 2021] “Toba Tek Singh”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
This political story addresses the absurdity of the partitioning that separated India from Muslim Pakistan.
The inmates of lunatic asylums were to be sent to their appropriate countries. Most of the inmates couldn’t even conceptualize what this Pakistan was.
One of the inmates stood all day long–he never lay down, never slept. He muttered nonsense syllables about this Pakistan Government. Eventually the nonsense syllables changed to reflect the Toba Tek Singh Government.
When they try to move him to Pakistan he refuses and ultimately lays down in the no man’s and between the two countries.
This one was a little confusing for me. I got the point, but the details were lost.
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