We're all writing legends, to some extent. All of us, slaving over typewriters and keyboards, churning out romances and SF and fantasy and any other blend of genres that the human imagination can conceive. Whether we intend for the story to make a million dollars or it's something that we are never going to show another living soul, we're crafting new legends every day.
Because what is a legend? A legend is a story and it's not a true story. Or maybe it was once true but the passage of time has made it less true, so that it doesn't mean what it used to mean anymore. But it could have been once true and that's what we respond to. That's what distinguishes them from pure myth, which is meant to explain how the world works but in a fashion that you'd never confuse as "real." Legends could have happened, maybe not to you, but to someone you know, or someone just like you.
We can't control what happens to our stories once they've left our brains. It might remain immaculate and unchanging, sinking through the layers of history like a stone. It might fade out entirely. Or it might take on another life when viewed through new eyes, seen less as a story from the world before than a story about how the world used to be, a long time ago. A thousand years from now they might be discussing the epic tale of Mr Potter and his struggle with the dark forces in the latter days of the twentieth century and how we all waited in quiet vigil at the massive storage houses for knowledge for word that the conflict was finally over. It's not exactly up to us. All we can do is get the word down and see where it goes from there.
In a sense, this is exactly what Vrishchikan Raj's The Hunt is trying to do, take a story that was literal once upon a time and drag it into the present day where nobody believes that it's true anymore. Not surprisingly, it just might be. Interestingly, the story is classified as "horror" when, and I'm going to get this out of the way now, it really isn't that scary. Or maybe it's just not the kind of fear that moves me. But I'm not one for genre classifications anyway, stories are what they are, which are stories. Legends are stories, myths are stories, your long-winded explanation to your wife why you were late for dinner yet again is a story. You cad. True things can be stories and so can false things.
But what we have here isn't so much a story but a framework wrapped around a story, where what it's telling us may not be what it's actually saying. Yeah, I can see you all rolling your eyes already but we're totally going there. Buckle up.
Let's take the bare bones of this and lay it out for everyone . . . speaking strictly in terms of the plot, what happens? Yogi, forest ranger (I don't know much about Indian names but if that's not deliberate that's a funny coincidence) listens to a story from an old man about a mystical stone that he possesses. He got the mystical stone by outwitting a magical snake that was guarding the snake temple. The stone brought him prosperity, until it didn't and now he wants to pass the stone along. Yogi gets the stone and as it turns out, appears to be a snake person. Roll end credits.
The bits that bookend the tale are I think where the true "horror" is supposed to lie. But the horror is too removed from us to really hit home and so it remains as frightening as someone telling you there is a giant dinosaur down the street eating people. Until it shows up on your doorstep, you don't pay too much attention to it. Yogi turns out to be a snake-man . . . but so what? The story doesn't answer the crucial question (if it even wants to) of whether Yogi knew the entire time that he was a Ichathari (by the way, I found references to an "ichadari" which also appears to be a kind of snake person, is the difference in spelling deliberate or just a factor of translating stuff from Sanskrit?) or only realized it when he got a hold of the stone. Maybe he's just delusional and really only hallucinating it because he has a fixation on Lord Shiva. And even if he is, what does that mean for us as the reader or for the village as people? The story doesn't really try to answer any of those questions, instead just leaving it dangling for the rest of us to ponder over. Having gotten the stone and revealed his true form, is he simply going to return it to the temple and go back to guarding things? Or will he take his revenge on the people who have had it all along? And if he was a snake-man the entire time, why not just kill the old fellow and get the stone back? He doesn't even torment him, he just buys it back.
There could be rules in the story that we're not privy to, for whatever reason. Maybe the ichathari isn't allowed to just steal the stone back since he was stupid enough to lose it in the first place. Maybe he finds it more fun this way. Maybe this is just the way it has to go and nobody ever thinks to question it. I'll be honest, I was not expecting Yogi to become a snake-god at the end but as a punchline it's not the most effective because it leaves too much out in the open. Yogi leaves to do whatever it is that ichathari do, but what is that, exactly? The old man's story tells us how it could have easily killed him in its guarding but doesn't say what it does when it finally gets back what it wants.
Unless the shock of the story is the "gods walk among us" route. And that's where it gets interesting and a bit tricky. Because what's the title of this story? "The Hunt", as we can all see up top. And I can see where the author is going with that, because initially you are supposed to think the hunt of the title refers to the old man's quest to get the magical stone. Until the "oh snap!" moment of the end arrives and you realize that the hunt is really the ichathari's long quest to get his rock back. And yet, it lacks impact because it seems that Yogi doesn't seem to realize he's an ichathari until the very end. The hunt was going on all along but Yogi didn't know he was the hunter, the ichathari immersing himself so deeply into it that he forgot what he was. Is that a story in that kind of scenario, the lengths you'll go to get what you need, how you risk losing yourself in the process? That the perfect kind of hunter is one who becomes the hunted, who disappears so well that when the strike comes he may no longer be effective enough to pull it off? So that when he does succeed it's really only by accident?
I don't think that's the story here. Oh, it's a kind of story and one that could be told. But not this time. The adventures of Yogi the Ichathari aren't what we're really here for. On his own he stands for nothing more than a neat plot twist, the "everything you thought is wrong!" moment that this story might hinge on. He slithers away and threatens to take the story with it, further away from legend and more into "passing diversion".
Except he's not where it's at. When reading these stories, when talking to everyone who ever writes, my question is always "What are you trying to say?" What are the reasons that we write, what drives us to put pen to paper and just get it down? The need to create a piece that didn't exist before, to bring something into the world that was never there before, that only we could do? The desire to see the imagination made physical and enjoyed by others? The hope that what we do will somehow survive us and persist through the years, long after everyone who ever knew what our laugh sounded like is dust? What are you trying to say?
So let's get back to legends. By definition those are saying something, even if it's not relevant to us anymore or we're too far removed from the context for it to make sense to us. They are trying to impart a warning or a lesson or a viewpoint on how the world might be. They can be blunt or skim along the collective unconscious or dance right out of your awareness, settling itself into your brain with very thin needles. Legends talk about the world but not as it is, or even how it might be, but how it looks when the view becomes slightly skewed. And what you get from it comes from the spaces where it and us touch, the shimmering bits where the starlight seems to brush right up against the surface of the lake. Legends are not real. But what stories are?
But legends survive, regardless. And that's where the story starts to take us in. We're told first about the stone, which is always shown to be just a stone. But that's like saying a tale is just a tale. Magical stones aren't real, we all know that. To make matters worse, the magical stone is guarded by an equally magical snake. Once upon a time when the stone was taken, the snake would go out and find whoever took the stone, and in finding, kill him. We're told this and it can't possibly by true but we have no reason to doubt that it might be true. Why not? This is the world as it is, where karma is a physical force the same as magnetism and gravity and people talk about the gods like they might come in at any time and order a drink. Why not gods? Why not the ichathari?
To take the stone is to die. Once. And yet, the old man takes the stone and doesn't die. The snake gets it back without killing him and goes on its way. The legend becomes satisfied, nothing is truly contradicted but at the same time it all goes the way it has to, the only way it can. Do you see? Legends have fixed end points, the beginning and the finish are not like most stories, where they trail off. With stories we can extrapolate past those points and think about what might have come before, what might happen after. How often have you done that with friends, talking about what happened next or how it might have began?
That doesn't happen with legends, because we're not concerned with the aftermath or the . . . beforemath? That should be a word. Snip the ends off and there we are, forced to only focus on the middle. The center, as it were, and the meat of it. Where we only care about what we're shown and not what might have occurred. What the snake does when he gets his stone back is not important, all we care about is that he got it back. But that's not how the story goes. Murugan should be dead by the end of it, the story should end with the old man being devoured or focus on his blank eyes staring into eternity, as a warning to anyone else who wants to anger the gods.
And yet. And yet. He is not dead by the end of it. Things can change. The distant points of a legend are fixed but the interior is infinitely malleable, able to alter itself with the times. It used to end in death and now it doesn't. We're in different times now, where people still believe in the gods but it's not the same. They've had to go underground and hide and maybe forget themselves. The tales can't end any longer with blood splattering the walls and vengeance written across the sky. Reclaim what is theirs and take it inside to finally rest. Yogi slithers out of the story and maybe out of all Story, never to be seen again. Let's exit and go, our time is done. What are you trying to say?
The story is a snake, like Yogi it appears normal and later on reveals the serpentine nature of itself. It's the same legend said twice, one nested inside the other, the new devouring the old and the jaws haven't totally closed yet, so that we can see the remnants of how it used to be. As a reminder, as a marker to where we used to be. Old Murugan talks to young Yogi and the two legends cross each other in mirrors, reflecting the same image. But which is the original? Or does it even matter? Yogi has taken the old legend and ingested it and turned it into something else. You have to change or you become the old man, giving away all the things that matter to you, leaving nobody behind to remember your name.
Old man, old times. It fits. He tells a story about how everything has gone wrong, he lost his wife and his business and presumably his virility, through nothing more than the passage of time. He can't change, he's not able to anymore. But, oh, he's got an out, you see. He's got the stone. And he can give it away and start the slate clean, pass it to himself and let himself leave the story and maybe find a better way. For we are no longer in an age where the gods can just go and massacre stupid people simply because they feel like it. Even Murugan's trials are insidious and simple, a thousand cuts that don't kill him but perhaps warn him that death is about to come. His death, though, or the death of what he represents? It's a message sent, perhaps, from one self to another, a sly warning that something has to be done inside the story, buried inside the legend, or else the whole affair will shrivel and die.
So Murugan, old legend, invites Yogi, new legend, and fixes things in order for them to go on. His long quest story is probably the best thing about this, rich in detail and adventure, showing the painstaking steps required to get what you need, no matter how much it hurts. We have to take from the gods and render them unrecognizable in order so that they might return again. The right hand taking from the right hand and giving itself back. The way that legend prepares and perseveres so that it might fully emerge into this world.
The question, then, that keeps hovering here. What exactly are you trying to say? Not only the story but me as well. The world used to be strange and there's no place for it now. Murugan lives in a time where the idea of guardian snakes and magic temples and purification quests were second nature to everyone who lived. That was an exciting world, if perhaps more dangerous, where a man could take the big risk and still come out ahead. Where the logic behind flinging dung at a mystical snake is just something you accept, because it works, because someone told you that it would. Where belief might be the most powerful force in existence. A world both scary and careening and that is fading out every day into nothing more than grey memory, not even worth trying to frighten children with.
Each day the world has become less strange. The old legends are getting explained or being forgotten, stripped of everything that made them real. These days if Murugan carried around a bag of dung to fling at strange snakes, he would probably be arrested, or at the very least tick off some reptiles. The world is not what it was and for the factors that inhabit it, you either have to adapt with it, or die. In order to keep that strangeness you have to make a new form of strangeness, where the magic does not linger on hillsides or in foul temples, but in the places that you can't touch. In rocks that may not be rocks, in the events that befall you that you can't explain, in a man who might only stop being a man when no one else is looking. Science makes everything normal and shows us the gears underneath, the impassive endless mechanisms. The sky pinwheels above but we don't look up into it with any sense of wonder. It's either explained or we don't care to find out the explanations. What's an ichathari to do? Go deeper, then. Maybe. Further into memory. Hide inside its own story so that it can keep going.
Everyone goes away. Murugan, to his temple, never to be seen again. Yogi, off the page and into wherever legends coil. The aspects of the world that don't make any sense, all dissolving into the ether and leaving us with . . . what? The mundane? Cars and men cutting down trees and money changing hands and everything is what it's supposed to be. For some reason, I see the story railing against that, tucking this absurd tale of mystical theft into what is up until the end a completely normal story. A man talks to another man and tells him a story. The most basic form of communication ever, and it's showing us how it doesn't have to go down. A legend can alter itself to persist and survive, staying just as relevant as it always was. And maybe you won't be able to see it as easily as before, back in the day you could walk out there to find the temple and see its dangerous guardians. Nowadays it's not so easy, you have to look a little harder and maybe not at the angles you used to be able to see. It's all there but different, because it had to become different. Because the alternative was not to be there at all and what kind of world would we live in, then?
"What exactly are you trying to say?" The legends used to tell us things and sometimes what they told us wasn't what the story was saying. But that doesn't make it any less true. What do you see when you look at something? Do you see a forest ranger, or a snake-god? Or something entirely different? When we look at the world we try to perceive it in ways that reinforce our ideas about it, which is why you can poll ten people about the same story and get ten different answers. I take the components that make no sense to me and work them around in my head until they start to make sense. And hence we end up here, several hours after I started.
Is it a horror story, this "Hunt"? I don't think so, because the fear is truncated and contained. Whatever it might have once been, it can't hurt you now. Maybe it could in the future but that future isn't now and we aren't there yet. I prefer to think of "The Hunt" as that search for survival in a world that rejects everything you used to be, and how to remake yourself into a shape that will persist and prevail. It's the search that all of us are constantly engaged in, as we're part of a world that refuses to sit still and if we were try to waste a second to catch our breath, might blow past us, rendering itself unrecognizable. Even if that's not what we intend, it doesn't mean it can become anything less despite our best efforts.
That's what I see, at least. The fabric of story, reworked, because it needs to stay alive somehow. We need legends, we need shadows still cast on the world or else, what do we have? Nothing that I want to keep, that's for certain.
- MB
7.31.2008
"You bring something unreplaceable to each and every day, or you used to anyway, but this world couldn't hold you, you slipped free . . ." – the Mountain Goats, "'Bluejays and Cardinals'"
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