Monday, September 1, 2008

Zakir Ali "Rajneesh"'s "Visfot" ("Explosion") (short story, invisibility, Hindi, free)

Note this story is in Hindi.

OK reading. A revenge story that is a sort of mix of invisibility stories with David Marusek's "Osama Phone Home".

Story summary.

Shahid is a man from Doda (JK, India) who's lost his family over the years to multiple terrorist attacks. Now it's time for his revenge.

He sets up a lab in Delhi to develop an invisibility paint. Spread it on a surface, & the surface becomes invisible because "it absorbs light"! Won't absorbing light make it black, & easily identifiable against the background? But I'm nit-picking.

Anyway, his plan is to go across the border to PoK, & plant bombs in terrorist training camps being run with Pakistan government's aid. He will be successful, but die after returning in rain because of a side effect of invisibility paint discovered too late - paint washes off in water, removing invisibility, but this solution is fatal to wearer.

I guess social mores prevented the author from stating that the man must have crossed the border naked. He had painted his body; not his clothes.

Fact sheet.

First published: indiascifiarvind.blogspot.com, 1 September 2008.
Download full text (in Hindi).
Rating: B

2 comments:

Dr. Zakir Ali Rajnish said...

अपनी कहानी की समरी पढ कर आश्‍चर्यमिश्रित प्रसन्‍नता हुई। इस प्रस्‍तुति कि लिए हार्दिक आभार।

Arvind Mishra said...

Ha Ha ...Brilliant summary and eloquent pointer towards howlers in the story !