Sunday, December 21, 2008

Zeashan Zaidi's "Parivartan" (tr "Change") (short story, Hindi, free): Cool & surprising ending

In a future where sea surface is divided & owned the way land is owned today, you can steal someone's identity by stealing an ID card & getting his body appearance by surgery, & hominid robots indistinguishable from humans exist, Anand is a destitute man looking for some work.

So when he is witness to a road accident that killed the sole occupant, he quickly claims driver's ID, disposes off the dead body, gets himself surgically transformed to diseased's body (presumably with dead man's money), & goes to diseased's office to his job - all before anybody noticed anything was amiss about the dead man!

Only, he did not know of a little thing that he will discover when he "returns" to dead man's home... Fantastic ending, of an otherwise ordinary story.

Fact sheet.

First published: As a "recent" radio drama (when? where? is audio online?)
Rating: B.
Download full text (in Hindi): part 1 & part 2. Or automatically produced English translation by Google: part 1 & part 2.
Related: Stories of Zeashan Zaidi (all are in Hindi); Hindi stories (including human translations from other languages).

3 comments:

  1. Arvind MishraDecember 22, 2008 at 8:35 AM

    I fully endorse Tinkoo its only end of this story like any other good story which is just astonishing and gie a heart break ! The Google's translation is queer but assuring !

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  2. AnonymousDecember 22, 2008 at 9:07 AM

    Google translation may not be impressive, but it's amazing how many people actually do it manually for my Hindi posts. Thought I could save some clicks with the links.

    Also, ending didn't give me a heart break; it gave me ... not quite a smile but a feeling of something naughty. Author had clearly done it on purpose.

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  3. zeashan haider zaidiDecember 23, 2008 at 4:26 PM

    Parivartan broadcasted from Akashvani Lucknow on dated 6 Dec 2008 at 7.30 p.m.

    ReplyDelete