Yamini

A pinch of jazz

There is a lot going on in my mind lately, so this is going to be a long one.

The other day, a friend responded to my blog post on a guava man. You know, he said, all along I kept imagining there’d be something more to it, that it would lead on to something else… that you’d reveal something mysterious in the end! Sorry, mon ami, but there wasn’t anything mysterious about the guava man. It was just a page from memory, a trip down memory lane as the cliché goes, I quipped, in reply.

And the conversation ended with no further ado.

But later, today, it struck me. There could’ve been something more to it! All of us, at least most of us, thirst for that ‘something more’, something ‘extra’. That special zing, a twist in the end that makes a story out of every little thing we encounter. Just look around, jog your memories and you’d realize.

Why do people love O. Henry? The master of the twist in the tale - the quintessential short story with a surprising turn of events just before the story ends? Why are mystery novels, ugh, so mysterious? Sherlock Holmes and Poirot and Hardy Boys and Secret Seven - - just what makes them who they are? Why are folklores and fairytales popular? Why is a myth, a myth? A legend, a legend?

Why do we all love lending ear to yarns – better still, with a local flavor? Imagine a stone you pick up from a riverbed while on holiday. Imagine if someone told you a story about how it ended up there, and became a stone in the first place? A goblet of wine – a flute of champagne you taste – what if the vineyard had a story to tell about how it was made and all about the processing and ageing and choice of grapes and method of harvesting? A chime you pick up from Tibet – what if it had a lore to spread as well?

What about Loch Ness? What about the Fire Dragon? What about monuments? What about ‘what if’s? What about banshees and witches and dwarfs and pixies? What about the Leprechaun? The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Remember horror movies you watched sitting up late nights? Those crazy eerie ones on
Extra Terrestrials? And Hitchcock, my goodness! And yes, Star Trek! The Hollow Man.
The Man in the Iron Mask. The Invisible Man. Batman. Superman. Spiderman.

Anything but man -- man has an insatiable thirst for!

Pokemon and PowerPuff and the new-look Hanuman (let’s not forget the kindergarten heroes). And that’s not all.

We love anything that glorifies the simple.
Robert Burns – he wrote poems about puddings and field mice, about toothache and tear drops.
Enid Blyton – she made stories out of sauce pans and tree trunks and mushrooms and chairs.
James Barry – he created Neverland and breathed life into a boy who never really grew up.
Satyajit Ray – he painted a beautiful motion picture around a pair of anklets.
Aravindan wove a plot with a humble rat trap.
Roald Dahl mesmerized little minds (and adults even) with yarns on yards of chocolate.
Salvador Dali splashed a stamp of intricacy over simplistic stuff.
Whistler made patterns out of pure white and grey.
Van Gogh immortalized the sunflower (of course, he later cut off his left ear; nothing simplistic about that, but never mind).
Rodin made waves with the thinking man – just the sculpture of a thinking man.

The Japanese made poetry with themes as simple as jumping frogs and snowfall and whistling bamboo and pretty cherry blossoms.

The Russians wrote literature about life – sweat, toil, tears – all included. So stark real and honest - that it almost seemed surreal.

And in recent history, we have JKR and JRRT - Rowling and Tolkien. And a whole many more that perhaps demands a listing. Oh yes, kitchen orchestra is in demand!

So where does that leave us? Simplicity sells – if not merely by itself –with just that necessary twist of twang in the tale, a gentle twirl of events, a tweak in the middle, a touch of jazz. Guess that is precisely what makes the difference between a great story and a good one.

Jazz.

Jazz to play it up. Jazz to please. Jazz to excite. Jazz to puzzle. Jazz to answer. Jazz to teach. Jazz to entertain. Jazz to satiate the curious mind. Or just jazz. For jazz’s sake!


- On copywriters: masters of the art of jazz
(Made as screensavers specially for writers' comps)