issue 33: winter 2026

RAJALAKSHMI N. RAO

A Very Ordinary Story

Translated from the Kannada by Chandan Gowda

It was the same old story. A very ordinary story. She had loved a man and thought he loved her. She had gathered jasmine and peacock feathers and strings of stars and built enthusiastically huge glittering fairy castles. And she had installed herself and him in the mother-of pearl mansion. 

He married another girl. She was buried in the debris of the granite-and-roses castle. The dust smoked, thickened, became iron rods, pierced her eyes. 

She was determined not to appear ruffled. ‘I will just wash my hair clean and perfume it,’ she thought bravely. She was decided not to let the sheet of crumpled water stir itself into heaving red quicksand. 

*

One night, at dinner, her family was more irritable than usual. Her mother was more nagging and irate, her father more scowling and depressed, the children more noisy and querulous. She had thought she would escape it all! 

Suddenly, a kitten streaked in. Her mother screeched and threw a block of wood at it. It hit the animal on the head. It whined and ran out. 

She began to laugh. She laughed and laughed. She did not know why. She just had to laugh. Every one stared at her, amazed but she could not stop it. When, at last, she stopped for want of breath, the room was full of shocked, startled, horrified faces. The sudden silence was more frightful than the demonic laughter. 

*

She glanced at the block of wood and immediately began to weep. She did not know why she wept. But still she wept. She made no sound. She hung her head down and tears poured down silently, trickled down steadily, like battalions of migrating ants. 

Then there were no tears, but only sobs; dry, hacking sobs like saw-sounds, like a tubercular patient’s cough, like a woodpecker on a hot lonely afternoon. Her mother was frightened and helped her to her feet and took her to bed. She lay down. She was quiet but shaking, like a violently plucked string, trembling in every nerve. They heaped blankets on her, thinking that she was suffering from an attack of ague. 

She fell asleep, hands folded, face calm and tear-marked, like a dust road after a swift sharp shower. 

Deccan Herald
7-4-1957

Editor: Published in a column designated for New Writing: Experimental Writing Disguised as Short Stories, this story is the author’s translation of a story that she had written in Kannada, Ati Saamaanya Kathe, for an All-India Radio programme titled, Postcardnalli Kathegalu (‘Stories on a Postcard’). The original story, which is likely to have been published in Janapragathi, could not be traced.

About Rajalakshmi N Rao

About Chandan Gowda