James is a guy better known for his novel – Shogun and a few others. But, not many folks realize that he was also an able teller of short stories. For a parallel case from the realm of the debilitating pulp, Jeffrey Archer (whose name should be familiar) also happens to be a reasonable short story writer.
But, am digressing…
I had read this story of James Clavell – The Children’s story, many years back – and now, thanks to the efforts of Arvind Gupta, this is available online and I read it again, oh, the horror, the horror… with shades of the ‘animal farm,’ ‘keep the aspidistra flying’ and ‘1984;’ it is a very short *horror* scienc_fiction (or is it really?) bereft of blood & gore or hitech hijinks and so please read it – it would take just 10 minutes, max. It is also a telling comment on what ‘education’ can do to our thoughts and ourselves.
This brings up Dharampal and his great research work on Indian Education prior to the advent of the Brits – ‘The Beautiful Tree’ – but would reserve it for later…
namma shaale 