The Story Of A Barbar
The story namely “Barabar” of Manik Bandyopadhyay focuses on the life of a man Mirza and coming up themes of poverty, desperation and humanity. Based in an Indian villageproduces a realistic depiction of survival of the most impoverished of actually rural villagers. Mirza is a day wage earner and the family is poor; he has to support his sick wife and children. Their lives are in such poor conditions that even food and medicine are commodities, which they rarely can buy.
The turn in Mirza life comes when villages get a word that a government project is underway which will provide employment to the workers. Out of jobs Mirza starts working, he too desperately looks for some earning. But the work is monotonous and tiring, which is characteristic for such government’s contracts and contracts. Nevertheless, he struggles to make $500 per month to feed his family. From the story itself one realizes how deeply it embodies injustice and suffering and this is for the rural poor who really have no much to look forward to they are mere subjects of capital and therefore mere objects stuck in a life they really have little to say about.
The climax in the story is reached at the moment when Mirza has ethical conflict. For him it was a big struggle to feed his family and even for that he perhaps thinks of theft which ultimately is wrong but appear to be the only way to survive. His dilemma paints a picture of how poor people have to make many decisions that pit right against wrong, in order to survive. The conclusion is rather sad, and the reader is to think about the state of persons who can do nothing in their situation and how much the status affects people, forcing them to cross a line they never thought they would.
In the ‘big-tale’ of Mirza, Bandyopadhyay depicts life in Village as success is both ethically accomplished and ethically questionable since conflict is inevitable in any ordinary man’s struggle for a living. ‘Barabar’ is a social message telling about life of underprivileged and poor people and urges the readers to think what type of society permits such injustice.
