“A lion, a goat, and a bundle of grass,” said my teacher, her face like a shut gate. “A person has to ferry them across the river in a boat. As the boat is tiny, this person can only carry one thing at a time. If they leave the lion and goat alone together, the lion will eat the goat. If the goat and the grass are left together, the goat will eat the grass,” my teacher announced. At eight years of age, it took just this riddle and a few seconds to awaken me to the potent scent of life’s absurdity.
Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a New Delhi-based writer, uses her ardour for writing to break firewalls between nonfiction and fiction and marginalia and manuscript.