Genre: Classics/shortstory
Page Count: 134
I remember being in 9th grade and reading a chapter named ‘Overcoat’ in my Urdu subject book. The story in that chapter followed a cheerful, lively man who wore fancy and neat clothes on the outside. Although he was really poor, his neat clothes contradicted people’s perception about him. However, one day the protagonist of the story runs into an accident and is badly injured. After he’s rushed to the hospital, the doctors take him to the operation theatre where they have to unclothe him. Upon clothing the man, they come to know he’s actually wearing worn-out, torn, dirty, and really detesting cloths – it was only his overcoat that presented him so neatly.
This story, if I come to think about it, would have many things to teach me now, but back in those 9th grade days, this chapter from our Urdu book (the story was translated into Urdu language) did not impact me at all. That was because I did not know anything about literature, or about Chekhov for that mattter, who actually is the author of the brilliant ‘Overcoat’ shortstory. While reading ‘Dozakhnama’ by Rabisankar Bal last year, I came across both Chekhov and his story ‘Overcoat’, and in one rush of overflowing memories, it took back to my 9th grade days and this exact same story that I had read.
While I could go many ways with this incident, I just want to point out two things: first is that teaching skills and passion for that subject must be essential preconditions for the teachers appointed; without it the students would learn nothing lasting about that subject at all. I was lucky to remember the chapter’s name.
Secondly, the students themselves should also pick up on their academic or personal interests in order to improve in their own turfs. Although it is primarily from our teachers that we learn and build interests, unfortunately for some there will not always be someone to open the doors for them or to push them down any path; sometimes, when we are growing up, it is ourselves who become the teachers and mentors of our careers. Thanks to literature and my passion for it that I not only know Chekhov by now but am also reading him.
Being one of the most acclaimed and important writers of Russian literature, Chekhov was both a playwright and short-story writer, the latter of which brought him much success. ‘Three Years’ is one of Chekhov’s excellent short-stories which tells the story on an unhhappy marriage.
Easy to read and get lost into, this story follows the lives of Laptev and Yulia, where the first loves and eventually succeeds in marrying the second. Yulia however does not love Laptev back and marries him out of strategic reasons: mainly that Laptev is rich and that she doesn’t want to ruin both their lives by rejecting such an attractive offer. But can someone, or rather should someone marry without loving the person they are marrying? While Laptev is buoyant to hear ‘yes’ from Yulia, the aftermath of their marriage is a frustrating and sad tale.
Chekhov brilliantly sensitizes his readers towards the miseries of both the husband and wife, sometimes through their own frustrations and at other through other people’s negative remarks, most of all, their respective exes. ‘A happy man marries the woman he loves; a happier man loves the woman he marries’, said someone (probably Tolystoy, another great Russian writer) and Chekhov’s story expands on the complexities of this saying – while Laptev gets to marry Yulia whom he loves, he isn’t happy because she doesn’t love him back.
But while they suffer in the early years of marriage, they do meet their consolation later down the road in each other – once all the hopes and promises of happiness from the outside die, exactly three years later – as they recognize that a marriage founded upon the grounds of reason can see its fulfillment into a labored, created, yet nonetheless sufficient love, which could carry out their next thirteen or thirty years together. ‘We shall wait and see’ while holding on to each other...
Ratings: 4/5 ****
May 20, 2021_