MY SHORT STORY " WITHOUT WHY"

                                          

(Without Why)

The river was in flood. Three days of rain and the river had no banks. It moved wide, brown, and silent. A boat carried villagers to safety. Then it lurched. A child, maybe four, slipped in.  

“ Ayee! The child!” 

Hands rose. Voices broke. On that boat sat two swimmers. They wept and did not move. From the next boat a man stood. Thin. Spectacles. An accountant. Fondly named Master-ji. Ink still on his fingers. He could not swim. He looked once. The water was not cruel. Only not listening. He created a fake thought that he could swim. The mind received it well. And he jumped.

He jumped on a belief he did not have. If he waited to say “I cannot,” the moment would pass. So for one second he acted as if. The current hit him. Arms made for ledgers fought it. He caught the child, lifted him, threw him into the boat. The mother wept to see  her son alive .

Master-ji turned for his own boat. The water had already taken its due. The current was faster than will. He went under. Came up once. Was gone around the bend. The boats went on. Safety was reached.

Later they asked, “Why did he jump?”  

Because the world gives no reason, and he chose to give one.  Because there was no “other,” only a child and a man who was there.  Because to save was to be. And to be lost was also to be found.

There was grief. There was futility. A man who could not swim saved a life and lost his own to the same water. The flood receded. The water stayed indifferent.  And the act remained.

( Avtar Mota )

Critique of the story 

Avtar Mota’s “Without Why” presents a single, unadorned incident ; an accountant who cannot swim enters a flooded river to rescue a child and from it derives a compact ontology of ethical action. The narrative economy is deliberate. Stripped of biography, setting, and consolation, the text functions as an exemplum: it does not describe heroism so much as enact the structure of a moral decision.

The story is best read through three philosophical frames that converge on the same problem: action in the absence of guarantee.

1. The Upanishadic frame: Nishkaam Karma

The act embodies nishkaam action,  action without attachment to phala, or fruit. Master-ji “jumped on a belief he did not have”. His arms are “made for ledgers”, not for swimming. Capacity is irrelevant. What matters is Sannidhya, presence. “There was no ‘other’, only a child and a man who was there.” This echoes the Upanishadic and Gitaic insistence that dharma is performed because it is dharma, not because the world will reward it. The moral agent is not defined by outcome but by the alignment of action with duty in the instant.

2. The Camusian frame: Revolt in an Indifferent Universe

 

The river “was not cruel. Only not listening.” Nature is amoral. Camus’ absurd arises here: the human demand for meaning meets a silent world. Master-ji’s response is Camusian revolt. “The world gives no reason, and he chose to give one.” He does not wait for justification. He creates it through the leap. To save is “to be”. The cost ,his own disappearance, does not invalidate the act. Like Sisyphus, meaning is not found but produced in the doing.

3. The Kundera-esque frame: The Weight of Lightness

 

Kundera diagnosed modern life as burdened by lightness: without eternal return, acts feel weightless. Mota inverts this. Precisely because there is no audience, no monument, and no afterlife of recognition  “the act remained” the choice gains weight. The lightness is not triviality but radical responsibility. One second, one decision, and the self is constituted by it.

In sum, “Without Why” archives more than an anecdote. It preserves a cross-cultural argument: that ethics is not predicated on certainty, but on presence. 

(J.Paul) 

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.