I tell you, it's not fair. Damn it, it's not fair

As I get older, some of the finer details from the years past get fuzzy.  I don't mean I am imagining events and places--it is just that sometimes I am not sure about the contexts.  I guess it happens to all of us with aging--earlier than normal for some, and much later for a lucky few.

There is one that I am certain about--every time my father reads a collection that I put together from my blog-posts, he remarks, as if for the first time ever, that my narrations remind him of Somerset Maugham's storytelling, of the characters he portrays and the places he describes.  Of course, it is a parental duty to exaggerate a child's accomplishments, even if the child is an old man himself!

There is a reason, perhaps, that subconsciously I have been trying to follow Maugham's path--I read quite a few of his works when I was young.  And when I was older, too.

I loved Maugham's short stories in particular.  I was in Neyveli or in Madras or in Coimbatore, and hadn't been outside the country ever, and yet I was able to be in the very settings that Maugham described and interact with the characters that he so easily and vividly described.

There are many favorites of mine, and one of them I am blogging about today because it is past midsummer and I am beginning to worry that I have eased off way too much.  Perhaps I have not been enough of an ant, and like a grasshopper I enjoyed the summer without preparing for the seasons that follow.   Remember that old and familiar story of the ant and the grasshopper, from which we learnt about hard work and saving for the rainy day as the "moral of the story"?

This is where my memory begins to get fuzzy: did I read the short story in which Maugham played on this ant and the grasshopper theme because it was in the school curriculum, or was the story in the collection that father owned, or was it in an anthology that I had borrowed from the library?  Ah, when I was younger even such fine details were within grasp and now I am left to wonder forever!

It is not the aging, or being unable to recall the fine details, that I refer to in the title of this post, "I tell you, it's not fair. Damn it, it's not fair."  So, what's it about then?  Google for Somerset Maugham's short story in which he plays on the ant and the grasshopper fable and read it for yourself and you will also chime in with, "I tell you, it's not fair. Damn it, it's not fair."  Or, maybe you want the story to be read to you, while you lie on your hammock and enjoy the summer, you lazy grasshopper!