Plot Ka Qissa

Theoretical discussions on fiction begin with Aristotle. Since tragedy, comedy, and narrative fiction all involve the recounting of events, whatever Aristotle said about events in tragedy and comedy was assumed to be equally valid for fiction. Consequently, under Aristotle's influence, the theory that plot holds a central position in fiction was established and widely accepted. Aristotle’s points regarding plot are as follows:

(1) The plot of a tragedy is the representation of action; plot refers to the logical arrangement of events.

(2) The purpose of tragedy is to present events and a plot. A tragedy cannot exist without a plot, though it can exist without character.

(3) A plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A well-constructed plot is one that possesses all three of these attributes.

(4) The arrangement of events means that nothing follows the end, and the end naturally emerges after an occurrence, whether by logical sequence or by necessity.

(5) There must be such a structural unity among the different parts of the plot that if any single part is displaced or removed, the entire structure is disrupted or dismantled.

(6) The plot should only describe things that can actually happen—meaning those whose occurrence is necessary or probable.

In light of the above points, it is not difficult to see that almost all assumptions regarding the plot of modern fiction are built upon Aristotle's ideas. The influence of these ideas is so tremendous that even the most modern theorists of the *afsana* (short story) and the *kahani*—that is, Fiction—consider some of the conclusions derived from them to be innate and natural. For example, one major conclusion drawn from Aristotle's ideas is that since a plot is essential for fiction, and a plot is defined as an arrangement of events connected by a beginning, a middle, and an end, bound together by a structural unity, it is therefore necessary for a work of fiction (or narrative) to exist that the events it describes be linked by cause and effect.

Thus, Gerald Prince, in his book *Grammar of Stories*, states that a sequence of events lacking a cause-and-effect relationship does not seem like a story, whereas a sequence that possesses this relationship intuitively feels like a story to us. Postponing for the moment the debate over the differences between the *afsana* (meaning the *qissa* or narrative, which is the essence of the *afsana*) and the *kahani* (meaning Fiction), we can say that since the importance of plot is equally acknowledged in both the *kahani* and the *afsana*, and fictionality is given central importance in the *afsana*, there is no fundamental difference between the traditional concept of the *qissa* and Fiction (i.e., the *kahani*) as far as the discussion of plot is concerned.

The idea that a structural connection in the sequence of events is the inherent hallmark of the *qissa* and the *afsana* is so compelling that no theory of fiction can be established without analyzing it. One reason for the pervasive influence of this idea is that adequate precision was not applied when determining the definition of an event. Therefore, it is necessary to attempt to clarify what an event actually is. Obviously, anything that happens is called an event.

If something is going to happen in the future, we call it a future event or an occurrence yet to come into existence. For example, if we are reading a novel, we can constantly ask ourselves, the author, or someone else who has read the novel, What will happen next? Similarly, if we are reading or listening to an account of an incident that has actually already occurred, we can still ask, What will happen next? Therefore, an event in its abstract sense is not bound by the past, present, or future. But merely stating this does not adequately define an event in the context of fiction. Consider, for example, the following sequences of events:

(1) Zaid was reading a book; suddenly he got a stomach ache, vomited blood, and died.

(2) Zaid was reading a book and eating an apple. Suddenly he got a severe stomach ache. He vomited blood and died.

(3) Zaid was reading a book and eating an apple. The book's name was *Tarikh-e-Tabari*. Suddenly he got a severe stomach ache, vomited blood, and died in agony.

In all three passages, the central event is the same: Zaid's sudden death. That is, these passages serve to inform us of Zaid's death. However, their informational content is not equal. The first passage contains four pieces of information: Zaid was reading a book, his stomach suddenly ached, he vomited blood, and he died. In the second passage, an additional event is mentioned: Zaid was eating an apple while reading. Furthermore, the detail of one event is amplified: he had a severe stomach ache. In the third passage, further information is provided regarding the name of the book, and the detail about his death is expanded to note that he died in agony.

Therefore, we must now ask: if Zaid's death is the central event and its cause is his stomach ache, are the remaining occurrences actually events or not? If an event is defined as absolutely anything that happens, then certainly all these details fall under the definition of an event. But if an event refers specifically to a central event (meaning an event for which a passage was written, without which the passage would remain incomplete or convey no meaningful information—leaving us wondering why the passage was written at all), then applying the term event to all occurrences other than Zaid's death and its cause is unnecessary, and even detrimental.

This is because if every occurrence is an event, then every occurrence should hold equal importance (as Aristotle suggested). Yet we can clearly see that not every detail described in passages one through three holds equal weight. There is no doubt, however, that the details provided in these passages certainly convey some information about the actual central event (the event for which these passages were written). This information can be categorized into three types:

(1) Information that sheds light on the actual event—meaning details that reveal things about the central event and increase our knowledge of it.

(2) Information that sheds no light on the actual event.

(3) Information about which we cannot immediately (or perhaps ever) decide whether it sheds light on the actual event or not.

As we have seen, the actual event is Zaid's death. Therefore, the following events merely fall under the category of information:

(1) Zaid was reading a book.

(2) Zaid suddenly developed a stomach ache.

(3) The pain was very severe.

(4) Zaid vomited blood.

(5) Zaid was eating an apple while reading the book.

(6) The name of the book was *Tarikh-e-Tabari*.

(7) Zaid died in agonizing pain.

Obviously, Zaid reading a book and the name of that book are events that seemingly shed no light on the actual incident. Zaid eating an apple is an event about which we cannot decide whether it has any connection to the main incident or not. If the apple was poisoned, or if it contained something that could cause him to vomit blood, then Zaid eating the apple could be a significant detail. For now, this information seems useless to us, but there is a possibility that it is not. Zaid vomiting blood also holds an ambiguous status.

We do not know if Zaid had a disease where eating an apple could be harmful and cause him to vomit blood. Zaid died. He was not murdered, nor was he hanged, so his vomiting blood does not seem important to us. However, mentioning this detail certainly introduces a gratuitous sense of pathos into the central event (i.e., Zaid's death). Therefore, it is seemingly impossible to determine the exact significance of this information. If presenting an event tragically can increase its value or importance, then vomiting blood is important; otherwise, it is not.

But this importance (namely, the tragic nature of the event) does not actually add anything to our knowledge of the event itself, because we have already established that Zaid suddenly developed a stomach ache and died. Once this is known, it is also a given that his death was painful. Consequently, the significance of the bloody vomit remains doubtful. The same applies to his dying in agonizing pain.

A decision regarding this is only possible if we accept that the tragic nature of an event increases its importance—that is, it adds to our knowledge about it. If so, the detail that Zaid died in agony is important. Otherwise, it holds no more significance than a secondary detail. In the *Dastan-e-Amir Hamza*, it rarely ever happens that the death of even the most important character is described in exhaustive detail. The *dastan* narrators were perhaps aware of the fact that the tragic details of an event do not increase its importance or meaningfulness.

Thus, we can say that since only the information that provides us with essential knowledge about Zaid's death holds the status of the actual event, out of the three statements mentioned above, only one piece of information (or one notification) serves as the actual event: Zaid developed a stomach ache, which caused his death.

This means that we must first differentiate between an event and information, and then differentiate between the hierarchies of information. Since informational events do not hold central importance, their sequence is also not important. The sequence of information that directly affects the event might be important. But why should the importance of sequence mean that events and information must be arranged in a way that clearly demonstrates a cause-and-effect relationship? In response to this, Aristotle stated (and Prince followed him) that we only find those events interesting which possess a cause-and-effect relationship.

However, we have seen above that many pieces of information regarding Zaid's death are also interesting precisely because we cannot decide whether a cause-and-effect relationship exists between this information and the actual event. We place certain events in the category of information and study their hierarchy. We ignore the information that provides no benefit regarding the central event or its value.

The information that does provide us with this benefit is elevated to the status of the actual event, and the information that leaves us in a state of uncertainty becomes the subject of various speculations. The more important the central event, the sharper, more detailed, and more complex our speculations about such ambiguous information will be.

Suppose Zaid, whose death we are reading about, was a king or an important personality. Obviously, his death would also be important. Now we would be forced to speculate: Was the apple poisoned? If the bloody vomit had been analyzed, what would the result have been? Perhaps Zaid had liver cancer and his liver suddenly ruptured? If we bring imagination into our speculation, we might even consider that perhaps a specific incident in the history book had a profound effect on Zaid. We might also wonder if the pages of the book were laced with poison, and so on.

A living example of such speculation can be found in the answers to our question regarding Hamlet: Why does he delay so much in killing his usurping uncle, Claudius? From the simple answer that if he did not delay, the play would end too quickly, to the theories of Dr. Johnson, Ernest Jones, and T. S. Eliot, hundreds of answers have been given—which is to say, hundreds of speculations have been made. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that we are only interested in events where the cause-and-effect relationship is clear. Sometimes the cause is unimportant, or even non-existent. In Intizar Husain's short story *Aakhri Aadmi* (The Last Man), the cause is not clear. But this holds no importance in the story. Because if the cause is merely that some people caught fish on the Sabbath and therefore turned into monkeys, then this is a mythological event. We already know this, and we also know that from the perspective of faith, it is absolutely true, while from the perspective of reason, it is merely a myth.

In both cases, the cause is unimportant, because it is related neither to rule nor to necessity, neither to obligation nor to probability. In Kafka's story *The Metamorphosis*, there is no cause at all. A man suddenly turns into an insect in the morning, or when he wakes up, he finds himself to be an insect. It is also possible that he is not an insect, but rather he and his entire family are victims of mass hypnosis. The cause is unknown, and even if it were known, it is unimportant; the effect is everything. (For instance, regarding Kafka's story, no one asks why and how Gregor Samsa turned into an insect, whereas regarding Hamlet, everyone asks why he delayed.) Therefore, contrary to Aristotelian structure, a plot can also be described as follows: unimportant information, important information, ambiguous information, event, conclusion.

When there is no apparent connection between an event and its conclusion, it can certainly cause some confusion. However, this is because we have assumed that a conclusion only occurs as a direct result of an event. The Latin maxim *Post hoc, ergo, propter hoc* (after this, therefore because of this) points to the logical fallacy that if one event follows another, there must necessarily be a cause-and-effect relationship between them. Long ago, Imam Ghazali—and centuries later, David Hume—pointed out that just because one event follows another does not mean they are bound by a necessary relationship of cause and effect. According to Ghazali, this relationship can simply be one of function. Critics of fiction must banish this prejudice of cause and effect from their minds.

The fundamental requirement of a story is that any information provided about an event must actually pertain to that event, regardless of whether the information is important or trivial. It is a different matter that accumulating too much trivial information might obscure the significance of the event itself, but this is an issue of narrative technique, not of structure. As long as the details relate to the event—whether or not they add to our knowledge of it, meaning the facts that help us determine its nature—they will serve some purpose in constructing the narrative. For example, consider adding the following details to the event of Zaid's death:

Zaid was forty years old. He was married. At the time of his death, his wife was not with him, but his children were present. Zaid had no particular interest in reading or writing. He was not fond of eating apples either; it was merely a coincidence that on that day, he was both looking at a book and eating an apple.

There is no doubt that some of these details hover somewhere between mere information and actual events, leaving room for speculation. For instance, if Zaid had no interest in reading books or eating apples, why was he doing so on that particular day? If he was only forty years old, it is unlikely that he had liver cancer, but it is possible that if he was an alcoholic, his liver might have failed, and so on.

We might argue that while these speculations are valid, Zaid's death itself (the central event) holds no importance for us, so why should we bother with these complications? This is a fair point, but again, it relates to the meaning of the story, not its structure. If Zaid (as we noted earlier) had been a king, or if he held some emotional or experiential significance for us (like Hamlet), we would certainly engage in such speculation. In the present scenario, we are not debating whether this story is great or trivial. The only question is whether the event of Zaid's death, as described, constitutes a story or a narrative. The answer is obviously yes. There is a central event accompanied by various pieces of information, and these details have a hierarchy that helps us determine the nature and value of that central event. This is precisely what constitutes a story.

If the information and events in a story were not the primary focus, and instead their clear causal connection was what mattered most, we would have to reject many stories as being stories at all. As things stand, even if we refuse to accept the account of Zaid's death as a story, we cannot deny that Majnun Gorakhpuri's short story Tasadum (Collision) is indeed a story. Yet, the cause of the train collision in that narrative is simply that the station master had gone to the restroom, and his subordinate, out of ignorance, cleared the line for two trains simultaneously.

This cause is akin to saying that an accident happened by mistake. In other words, this cause relies on an occurrence that is not based on any underlying logic. We are not debating whether Tasadum is a good story, because that discussion would lead us away from our central question: what are the structural components of a plot? Asking what kind of plot makes a good story is an absurd question, much like asking what kind of subject gives birth to a good poem.

The presence of a clear causal connection in a plot does not always guarantee the creation of a story. The proof of this lies in the fact that causes and effects rooted in everyday observation and reality carry such a heavy burden of truth that their fictiveness vanishes. Instead of remaining within the realm of storytelling, they cross over into the domain of factual reality. Although a true event can be turned into a story, truthfulness is not a prerequisite for fiction; the only prerequisite is the occurrence of an event. Therefore, when a narrative so closely resembles a true event that it falls entirely within the bounds of everyday observation, its status as a story becomes questionable. Consider the following two statements as an example:

(1) Zaid grew up. He sprouted a beard and a mustache. He started shaving.

(2) Zaid grew up. He sprouted a beard and a mustache. But he did not start shaving.

We can see that the three events in the first statement share a cause-and-effect relationship. Yet, no story is formed. This is because starting to shave upon coming of age is a matter of everyday observation; it lacks any fictiveness. In contrast, the final event in the second statement (he did not start shaving) is not the effect of any preceding event, and for this very reason, a story is born. This happens because a piece of information has been introduced that invites speculation, simply because it is not the direct result of a preceding cause. Now, suppose the statement read like this:

(3) Zaid grew up. He sprouted a beard and a mustache, but because he was a devout follower of Islamic law, he did not start shaving.

Here, cause and effect are fully present, but the story has vanished. The explanation of the cause has given the event such a strong hue of reality that there is no room left for fiction. However, arguing that a cause-and-effect sequence is unnecessary for a plot—because if it were, we would have to reject many stories as such—is just like arguing that we naturally and instinctively accept narratives as stories simply because they do contain this sequence. Both of these arguments have been formulated by observing certain writings and oral narratives (i.e., tales). The flaw in this approach is that one could create any similar hypothesis and easily find stories that perfectly fit the criteria. In other words, these arguments are more intuitive than logical.

Therefore, it is necessary to find an argument that is more or less based on logic. We have already seen one such argument: if the cause is not explicitly stated in the text, but there is an abundance of information, it gives rise to speculation, which in turn generates interest. Aristotle had argued that we are only interested in events that follow a sequence of cause and effect. However, once we established that the absence of a clear cause—coupled with an abundance of information—can also generate interest, our counter-argument was validated. Yet, other arguments are also possible if we critically examine the methodology used to formulate the premise that a plot must rely on cause and effect.

Karl Popper termed this methodology Essentialism. Both Plato and Aristotle believed there is a fundamental difference between knowledge and opinion. Knowing the essence of things constitutes knowledge, while knowing how things appear at any given moment is merely opinion. Grasping the essence of things is somewhat innate and intuitive, because this kind of knowledge cannot be proven through logic or observation. Aristotle believed that stating the correct names of things is tantamount to stating their essence. This is why he claimed, Actual knowledge and the thing itself are one and the same. In other words, the knowledge of things is not separate from the things themselves; if things are accurately defined, knowledge of them is inherently acquired.

As a result, in Aristotle's view, all knowledge became based on definitions, and formulating definitions is more a matter of intuition than logic. Consequently, he defined tragedy as the representation of an action that is worthy of serious attention, complete in itself, and of a certain magnitude. And since tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and its purpose is to present events and a plot, he concluded that a tragedy cannot exist without a plot.

The flaw in this methodology becomes apparent when we ask: what question is Aristotle's definition attempting to answer? Obviously, the question is, What is tragedy? This implies that we can answer the question What is a certain thing? however we please, and then claim that anything failing to meet our definition is simply not the thing we are defining. For example, if the question is, What is a cat? we could answer that a cat is a creature that flies in the air. Now, if we are shown a cat that does not fly, we can simply argue that, according to our definition, it is not a cat. In this way, no relationship remains between the definition and the thing being defined, and the definition is reduced to mere dogma.

In response to the question What is a plot?, Aristotle's followers argue that a plot is a sequence of events connected by cause and effect. Therefore, anything lacking a cause-and-effect connection is automatically excluded from the definition of a plot. Consequently, our methodology should not revolve around asking What is it? but rather, What does it do? The importance and validity of this approach become evident when we try to answer two distinct questions: What is electricity? and What does electricity do? Obviously, whatever answer is given to What is electricity? will either be absurd or false. This is why Bertrand Russell stated that electricity is not a physical thing, but rather a state of affairs.

It could be argued that it is inappropriate to apply questions related to scientific problems to literature or philosophy. However, this objection is based on the misconception that scientific inquiry can discover irrefutable facts, whereas philosophical inquiry cannot. The reality is that the solutions to scientific problems are also neither absolute nor final. While this is not the place to go into detail, it is necessary to state that the methodology of inquiry for all types of problems should fundamentally be the same.

Therefore, if the question regarding a plot is What does a plot do?, the answer will simply be: It narrates events in a way that generates interest. In light of this answer, further questions can be formulated. In contrast, Aristotle's methodology, being circular, produces a definition that rejects anything to which the definition cannot be applied. It does not concern itself with the fact that by excluding everything that falls outside its parameters, the definition itself risks becoming meaningless.