Telmo Tinga and the Hovering Rain Cloud | Magical Realism Concept of Storytelling/Writing

 Ever since he lost his wife to a snake bite, Telmo Tinga transformed forever. He withdrew from the world and dedicated himself to a life of recluse. Enshrouded by the green cloak of looming forest trees, his little hut was both his home and his work station. For as far as his eyes could see, the ground was enveloped in prickly carpets of long, pinny grasses. Shooting from within these grasses, giant trees rose proudly, spreading their gnarly branches like veins of a monster’s claws trying to posssess the blue canvas of the sky. On most days, there wasn’t any animal in sight, let alone a human. 

A small cloud constantly hovered above his hut, raining down a perpetual drizzle on everything that lay, stood, or hung inside his hut, an unrelenting reminder of the intense sorrow that lingered in his heart. What would have made an ordinary person insane, became the new normal for Telmo. After years of battling his own grief, Telmo had befriended the hovering cloud, the constantly drizzling water, and a strange routine where he spent his days talking to his tools. He used these tools to craft items of furniture, home decoration, and show pieces. At the end of every month, he visited the city to sell these items to a big trade emporium for good amount of money.

He spent a portion of the money to buy home essentials and saved the rest of it in his home bank for buying new tools or for the rainy days. Rest of the days, he spent his time interacting with his tools. The tools, like his family members, listened to his thoughts, his laments, his sorrows, his memories, his happinesses. While he banged their tips on sheets of metal or rubbed their blades against blocks of wood or pummelled ornamented designs with veneer, the tools listened to his stories, with patience.

 

One morning when he woke up to look into the mirror, horror struck him. The mirror was missing. There was just wall, plain mud-colored wall in front of his eyes. This wasn’t however what horrified him. What horrified him was what he saw when he lifted his gaze. The mirror wasn’t missing. It was just hanging at a height. He turned around his gaze to scan other things. It seemed, that everything had gotten enlarged into giant sizes. Even the small cushioned chair appeared to be surpassing his own height. He jumped and hopped on top of the chair and tried to look at himself in the mirror. The cloud hovering above the hut continued to rain down drizzle. 

Little dollops of liquid plopping down caused one of the cushion’s edges to turn wet. He jumped over the cushion and tried to look at his reflection in the mirror. Disbelief enveloped him as he noticed that he was no longer a human, he was an insect, although he still seemed to have a human mind. He could still think, describe things, have feelings and opinions. But his body had turned into an insect, a giant beetle with silver-black metallic body, a tiny round head with two antenna erupting from it and two googly eyes.

Telmo noticed that his metallic body had soaked up all the water from the cushion. The cushion was now dry. He jumped on the ground where the drizzle had wetted it. He noticed that his body again soaked up the drizzle. Telmo stepped out of the hut and started crawling towards the roof. Once he reached the roof top, he took a long jump to try and touch the hovering cloud. He latched on to the cotton candy-like cloud and shifted his body on top of it, in the same way he had been sitting on the cushion. His body started soaking up the moisture in the cloud. Within a few moments, his body had sopped up all the water. The cloud dissolved in the mist and Telmo dropped on the roof, his belly holding all the water his body had absorbed.

Crouching underneath a mallet, he slept. The next day he woke up, he felt different. His chest felt open, his abdomen pulsing with warm swirls of breath, his head dizzy yet light. He looked up. The hovering cloud had vanished. He settled down to work on a lamp he had been working on before he turned into an insect. He tried to talk to his tools, but the tools wouldn’t respond, as if their squeaky, creaky voices had died, along with the hovering cloud. Extreme silence jolted Telmo into an intense pang of loneliness and longing. He couldn’t hold back anymore. He slumped down on the ground and burst into tears. He kept crying until evening, then sat there gazing at the fleeting colors of the sky. Golden, orange, pink, purple, blue, black.

Night set in. He walked inside the hut and embraced his late wife’s photo. He no longer felt grief of her loss. He was ready to move on.

 

The following morning, while he was working on the lamp, a group of travellers emerged from the cover of grassy bushes and approached his hut. Reaching the door of the front courtyard, one of them walked towards a small jewellery cabinet Telmo had left out to dry after a coat of paint. Others walked around, gazing at other items that lay scattered in the courtyard. Returning to Telmo, they gave him a big order. He was to create thousand bamboo-glass chairs, for which he would get about 10 million rupees.

 

For the next few months, he dedicated himself to creating bamboo-glass chairs, each daubed with a doodle of his wife’s face and the initial of her name. Once the project was over, he collected all the photos and belongings of her and bid them a farewell by burning. He had liberated both himself and her, something which she would have wanted for him if he could talk to her. He assembled his ash in a tub, poured it in a forest river, and walked away, seeking a new partner and his dreams of success.

 

Apart from being interesting and entertaining, the tale of Telmo Tinga is a fantastic example that illustrates a storytelling concept popularized by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Called “Magical Realism,” the concept, as its name suggests, is a writing strategy where elements of magical or supernatural worlds are presented as natural parts of realistic world, often with a very mundane and matter-of-fact tone or realistic setting.

The concept allows the writer to explore the realm of magic to illuminate the real. With the introduction or intrusion of magic, supernatural, impossible, unrealistic, bizarre, uncanny, or unusual elements, the writer presents the fusion of realistic and magical/fantastic. Boundaries between speculation/magic and reality are blurred. The aim, is to express emotions and normalize magic with amalgamation and practical integration of magic and reality.

What elements in this story illustrate the concept of “magical realism”?

1.    Normalization of the fantastic – The perpetual cloud hovering above Telmo’s hut, constantly raining drizzle, represents a fantastical metaphor for the intense grief and unending sorrow that prevails in his heart. Yet the cloud is depicted in an entirely natural and realistic setting.

2.    Fusion of realism and fantasy – Telmo’s story involves a blend of the magical and the mundane. The secluded hut in the forest and the hovering cloud; his job as a craftsman, selling goods in the city, and the talking tools.

3.    Anthropomorphism with magical tools as a Coping Mechanism – Telmo’s core routine, where he talks to his tools as if they were his family members or friends, represents anthropomorphism, a concept where human characteristics are attributed to non-human entities. While drenched in extreme isolation and the profound grief of losing his wife, Telmo uses these magical “talking tools” as a psychological coping strategy. The loss of the cloud and the subsequent silence of the tools at the end represents his mind no longer needing to project that connection—the coping mechanism is dissolved because his grief is gone.

 

4.    Thermodynamics and Phase Transition (The Insect Transformation and Metamorphosis) - Telmo's instantaneous and unexplained transformation into a small, metallic, water-absorbing insect that retains a human mind. - This radical, magical/dream-like physical change is presented as a simple/realistic event. The insect is depicted to possess a magical ability of swallowing up grief (water). This small metallic creature soaks up the moisture from the cushion, the ground, and finally, the hovering cloud. This element depicts the scientific concept of “thermodynamic equilibrium.”

With the act of physically absorbing the energy of grief, Telmo’s body naturally arrives at a state of emotional stability or thermodynamic equilibrium, thereby, transforming into a healed state.

5.    Magical Companionship and extreme ecology: the story presents Telmo in an extreme environment of isolation and recluse where he relies on the magical and supernatural elements as a crutch to manage his emotions. The description of "prickly carpets of long, pinny grasses" and giant trees forming "gnarly branches like veins of a monster’s claws" emphasizes a wild, aggressive environment hostile to human connection.

Extreme isolation, recluse, and grief forces him into an emotional breakdown and eventually, symbiosis. While the cloud of intense sorrow constantly hovers above him, the tools act as his companions in catharsis, listening to his sorrows. When the cloud finally bursts, his reality collapses and he is jolted into a rapid symbiosis. Turning into an insect, which essentially is a materialization of his sorrow, he drinks up the grief, and moves on into radical acceptance. Eventually, his reality starts to shift. He begins to heal. He receives the big order and he feels ready to move into a new life, a transformed version of himself.

 

Telmo's journey from paralyzing grief to emotional liberation, with the magical happenings serving as symbols of his internal state and necessary steps toward healing. His old biology, his old ecosystem, his old mind are now just history. By the end of the story, Telmo turns into an entirely new person. So, basically, the story uses elements of magic and fantasy to shift his reality from old to new. This fusion and intersection of realism and magic is what marks this storytelling device.