Different Tales – Review
(Written by Shirly Mary Joseph, who works in Kanavu a school for with Tribal Children in Wayanad, Kerala. Dated 16th August 2009)
These different tales are beautifully different; differently beautiful. One so unlike the others of the series and unlike most stories for children. Just like each child, unique yet similar in her/ his precious uniqueness. And such wonderful reading material for the adult reader too. These stories may or may not take you down the nostalgic lane of your childhood memories. But they will certainly get you, the adult reader, to roam young and free through these diverse trails.
Along these trails one comes face to face with one’s own prejudices too. Prejudices you never suspected you had. When I read, '"Spade on shoulder Balamma patrolled the mud banks of the canal that bordered the groundnut fields," I came to imagine Balamma as a male worker. A few lines down, I realise that she is a twelve year old girl. I should have known! I who have worked in paddy fields with children of all age groups. Boys and girls. Balamma the determined farmer could have been my neighbour Putty or Kunjiri or Malla or Iravi. She is a real fighter. And a rabbit-catcher. And a herbal healer. A good swimmer. She plays 'gilli danda ' with boys, eats cooked rabbit meat with family and friends, puts up a fight when the landlord's bonded labourer blocks her from watering her fields, and when the landlord tries to do 'the awful', kicks him on the groin and runs off. Certainly not a little princess. Just a small and determined dalit girl who lives her life. Her childhood. Yes, childhood is the stuff that children’s stories are made of. What else?
Living stories. Stories of the living. The way it is lived: making a pair of sandals for one's mother—no 'not as a gift on 'Mother's Day' or as handicraft practice, but because her thorn-pricked feet need them; fetching a just butchered ram's head for a 'Head Curry', one's father's favourite; making sense of identities split and splintered by caste , religion and poverty; stealing the moon with cool; negotiating the price of second-hand textbooks with real business sense; recycling unused pages of handed-down old note books to make new ones, and warding off 'brand' temptations which one can't afford anyway.
The only disagreement I have with this wonderful series is regarding the paper used to print it on. Just can’t help wishing for that also to be boldly different. Handmade paper could provide such unique and organic textures to each book, each page. That would make the books smell different too. But then many a reprint awaits these lovely books and we can look forward to 'different' reprints. Like braveheart Badeyya or the protagonist of ‘Three fourth, Half Price, Bajji, Bajji' we have no choice but to innovate if we find ourselves a little 'different'. That is what provides the diversity.
Yes, I am digressing. But that is the point. Child or adult, these stories let you. Let you out of yourself to roam unbound through the trails of childhoods—of your own and of others. The other also must have begun as a child.
Not just 'Braveheart Badeyya,' but all of these children are brave hearts. Sweethearts. They manage not just to survive but to live life in all its glory, sweetly warding off the desperation of their surroundings. This deserves celebration.
And that is what Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies (Hyderabad) has done with the support of Ratan Tata Trust. And the three language series does all three languages—Telugu, Malayalam, and English—proud. The group of artists from Baroda have made each book so visibly, so soulfully different from the others.
This diversity, this celebration, is so real yet fantasy runs wild and free. And so sure-footed. No hesitations. Magic is a matter of fact: "Guddawwa took the moon out of the pot hanging from the roof and hung it up in the sky". Moonlight and fireflies and moonchaff lamps for sparrow nests. Guddawwa the one-eyed grandma is the keeper of the moon, maker of Rangoli designs, rain-maker and tide-manager. But this story-teller sorceress is also the victim of a clumsy eye-surgery, of wife abuse, and forsaken old age. Yet the will to live and to celebrate it in joy with the youngest of one’s species is so vibrant in her. Yes, I know many a Guddawwa too. Old women, forsaken by husbands, sons, daughters, by pension schemes and welfare programmes. Foggy Wayanad winter twilights find them tending a twig fire in the yard, warming all the children gathered around with twigs and tales.
This story—Moon in the Pot—is not just illustrated, it is written over clouds spangled with stars and people and sun and moon and demons and silver letters. One gets immersed in cloudy, hazy blues of night. Anything is possible within those night hues. And it is so easy to recognise one's own Guddawwas in this one. The sky-mother. The earth-mother. All mothers. Their stories. Stories within stories. The listener within stories. And I know that little one so cool and calm, with the assurance of an inheritor of stories and skies and earth takes that moon and hides it under his pillow. It's been my pillow too.
Many a little friend of mine will recognize himself/herself in these stories. It is not only Shaija who dreams of going off to outer space while waiting in a queue before a water tap. Shaija's mother's favourite food is rice and fish. That is the favourite of most of the tribal children of our Wayanad region too. They too wait in queues to fill pots and buckets. Do they dream of going off to explore outer space? If they ever do, they too will wonder whether there would be rivers and seas there. And they too will smile at themselves at the thought, "May be every morning we can come to Earth and buy a bag of fish." Just like Shaija. If they have not yet had that dream Shaija’s story makes it at least a possibility. Because, for the first time in their lives, they meet a bare-foot, fish-eating, queueing-for-water future astronaut who is in a hurry to make a cup of tea for her tired, hard working mother. Aren't we glad to meet Shaija? This is the meeting of kindred spirits.
There are many others we rejoice to meet. Many 'other' kindred spirits. Vasu who scratches his sores till they bleed and repulses teachers away. Anni who defiantly runs home when humiliated at school, and so on. School is not the same for every child though our uniform textbooks and curriculum would have us believe so. Getting a surprise visit from one of ' The Spirits of History' is the experience of every child who gets intensely connected to lessons and teachers and can't help feeling involved in ‘historical’ battles. Their E. Q. is good enough to fathom the 'different' look that the teacher gives to a child whom s/he subconsciously relegates to the 'other' side of history. Battles, even in classroom history lessons have sides and asides. It takes a really wise spirit to reveal that sides don't matter, and it is the greatness of the beings caught in the battle that matters. Sensitive children are capable of taking in the complexities of it all. And there is no lack of respect to anyone—father, teacher, emperor-spirit or oneself—as the flux of forces that operate in the process of making history is tackled ever so gently, with just that slight touch of wistfulness.
Mathai Appachan's ancestors are ancestors of every agricultural labourer. Questions of identity and religious propriety are dealt with so organically in this story ('Beloved Spirits'): One makes offerings to one's ancestors, to the church and to the community deity. One manages to get one's children educated and can now afford to live comfortably with the help of the money they earn. Yet nothing can quench the longing for the planting, the caring and the joy of watching seeds sprout, grow and bear more seeds. It is much more than about making a living. With his beloved ancestors on his side, who can keep him off that joy?
And who dares to look down on a person who loves his traditional non-vegetarian food?
Khadeer Babu's 'Head Curry’ lovingly and daringly takes us through the process of making that curry, without omitting a single detail. The boy’s walk home with the ram's head-piece and legs in the wire basket ' making a pattern with the water dripping from the freshly cut meat pieces on the road, ' is my favorite image in the story. Talk about tracing new trails! If only one such story were included in my school textbooks! All those questions (and the expected answers) for our exams wouldn’t have been so blandly vegetarian. And Saheer (' Textbook') wouldn't feel so dejected about not finding a single Muslim name in the stories, poems and essays of his textbook. As children we all sensed communal prejudices precisely ‘cause it was an unspeakable topic in the classroom. All were supposed to be similar, if not equal. Suvarna and Sreelatha (Friends in School) still cannot be friends at home. We all know that. The reality is looked in the face—literally, with black and white photographs—and that gives Suvarna the courage to snatch the ' polluted' clothes from her mother and race off to her friend’s house. Why shouldn't she?
These are stories of children who act. Now. Here. No reality is taboo to the child's mind. The child is real too. S/he can deal with life and death and identity differences and exploration dreams as well as pure, cool fun. All at the same time. If only the adults around him/ her are honest enough to acknowledge the complexity of it all. Why, Anu (The Sackclothman) can even deal with her sister's death, her mother's depression her father's escapades into alchoholism and yet be interested in all that is happening around her. Like golden brown (a dark or light shade of which is the color of every page of this book) jute strands, her compassion and imagination weave a new wise myth around Chakkupranthan, the sackclothman. She can bear with—without accepting its inevitability—tragedy and yet bear no bitterness. The child's wisdom looks at options, acts when possible, and weaves stories otherwise.
These stories make one feel happy to have been a child once. Child of a mother as tender and as fierce as Kancha Ilaiah's ' Mother'. That mother's world comes alive in mythic large dimensions—the illustrations are such a blend of now and ever—on tender mango green pages within a fierce Durga-red cover. In that world where thieves disguise themselves as landlords, where each people sing and dance and play for the pleasure of Lord Beerappa, Mother reigns supreme. Her survival tactics, her knowledge and wisdom, her dragging this son to school, her fighting for her right to carry the Bonam pot to the Beeranna Shrine—it's all there. Along with the irrevocable facts of loss as well as resistance:
My mother who asked
Will you ever grasp a pen?
Did not live to see
That I would live to hold a pen to her own story.
Ah, writers were children too.