About idlis, dosas, commoners and kings

History as it is taught in Indian schools borders on the boring, and most people turn to the sciences at the end of their schooling in a desperate attempt to get rid of the subject. History, though, can be the most interesting of subjects if it is approached as a narrative of events, a story with all the elements of wonder and drama that it undoubtedly holds. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to activate our brains, just like a smell or music that are both powerful triggers for memory. Sometimes even reminding one of things long gone, that we may have not been conscious of remembering.

To focus on this, Saffrontree held a fest of fiction and non-fiction based on Indian History in the first week of Decenber. It has a wonderful bunch of books that deal with Indian history in a fun way. Do go to the posts and read all about these books.

Here are my contributions. Both of these are books A has thoroughly enjoyed. They have been extensively used for school projects this year, she has been recommending them to her friends AND her history teacher, and we've already gifted many copies of the first to a few close friends.

pic courtesy flipkart

Let’s Go Time Travelling: Life in India through the ages
Written by Subhadra Sen Gupta
Published by Penguin Books India
Age 9-12 years

In her interview in The Hindu at the publishing of her book Let’s Go Time Travelling Subhadra Sen Gupta says, "My target readers are the kids in classes 6 to 8, who begin studying Indian history. The book aims at making history less intimidating for them and also talk about things that kids are curious about. The stuff that textbooks leave out, like food and clothes, transport and school."

Very true. History textbooks have a way of putting the child off the subject, unless there is an exceptional teacher in the offing. This book fills in exactly that void. For my daughter in the 6th grade, this was THE book to read, much in the mould of the irreverent Horrible Histories series.

A period of close to 5000 years has been divided into 4 parts- Early India from 2600 - 500 BCE, Ancient India from 300 BCE – 1100 CE, Medieval India from 1200 – 1850 CE and British India from 1800 – 1940 CE. I give the dates here not to overwhelm the reader of this review with dates: something that always put me off from an academic study of history, but to demonstrate the scope of this slim and wonderfully crafted book.

Subhadra Sen Gupta ( interviewed here on Saffrontree) deconstructs the weight of all that history and distills it into bite-sized parts. She keeps her finger firmly on the pulse of the middle school child who is lured into wanting to find out more after reading the short story at the beginning of each chapter, comprising ordinary people from that particular period. The story tells a lot about their thoughts, ideas, customs and beliefs. She focuses on the ‘storytelling aspect’ of history, giving a holistic yet richly detailed view of each era.

Along the way, we get a peek into how historians decode the data they have at hand from archaeological findings, written records, period literature, and any other relics of a period to recreate the how and why of all that has happened. For example, we can know what food people of a period ate and why. In the chapter on the Pallava and Chola dynasties, we learn that people ate many varieties of the dosa, but the idli was not invented yet. How? From the references in the literature of the period. Odes to dosas, but no idlis. Also that spices used in sambar were pepper and tamarind. Chillies and tomatoes were a colonial import, brought by the Portuguese from the Americas in the 1700s.

An enjoyable book, and a valuable addition to the study of Indian history, along with Anu Kumar's 'In the Country of the Gold-digging Ants' and Roshan Dalal's twin volumes by Puffin.

pic courtesy flipkart

Victory Song
Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Published by Penguin Books India
Age 9-12

Neela is a spunky 12 year old girl living in the British India of the 1930s. It is a few years before the Quit India movement. Freedom fighters are everywhere, in the guise of ordinary people. Neela befriends a young freedom fighter, Samar, during her elder sister’s wedding. Neela's father has to go away to Calcutta on some patriotic work soon after the wedding.

Samar is seriously injured during a raid on a British facility. He takes refuge in Neela’s home, where he is kept in hiding until he is well, as the British soldiers are looking for him. Soon, Neela’s father goes missing in Calcutta. The feisty little girl dresses up as a boy, a wandering minstrel, and takes Samar’s help to go to Calcutta to find her father.

What happens to Samar and Neela in Calcutta? How do they find her father? The rest of this riveting tale on the backdrop of the freedom movement against British rule has to be read to find this out.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni brings us a book for pre-teens that takes us into the everyday world of a girl of the period, complete with people’s attitudes about 'girls should be seen and not heard', and how it is this feisty girl’s courage and resourcefulness that saves the day.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.

Of Spies and Writers

Just finished reading HARRIET THE SPY. The first time I heard of the book was in a discussion with a friend. I liked the name, and it stuck. As usual, I took to scanning shelves at the library and bookstores for it, but soon realised that it was not available anywhere but at Flipkart. I was seriously considering buying it, as it had become like the proverbial itch that had to be scratched. Then the same friend told me that she had borrowed it from their library, Hippocampus. Since we already had plans of changing over our membership to Hippocampus, I decided to be patient and hold on. And hold on we did, for many impatient weeks.

In the meantime, we found out that the book had been made into a film. The film features Michelle Tractenberg in the central role, and was made in 1996. There was a screening on TV which we missed. Now this eminently watchable actress had last been seen by us in a Disney movie called Ice Princess.  Another one of those "makeover" stories, made in 2005. She was wonderful in this movie, and I would recommend it to anyone for its strong female characters, wonderful acting, feel-good factor and some breathtaking ice-skating sequences. So Michelle Tractenberg would have been in her early teens when she made "Harriet the Spy." Just the right age for our 11year old Harriet. Now all I had to do was to read the book, and then search out the movie and Watch it.

Let me digress here a bit. There have been a lot of books that have been made into movies over the whole of movie history. Most people prefer to sit through a few hours of the movie and enjoy it rather than read the book. I know of many of A's friends who have watched the whole Harry Potter series on screen, but not held a single one of the books in their hand, leave alone read any. If that is not blasphemeous, (in my view) what is?  J.K.Rowling's work has revived most children's interest in the printed word. Her book releases have had all the hysteria of a sold-out rock concert, and she has enchanted children and adults alike. Her work and its aftermath deserves a whole post on its own. Shall do it some other time.

I feel that reading a book unfetters one's imagination. You are free to imagine the characters in any way you want. A movie, on the other hand, has its limits as everything has been pre-digested and characterised. There is also the limitation of the time in which the whole story has to be told. Going back to the Harry Potter series, it is my opinion that the movies do not do complete justice to the books. There is so much more in the books that has to be edited out, and sometimes there are additions out of context which completely alter the original flavour of the books. Maybe I'm being a purist here, but Rowling's work is so complete in itself that it shouldn't be tampered with. It is just wonderful how all her dots connect perfectly.

OK. Point well made. Read the book before you watch the movie. Wherever possible. Let me come back to the topic at at hand before I go off on a complete tangent. Which is the book we are reviewing.

HARRIET THE SPY.
Written and illustrated by Loise Fitzhugh.
Cover art by Michael Deas.
This edition published by HarperCollins.
Ages 8-13 yrs.

Image :Courtesy Amazon.

Harriet M. Welsch is a very smart 11 yr old. She has a way with words, and follows a "spy-route" everyday after school, complete with a notebook in which she jots down every little thing she observes. Even at school, she is ruthless about what she writes down about her classmates, her best friends Sport and Janie included. There is a raw truthfulness to her observations, the kind children indulge in when they are not used to guilding of any kind. She is amply encouraged by her nanny, "Old Golly," who has realised the potential in her charge. She encourages her to observe, analyse and write down about everything that she sees or hears. The first stepping stone to becoming a great writer. Harriet does not quite look at it in those terms, but does have "becoming a writer"  in her list of aspirations. Old Golly herself is an avid reader, and quotes often and at every possible occasion.

Then one day, she leaves to get married. Harriet is, in her opinion now old enough to take care of herself. Soon after that, disaster strikes, when Harriet loses her notebook in a game of tag. Her classmates read aloud all the uncomplimentary truths about themselves, and boycott her. Harriet reacts like a typical pre-teen by getting back at them by playing some nasty tricks, writing even more ugly things in another book, not going to school and behaving very badly at home with her worried parents, who do not understand how to handle their daughter. Her notebook is taken away at school, when the matter is noticed by the teachers. That really brings matters to a head.

"She didn't care anymore about signing her name, and she got no pleasure from the work she did, but she did it. Everything bored her. She found that when she didn't have a notebook it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her, whereas when she wrote, they flowed out faster than she could put them down. She sat very stupidly with a blank mind until finally 'I feel different' came slowly into her head.''

Harriet rebels and blocks everyone out, including her parents. She is like a cornered animal, hitting out at anyone and anything. Her world has turned on its head and nothing makes sense anymore. All she wants is to get Old Golly back and cries for her in her sleep.

To their credit, her parents do the right thing and decide to get help before matters escalate. They set up an appointment with a psychologist, who tells them that nothing is actually wrong with Harriet, and that she is actually an extraordinarily intelligent and articulate young lady, whose talent for observation and penmanship is to be nurtured and channelised, and not quashed.

So what happens next? How does Harriet get back all that she has lost? Does she really get it all back or does something change? What happens vis-a-vis Old Golly? What about her friends and classmates? Does she make up for the hurtful things that she has said and done? What does she learn from the whole thing?

There are some wonderful things that are written to Harriet by Old Golly in a letter that she sends her. Knowing that Harriet can be painfully truthful, she writes, "Little lies that make people feel better are not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it, or telling a sick person they look better when they don't,.....Remember that writing is to put love in the world, not to use against your friends. But to yourself you must always tell the truth."

Another aspect that the writer has dealt with, which is like a sub-plot is Harriet's puzzling over 'matters of the heart' after she realises that Old Golly has a boy-friend. She tries to speak to her mother about it..."what does it feel like when you meet the person you're going to marry?...I'm not worried." Harriet squirmed around. What am I? she wondered. Just curious. "I just wondered what it felt like," she said, sulking slightly.

That evening, after feeling that Old Golly was behaving very unlike herself, she wrote in her notebook, "There is more to this thing of love than meets the eye. I am going to have to think about this a great deal but I don't think it will get me anywhere. I think maybe they're all right when they say there are some things I won't know anything about until I'm older. But if it makes you like to eat all kinds of wurst (when you don't really like them) I'm not sure I'm going to like this." Very astute and very articulate for an eleven year old.

So now I am going to look out for the movie and enjoy Michelle Tractenberg's excellent acting. And what about A? She is next in line for the book. She will be done with it long before I can get the movie.