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 rising above a parent's life-choices

How many parents think about how their life choices affect their children? I am not speaking of parenting choices here. I am speaking of choices that we make for our self, or those that are made for us by significant others in our life. How much will my not working, despite a professional degree affect my daughter's life? Would that bare fact mold her thinking, or will the reasons behind that make a difference? Will she be able to see things from my POV?

Speaking for myself as a daughter, I began to really understand my mother only after I became a parent, and a lot more as I am growing older. I can now look beyond the strict parent whose strictures I so resented to the woman behind the facade. She is an intelligent, strong, principled woman, unfortunately married into a family that could never understand her - yes, my father's side was, and still is strongly patriarchal, and has managed to stifle my mother. I have very recently begun to appreciate the fact that her choices were often not real choices, and a lot of what I remember was a function of the times she lived in. Of late, I have been having conversations with my father about how he could have done differently by her. He, too, I realise now, was a victim of the system, and actually thinks that things were fine. He listens to me, fortunately, me being the favourite daughter.

Children like to make up stories. Watch a bunch of kids play-acting and one is amazed at the imagination and creativity they come up with together. What if there is the possibility that the story might be real? What if the story turns your view of the world upside down?

Here's a book that made me introspect: what do my actions convey to my daughter? Do my unfortunate choices taint her life? Do the good ones uplift her? How much is it possible for a child to lift themselves above the effects of their parents' choices?

pic courtesy flipkart

Hitler's Daughter
Written by Jackie French
Published by HarperCollins Children's Books
Ages 8-12

Mark, Anna, Tracey and Ben play a story game as they wait for their school bus every day. They have stories of fairies, of ball games and of horses. Until one day Anna decides to tell a story. It is an amazing story set on the fringes of a great war. It is the story of a child growing up tucked away from all the action, a privileged child who is kept safe despite not being the blue-eyed, blond, tall Aryan ideal, a child hungry for family and love, holding on to memories of the few-and-far between visits of her father. A father who obviously is somebody important. Important enough that people around her who have always taken care of her are in mortal fear of displeasing him. We are told early enough that the child, Heidi, is Hitler's daughter.

Anna's story focuses on the genocide from the outside in, raising many questions in Mark's mind. What if one's parent or child has done something really evil- how does one deal with such a parent/ child? Does one love them regardless? Do the sins of our parents taint us irrevocably, or is there redemption? Do the actions of someone dear reflect on us as individuals? How does society look upon those who stand in evil's shadow? Is a bad thing really a bad thing, or are we just victims of our convictions? Do we have a right to raise our hand against someone else's questionable behaviour if we, too, might be in the wrong in our own time?

These are very profound existential questions, and Jackie French, (whom ST has interviewed here), in her inimitable chatty style, raises them through Mark's thoughts, without thrusting them at us. There are also references to Australia's own genocide-  the colonial actions against their Aborigine population.

It has been so realistically told that we are left wondering if Hitler indeed, did have a daughter that no-one knows about. Also, it is an unusual look at the Holocaust; a great book to introduce them to it, along with Number the Stars and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. There are no grisly portrayals of the deaths, as the point of view is of a privileged, though unfortunate girl.

This page-turner of a book was devoured by A in an afternoon. She has been, since, recommending it to many of her friends.

Cross-posted at Saffrontree.

Book Review: The Help

Pic courtesy flipkart

Just put down The Help, after a marathon session of reading. The last time I read a book this size, non-stop, in two days -with bits of cooking, getting kid ready for school, etc. interspersed - was when I read The Deathly Hallows overnight. I just could not put the book down.

The Help
Written by Kathryn Stockett
Published by Penguin books

Sensitively written, the story is about the unusual friendship between privileged, white women and the black maids that actually run the household, in the Deep South, Mississippi state, in the early 1960s.

Almost a century after the Civil War that freed the blacks from slavery, things haven't changed overmuch. OK, they are now paid for the work they do, but much else is the same. The segregation, the distrust, the racism, the exploitation, even the belief that the black people are 'not the same as us normal humans'. (One can almost substitute words like women, economically backward, blue collar workers, middle class, faiths-other-than-one's-own, other nationalities, cultures, differently-abled, sexually-differently-oriented...the list could go on- for black, and the  othering would be just the same.)

The book is many things.

It is the story of a few women, on both sides of the so called black-white divide, who reach out to each other in an attempt to tell the world the other side of the loving mammy story.

It is the story of women who stand up to the dictates of a discriminatory world that puts them last in the pecking order- the rich, white, heterosexual male being at the top. No matter that he may not be the best specimen representing human beings.

It is the story of a stand-off between two erstwhile friends, both strong people, when their differing personalities and beliefs put them against each other.

It is the story of how we make judgements about people based on our limited interaction with them, and how we are sometimes pleasantly/ unpleasantly surprised by finding a completely different person when the layers of our notions are peeled away. Not everything is as black-and-white (pardon the unintended pun) as we think it is with the people around us.

It is the story of nebulous ambitions, and the power of affirmative action.

So much to learn. And especially in the Indian context, where we can readily identify with the reality of ladies-of-the-house and domestic helps. A luxury that the privileged still have in our country.

It re-affirms my belief in the fact that but for the accident of birth and circumstances, Amma, my house-help, and I are not very different. I am privileged in that she shares the ups and downs of her life with me. I wait for her in the morning like I would wait for a good friend, and it has as much to do with the fact that she eases my everyday life as with the fact that there is some genuine caring on both sides.

As Stockett's character Miss Skeeter muses, "We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought." 

If you haven't read the book yet, it is worth getting your hands on it. Will be now looking out for the movie.

P.S.: While on the topic of house-helps and maids, check out this news item about robotic maids.:)