Dear Reader,
If you clicked on “play” before starting to read, you must be wondering why you’re listening to me yammer on about an episode from the Mahabharat. This is actually from a class I conducted recently, in which I was talking about the importance of making sure the message that you want a story to convey doesn’t overshadow the storytelling. While I was preparing my notes for the class, I was reminded of just how creative and dynamic reading can be, which is why I thought I’d share this snippet with you.
A lot of people think reading is a passive activity that demands nothing from the reader beyond understanding the meaning of the written words, but if you think about it, that barely scratches the surface of reading. We’re never “just” reading. The act of reading goes hand in hand with imagining what-if scenarios, interpreting details and delving into the possibilities that are hinted at in a text. Basically, when you’re reading a story, you’re also becoming a storyteller because as you look for the meaning of a story, you’re actually retelling it to yourself — which is why everyone says that if you really want to become a writer, you have to be a reader first.
It’s not just wannabe writers who are interested in storytelling. Telling ourselves stories is basically how we survive the wretched chaos that is the real world, as Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler tell us in Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain. The basics of storytelling — sifting through data to figure out the important bits and then arranging them into a recognisable pattern — inform some of our most fundamental actions. For instance, here’s how Vedantam and Messler explain sight or the act of seeing:
“In any given second, the human eye collects about a billion bits of information. This flood of data is compressed a thousand times, and only one million bits of information are sent to the brain via the optic nerve. The brain keeps just forty bits of this data and discards the rest. … The amazing thing is [that]… your brain gives you the illusion that you are seeing everything… . It turns out there are excellent reasons for your eyes and brain to do all this filtering. Indeed, to see reality clearly would leave us worse off, not better. Our eyes and brain are not in the truth business; they are in the functionality business… .”
The central point of Useful Delusions is that we as humans are prone to storytelling, which often goes against the rationality and reason — and that may not be a bad thing. The book is not suggesting being delusional is the way to go, but that in certain circumstances, the fictions we tell ourselves may ensure our wellbeing. The book looks at a range of delusions, from the placebo effect to optimism and elaborate con jobs. One of my favourite stories in Useful Delusions is about an experiment in which a surgeon only pretended to carry out a surgery to see whether the theatre of surgery — the operating theatre with its lights, the noises of surgical implements being used, the anaesthesia, etc — can convince the brain to heal the body (obviously this only applies to very specific medical conditions). It’s fascinating to see how the need to feel in control of one’s situation can push us to believe the most ridiculous things and how ultimately, appealing to emotion works more effectively than appealing to reason.
If you’re a regular listener of Vedantam’s excellent podcast Hidden Brain, which explores human behaviour from a science-y point of view, you’ll recognise most of the cases he writes about in the book. I have basically been devouring Hidden Brain for the past few years, so the book felt a little repetitive to me. However, in most cases, Vedantam goes into more detail in the book, which is great. If you haven’t heard Hidden Brain, I highly recommend you make yourself a cup of coffee/ tea/ vodka-tonic (hey, it’s a pandemic out here. No judgements), and let Vedantam and his team tell you stories that will leave you feeling wiser and smarter. Which may well be a delusion, but in the words of one Sheryl Crow, if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.
What will not leave you feeling happy is Jamlo Walks, written by Samina Mishra and illustrated by Tarique Aziz. I was sent this book by the publisher, Puffin (which is part of Random Penguin, sorry, Penguin Random House), and the first time I sat down to read it, I had to stop midway. It’s a 30-paged book, written for kids, and by page 15, my heart was breaking. When I finally did manage to read till the end, I wept. The book has since been sitting on my desk for weeks because I just don’t know how to write about it.
So instead of trying to explain the emotions evoked by this work of “faction” (a work “based on fact, embroidered and distorted in order to project the character herein”), let me tell you the bare facts of what this book is about. Jamlo Walks tells the story of a group of children as they navigate their lives through lockdown. Some of them live in city apartments and have to do school on Zoom. One of them, Jamlo, is carrying a bag full of dried chillies and she’s walking a long road home.
Jamlo is a child worker and she’s one of lakhs of migrant workers, young and old, who were forced to literally walk home, across the country, when the lockdown was announced without warning last year. This 12-year-old girl had to cover 200 kilometres to return to her parents and as she makes her way past highways and through forests, the kids in cities live their lockdown lives, looking out of windows and into computer screens. Jamlo Walks is very much a story about privilege and the lack of it, but Mishra writes without judgement and with empathy. It’s not that the apartment-bound children are thoughtless or “bad”, but that our society is so terribly divided that it feels like Jamlo lives in another world rather than in the same country as the privileged kids.
This story is a far cry from the fluffy, escapist happiness that we usually associate with kiddie fiction, but it’s one of those books that I hope will find a place in every child’s bookshelf. I also hope that parents or elders of some sort will make the time to go through Jamlo Walks with the kiddie reader and talk to them about the issues touched on in the story. It’s difficult enough to process as a grown-up because what the migrant workers were put through was senseless cruelty and most of us have done our best to forget all that happened last year (especially since this year has brought only more horrors and misery). This is not a book I would want any child to read on their own because it is devastatingly sad.
Thinking back to my childhood — which was full of stories because I was fortunate to be raised in a home stuffed with fabulous storytellers — some of my most cherished memories are of my grandmother helping me understand the darkness that layered so many of the stories she told me. My grandmother was a battle axe of a woman and she had no time for anyone who thought children should live sheltered lives. She believed knowing things helped children be empathetic and that in turn made them better human beings as adults. The kids she raised certainly do make a good case for her theory. I think she would have loved Jamlo Walks and she’d probably have wept too if she’d read the book with me — as much for Jamlo and others who walked that long walk, as for the heartbreak of knowing that the India that her generation had hoped for is far from being realised.
As I write this, the clock is about to strike the witching hour, which makes it the perfect time to write about CL Polk’s The Midnight Bargain, a fantasy story about magic, stubborn women and mischievous spirits set in a world reminiscent of Regency-era England. The Clayborn family has pinned all its hopes on Beatrice finding a suitor during the “bargaining season”, which is when unmarried women are trotted out at parties and other public events, in the hope of attracting an eligible bachelor. Unless she can find a rich husband, the Clayborns are doomed because Daddy Clayborn has made some extremely bad investments and is deeply in debt.
Here’s the good news — the most eligible bachelor in town is interested in Beatrice. Here’s the bad news — Beatrice has absolutely no intention of getting married because she wants to become a mage, which is a male-dominated world and entirely out of bounds for married women.
Beatrice’s decision to stay single isn’t a temperamental whim. Married women are not allowed to practice magic because it involves interacting with the world of spirits and that can result in a spirit taking possession of an unborn child in the womb (which is basically the worst thing to happen because once born, the infant may be recklessly violent). So, the established practice is to collar a woman once she is married. This is not a euphemism. An actual collar is put on her, which suppresses her magical abilities and she has to wear that collar until menopause is upon her. One of the most haunting parts of the novel is when Polk describes the effect of the collar and how it dulls a woman’s every sense, from sight to smell to sensation.
The Midnight Bargain was nominated last year for the Nebula Award, which is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). While Polk struggles to balance the different storylines in her novel and a lot of her characters feel two-dimensional, what Polk excels at is world-building. Of course, it is easy for us to imagine Regency-era settings because we’ve seen and read so many stories set in that time, but that familiarity also raises our expectations. There are a lot of examples of the Regency period being used half-heartedly (*cough* Bridgerton *cough*), but Polk’s world worked for me because it felt familiar but also new. The conservatism of that time is very well portrayed in The Midnight Bargain and Polk makes sure they don’t romanticise the women’s powerlessness.So, for instance, there’s no positive side to collaring, which is such clever way to explore misogyny and patriarchy in a fantasy setting. Some of the most enjoyable parts of the novel are when Beatrice lets a minor spirit named Nadi possess her. Nadi’s hedonistic desires make Beatrice realise simple pleasures, like running on a beach, and it’s a great reminder that freedom lies as much in epic fights as in everyday details.
So that’s all I have for you in this newsletter. I hope you’re taking care of yourself and finding small joys to light up these dark times, even if it is only for a few fleeting moments. Be kind to yourself, stay safe and take care.
Thank you for reading (and listening). Dear Reader will be back soon.
The art of reading + Useful Delusions + Jamlo Walks + The Midnight Bargain