My dear Lewis, where are you?

The
last time I saw her, she was sitting on a peepal tree talking to
a book. Smarika Kumar studies law at NLIU, Bhopal, and loves reading,
kites and colourful things. She occasionally writes poetry and
stories, much of which is deemed insensible.

A
guest post by Smarika Kumar.

Last
weekend, I finished reading a book called Sylvie and Bruno. One of
his not so well-known books for little people, this one was written
by Lewis Carroll in 1889. Though like Alice books, it is a weird
book, with much apparent nonsense. But as the Red Queen would have
said, “You may call it ‘nonsense’ if you
like, but I’ve heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as
sensible as a dictionary!”

Lewis
Carroll remains one of the most liberating writers of children’s
books. Liberating, because in his absurdity only the mind of a child,
yet uninitiated into the phony ways of the world, can see sense.

He
thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He
looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
‘If this
should stay to dine,’ he said,
‘There won’t be much for us!’

Carroll
manages to weave out of this absurdity, a beautiful universe where
anything is possible. Literally. A child turns into a fairy and a
fairy turns into a child, a dodo creates a sea and runs a caucus
race, crocodiles fly and porpoises tread on whitings’ tails. This
boundless reach of the imagination offers to a child an escape from
the usual ‘No!’ which she gets to hear from the adults all around her
as she grows up, and which makes her limit her thoughts to the
“practicable”. Today we are too busy training children to fight
“the hard reality”, be the winner in a rat-race and to give up on
“too crazy” dreams. We teach them to be careful, to be scared of
unknown things, and to be planned and securitized citizens of an
ordered world.

Like
Carroll puts it,

“Will
you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,
“There’s
a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
See
how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They
are waiting on the shingle- will you come and join the dance?
Will
you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will
you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”

… and
thus a world of sad, sad adults is born and thrives.

Carroll’s
stories, on the other hand, almost seem to take the child by the
shoulders, shake him hard and shout at him, “Helloooooooo! Not what
they say! Whatever you want can happen! Whatever you dream is true!
Nothing is too absurd! Not practical! Not an adult! Don’t be an
adult, pleeease!” As if using all his strength to the last bit to
save another child from being drained into the world of fife.

No
other writer after Carroll has managed to do what he could, pull a
person out of the humdrum of reality, throw him into a world of
infinite possibilities and make him believe in the truth of it. Maybe
Mother Goose before him, yeah, but certainly none after him.

Carroll
reminds us that the world’s crooked wild. And that’s fun!