I have been asked many
times if I've always had a penchant for books or did I just develop it along the
line. And that question always took me down to the memory lane where I, a
fourteen year girl was browsing through the fiction section, trying to make a judicious
choice with no prior data or criteria I could base my selection on. I knew no
writers, no titles; this one had a nice cover; that one has fewer pages; no,
the blue one is brand new, untouched...yada yada yada. So, I don’t remember
exactly how but “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carol was the one to take away
my reading virginity. But like they say- the first one, is seldom the good one!
I began reading that
book. My memory distinctively states that I liked it through first few pages. I
rather was excited in the anticipation of the thrill and mystery that was
developing. A talking rabbit scurrying away in hurry; falling through an
endless well; big and small doors; size potions, all of it seemed so exciting
at first. But as the story developed, all I was reading was Alice expanding and
Alice shrinking and Alice crying…and it went as far ludicrous as swimming in
the pool of her own tears and just when I thought that it won’t get any
more exaggerated, there were plethora of animals swimming in the same pool.
When the story began, I pictured Alice as an audacious kid, driven by her
curiosity, ready to go on an adventure, ready to explore. But as the story
unraveled, all I felt was that she is a stupid crybaby who has pathetically
fallen into some super adventurous escapade out of some wannabe curiosity and
she’s doing it all wrong! After two chapters, the story stopped qualifying my
fourteen year old adrenaline rush and like Alice, I was bored reading a book
without pictures, no antagonist to hate, no protagonist to save the day and
series of repetitive events with my mind shouting “O C’mon Alice, just know it
Already !!” But what truly set me back was what anyone does after being bored
while reading a book- I browsed through the pages…and somehow, happened to land
on the last one…and then happened to read the only line that could have made me
survive through the book if left unread, “'Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister; 'Why, what a long sleep
you've had!'”. Boy it was a
bummer..! I left the book, shunning it as a poor attempt to be funny! I did
read many books afterwards- ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, ‘Five find Outers and a
Dog’ series by Enid Blyton and those still make into the list of my favorite
books. Over the time I met many people who actually loved reading “Alice in
Wonderland” and even watching the movie for that sake but never found myself
appreciating it. Never…until the last month!
As a part of some
assignment, I was asked to read and summarize that book. My first condescending
thought, “What’s there to read or summarize, it’s a children’s book, a book
that I never even liked even as a kid.” But still, I sat down to read it.
Though I was all prejudiced and smug, my whole firsthand experience with that
book took a phenomenal shift.
Firstly, four to five
pages later, I couldn't help appreciating the writing style of the author. To give a one liner, his writing style was somewhat subtle: not
convoluted to give quintessence of children’s book, but terse to make you read
between the lines. He was pitching a yarn for kids whose each dialect had power
to touch the Gray matter of an adult at varied levels.
A few chapters down, I
was no more a fourteen year girl who in the anticipation of vicarious thrill
and wonder, snubbed Alice for being a lachrymose abject bird-head. My
outlook of reading and judging the books and characters had changed.
Not only did I let go of the contempt I held for Alice, I rather started
connecting with her after a while. She was born in the book as a little bored
girl with pristine innocence, soon to become a damsel in distress. Appalled and
perplexed by the strangeness and variance of this new world, she did carp and
cry but never ceased trying. But how far could “trying” get her! As soon as
she’d conform to the new reality, this queer world would turn around to demand
either undoing those changes or making new ones. After all, no one is quite
enamored with the idea of change. So, despite of her best efforts to acclimate
with her surroundings and her new fellows, she wasn't getting
anywhere.
The story unraveled. I
read Alice surviving the Topsy-turvy ride of naive conundrums.
But physical changes were not the only ones to distraught her, for she
still was an immaculate innocent child who yearned for compassion or even for a
little bit of familiarity with her strange new fellows. Despite of her
ceaseless attempts of getting acquainted, trying not to offend anyone in
process, she still stayed as estranged as ever. Consequently, alone and
muddled, she was taken over by the most basic human instinct of evaluation when
faced with the lowest esteem of oneself, “Who m I ?... at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning,
but I think I must have been changed several times since then”.
The tale progressed and
so did Alice. That baffled girl soon took baby steps towards acceptance and
grew out of her ingenuous deductions. She was no more intimidated by the
change, rather became blasé about it. She soon figured out how to control her
size variations and used that knowledge for good. Call it ‘Grapes are sour’ or
‘Make an omelet with broken eggs’, but that’s how change takes us all. We
fight, complain, endure, struggle for a long time but then, ultimately give
ourselves to acceptance. I was marveled by the unique parallelism drawn by the
author between sweet and naïve dilemmas of a little girl and the grave and grim
nitty-gritty of adults. And he didn’t just draw a parallelism by mere series of
events stringed in sophisticated words and prosaic conversations but, rather
wielded his wisdom in the form of puns and quips which tickled my funny bone no
matter how many times I read them!
So, there I was, on the
last page…having a strong sense of déjà vu…but, with tenderness. “'Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister; 'Why, what a long sleep
you've had!'”…As if someone was
trying to wake me up from the delightful escape from the vicissitudes. That
book told me nothing that I already didn’t know, but put what I already knew in
more acceptable and light words. It justified defying logic. It justified
dwelling on simple joys and simple sorrows, for life will never stop giving you
huge reasons to be grave about. I don’t know if others liked this book for the
reasons I did, but I do know that my reasons would make me read it again…probably
many times…and each time, it will give me something different to take away J
