Alice in Wonderland

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