Merlin Posts

Teaching a tiddler how to read English

Last year Scholastic India published a marvellous collection of essays on reading. It is called Why I Love to Read: Real Stories about the Joy and Power of Reading. It is in keeping with the firm’s fundamental principle that reading opens up a world of possibilities. Reading is a lifelong skill. This anthology had a broad spectrum of contributors from across India. It included politicians, educationists, journalists, writers, publishers, poets, sociologists etc. I too contributed an essay. It was on how I managed to get my little girl to read modern English by introducing her to Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. The moment I introduced Sarah to medieval English where everything was spelt phonetically, the pennies dropped and she was able to make the relevant connections while reading modern English. So here is the essay that I am reproducing with the permission of the publisher.

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“They even have books in their bathroom!” exclaimed a friend to other classmates while describing our childhood home. Little has changed. Recently my daughter reported how her classmates describe our home as being full of books wherever you look! My nine-year-old is convinced that books are her birth right. She demands books she issues from the library and enjoys immensely to be bought for her personal collection as well.

My family loves books. We have done so for generations. We have inherited books that are now more than a century old. My childhood bedroom which I shared with my twin brother had an entire wall made of deep wooden bookshelves. I had rows of books three deep and more stacked on top.

I do not know what sparked my love for reading. It could have been my mother who decided to read out the texts she was teaching to her undergraduate students. Mum is a fantastic storyteller. So by the time we were six we knew our Shakespeare, Dracula along with breathless Piglet saying “Heff, Heff, Heffalump” from Winnie-the Pooh or she made up wonderfully imaginative tales. Or it could be my maternal grandfather who after lunch would tell us about the outrageous escapades about Laurel and Hardy traipsing through North East India – all totally made up of course! (My Nana as a senior civil servant had visited the region in the 1960s and 70s.) Or my paternal grandmother who would tell us stories about Shaikh-Chilli and other folktales at bed time. Or it could have been my bedridden great-grandmother who would tell us stories about Delhi and Dalhousie during British Raj including of C.F. Andrews or Charlie Dada as she referred to him fondly. He would arrive regularly at her home in Dalhousie with nothing except the clothes on his back. After every visit she would send him off on his travels once more with a bistar-band/ bedding holdall and clothes but he would inevitably distribute them to a more needy soul. My father is not much of a storyteller in words but as a photographer he is astounding. He brought home interesting guests, inevitably mountaineers and photographers, who would regale us with amazing tales of climbing some of the highest peaks in the world or taking photographs under extraordinary circumstances.

It was a short step from being surrounded by stories to reading the books lining our shelves. My mother too developed a neat trick of stocking our bookshelves with books just a little ahead of our biological years so we were never out of reading matter. Alternatively she would borrow huge piles of books from her college library and suggest books of all kinds – ranging from Georgette Heyer romances, Gerald Durrell’s animal stories, Homer, Malory, historical fiction to science fiction. We were well brought up kids. We even knew Asimov’s Three Robotic Laws fairly soon! Once mum realised I was getting frightfully bored by sixteenth century English Literature, she suggested a range of historical novels of the Elizabethean period. I developed a lifelong soft corner for it. As children we were encouraged to read anything that came our way. We spent most of our free time reading.

Initially I read what existed at home but slowly developed a passion for buying books and later even inherited personal libraries. I have an eclectic and vast collection of books. Now an entire floor in my parent’s home has floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the walls. In my marital home I have a study (and more) that is lined with bookshelves — anything to prevent my forming book towers! Even now my happiest moments are when I am surrounded by books and reading. It gives me peace. It is also as a parent I realise excellent role modelling. Children imitate their parent’s actions.

As a parent now I encourage my daughter to read anything she likes. Digital entertainment is rationed. When she was struggling to understand how English is written and spoken, I introduced her to my beautiful of Aubrey Beardsley’s Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Very soon the kid was able to “read” the story as Middle English was written exactly as phonetics is practised. It made it even more fascinating that the stories were about her favourite trio – King Arthur, Merlin and Queen Guinevere. One of her favourite past times is to read the spines of my books. (She even began reading this essay and wanted to know why I was writing about reading? It puzzled her – why on something as basic as reading?) The best inheritance I can give my daughter is of reading as a valuable lifelong skill and not just for leisure.

For now she is a happy kid who said to me reading out aloud from Diary of a Wimpy Kid “This is so easy to read. It is like an early learners reading!”

Shhhhhhh! We have a reader in the making!  

17 April 2020

Kazuo Ishiguro, “The Buried Giant”

The Buried GiantKazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Buried Giant is set in medieval England, Arthurian England. It is about an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice who set off on a quest to search for their son of whom they only have a foggy memory.  Along the way they meet Sir Gawain, a Knight of the Round Table and King Arthur’s nephew; Winstan, a Saxon warrior; Edwin, a young Saxon boy and the Boatman who flits in and out of the story. Not to forget Querig the ageing dragon, upon whom Merlin cast a magic spell. Her breath would cause a fog to form over the land, its sole purpose being to make the Britons and Saxons forget they were ever at war. Unfortunately it does away with all memory. Oh, there is also a visit to a monastery thrown in for good measure, a very depressing interlude reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s short story “The Birds”.

Having spent a decade writing this novel, especially when it is a refashioning of the better known Romance cycle stories, there are details in it that are accurate — references to the tin trade, the war between Britons and Saxons, details about Sir Gawain and the quests the people are sent on. Yet there are details in The Buried Giant such as the references to practicing Christians which is never delineated very clearly in any of the stories of the Romance cycle. Even in the well-known retelling by Malory of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table — Morte D’Arthur  the confusion about some parts of the story lie in the influence Christianity has begun to have on these oral tales. So elements are borrowed and interwoven but never sit well yet Morte D’Arthur is immensely readable for its highly charged atmosphere, the quests, the stories etc. Similarly in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, two-thirds of it are absorbing to read, but one keeps hoping that despite the bland and detached manner of telling a story involving monsters, knights, wars, and dragons, the diverse elements and characters will come together for a satisfactory end. Unfortunately it is not the case. Neil Gaiman’s review in The New York Times says it is “a novel that’s easy to admire, to respect and to enjoy, but difficult to love.” It is a balanced, constructive and informed critique by the superstar of contemporary mythographers of another exceptional storyteller. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/books/review/kazuo-ishiguros-the-buried-giant.html?_r=0)

The Buried Giant is an oddly fascinating novel. I am glad I read it.

Kazuo Ishiguro The Buried Giant Faber & Faber, London, 2015. Pb. pp.350 Rs 799

 

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