CHENNAI: In the Marvel universe, Loki is the God of mischief who drives Asgard to chaos. But in author Menaka Raman’s latest release Loki Takes Guard, Lokanayaki Shanmugam aka Loki is a determined 11-year-old with a mad passion for cricket. Unlike the seemingly selfish superhero, Menaka’s Loki bats for cricket to be a gender-bending sport. Who knows this better than us Indians, who’ve seen the men in blue be deified while their female counterparts are left with the crumbs. While this disparity in recognition is apparent at the national level, in her latest release, Menaka turns the focus of this inequality at a hyperlocal level, through Loki’s journey of making it to The Temple Street Tankers, a local cricket team.
It was sometime in 2018 when Menaka noticed a young girl, Dishita Bajaj, as passionate about cricket as a Kohli or a Dhoni is. “Dishita used to be our neighbour in a community we lived in before and I used to see her every morning when I was going to drop my kids off at school. One day, I noticed she was lugging a giant cricket kit along with her school bag. While we see equal participation among boys and girls in sports like football, basketball, tennis and athletics, at school level — in many schools — cricket is still very much a boys’ game. I was struck by this sight of her and she was really excited and looking forward to playing cricket. I asked her if any other girl had signed up and she said, ‘No, I am the only girl in the team’. The idea of an only girl in an all-boys cricket team stayed with me and it was a starting point for this story,” reveals the author.
Inspired by Dishita’s pursuit, Menaka’s protagonist too is the only girl in her cricket team. All’s well until she is asked to stop playing as the parents of the boys want her to be excluded from the team. Miffed, Loki finds no support from her mother even while her friends and brother back her. Determined to follow her heart, she starts a petition. Knocking on every door in her neighbourhood, Temple Street III Cross in Chennai, she fights for her right to play cricket. “I always wanted to set my story in Madras. When I was growing up in Madras, my friends and I were cricket-crazy. We didn’t play but we followed it, and I have a lot of memories of going to my friends’ houses to watch matches or begging our parents to let us take the day off from school and watch an India-Pakistan match,” she reminisces.
Loki’s journey reminds us of the conditionings imposed by family and society — about dreaming big, breaking age-old stereotypes, standing up for oneself — especially on girls, who are caged by dos and don’ts in a patriarchal world. “If you are from the kind of background and family that Loki is from, there is going to be more of a fight, more of a struggle, in even convincing your own family,” she elaborates.But no mountain is high enough for Loki to see the fruition of her dreams.
As the book progresses, we see Loki’s petition create a wave online, garnering a lot of support. She gains support from the unlikeliest quarters when someone called @_poetic_paati on Twitter — *spoiler alert* — her grandmother, silently roots for her. “The grandmother character is a wallpaper in the story. I wanted Loki’s supporter to be someone from her own family. And I felt that this generation of grandmothers, like my mom — my children’s grandmother — is on Instagram; she posts, she knows to use hashtags, etc. You can actually see a lot of women in my mother’s age group take to social media, a lot of them have followers who are much younger and they are fairly up to date with what’s happening, topics of conversation and all of that…I find that really cool,” she details.
The book also touches upon topics that adolescent girls are silenced from talking about, urging children and adults to pause, think and reassess their beliefs. “I want kids to read some situations (in the book) — like Loki getting her first period and how she goes about it, or her outlook towards her neighbour who is divorced — and think for themselves and just question and compare it to what’s happening in their own lives families and communities,” she emphasises.
While Loki takes guard at her local team along with ‘Bonda’ Balaji, Badri, Sooraj and Jain, Menaka has moved out of the pitch, to work on a picture book and dabble with other ideas for another young adult book.
Fighting for rights
Loki is the only girl in the cricket team. All’s well until she is asked to stop playing as parents of the boys want her to be excluded from the team. Miffed, Loki finds no support from her mother even while her friends and brother back her. Determined to follow her heart, she starts a petition. Knocking on every door in her neighbourhood, she fights for her right to play cricket.
Book: ‘Loki Takes Guard’
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books; Pages: 199
Price: Rs 299