CHENNAI: Early morning of August 15, 1947, from the terrace of a small house in Georgetown, my paati — all of nine years old then — soaked in the air of celebration and freedom for the first time. It may be overwhelming to consider that the stories of struggle and dolour in our history books were once realities for people still in our lives. While we celebrate the freedom fighters of yore, do we spare a thought for the children of the time? What was life like as a young mind at the turn of Independence? Treading on these themes through a complex and refreshing lens are Lubaina Bandukwala with The Chowpatty Cooking Club and Aditi Krishnakumar with That Year in Manikoil.
The voice of the young
These are the first two books in the series Songs of Freedom, conceptualised by Sayoni Basu of Duckbill Books (Penguin Random House India) that ‘explores the lives of children across India during the struggles for independence’. “I think it’s a fascinating way of looking at recent history. While we’ve all studied colonialism and the freedom movement in school, it’s from a very adult perspective — focusing on taxes and trade, laws and politics.
Those are very important things. But I think there’s also something in the idea of freedom that goes beyond all of those factors to something at the core of humanity. That’s what this series is about,” shares Aditi. The series will cover tales from various regions of India. “The thing that resonated with me about the series was that a whole generation that was probably the last to have seen the freedom struggle is going to pass, so oral history is very precious. It’s very important to preserve these memories and these first-hand stories we have that we can put into our fiction or non-fiction,” adds Lubaina.
Lubaina’s The Chowpatty Cooking Club takes us to 1942 Mumbai (rather Bombay), where ten-year-old Sakina and her friends Zenobia and Mehul battle with various perspectives during the Quit India Movement, while also acting as messengers (or perhaps, something more than merely just that) between their mothers who share recipes with each other. Two years later, we find ourselves in the fictional village of Manikoil, where Aditi’s protagonist Rajalakshmi (Raji) deals with incoming Tamil refugees from places like Malay, and a brother at the border during the Second World War.
What do we want?
Despite being individual tales, the two books serendipitously pose several similar questions. Both, Sakina and Raji, find themselves judging their role in it all, and whether they agree with the adults that surround them. In The Chowpatty Cooking Club, several refreshing perspectives present themselves through the adults. Where one is fighting through underground radio broadcasts, the other is chastising the freedom seekers.
“The important thing I had in mind is that every period in history that is a transition, is quite complex. Put yourself in a place where you are under a foreign government and prosperous, and it makes not much of a difference to you. Then, there are the idealists who can see into the future and say that these things matter a lot more than what you’re doing. And there are children who have absolutely no idea what freedom conceptually means…I wanted to capture those complexities without judgement because everybody came with a certain understanding of the world and based on various factors, they decided where their future would go,” explains Lubaina.
Like Sakina, Raji too battles with the idea of what is right in the face of potential freedom. Her war-enlisted brother thinks that the freedom promised to them at the end of the war is inevitable but everyone else says it is not their war to fight.
Speaking of varying opinions, Aditi elaborates, “I think the real importance of occasions like this, India’s 75th year of independence, is that they give everyone a reason to think about the value of freedom and what it means. Different people will have different answers, that’s only natural. I think the most important thing is to ask the questions.”
Apart from what is best for the nation, these two also indulge in their urge to contribute to the movement. Whether it is Sakina’s obsession with helping the satyagrahis or Raji’s worry that being associated with the British would invite the label of coward. There is a difficult question in each of these stories.
The finer things
Apart from the plurality in thoughts, both authors also do a fantastic job refining their stories with finer details. And it is these details that remain engraved in your mind after the read.
Lubaina adds to the charm of the characters by providing us with newspaper cutouts dating as far back as 1930s. “When my uncle passed, his family gave me two boxes of old newspaper clippings and said that he wanted me to have it because I would value them. They really give you the sense of an era and there were certain things I picked up from that. I found such fascinating nuggets of their aspirations and lifestyles…so I thought if I ever do a book I will put these in a scrapbook of my characters,” she says. Surprisingly, she even found a clipping of her husband’s grand uncle that makes it onto the page.
When it comes to Aditi’s story, it is difficult not to well up while reading the letters Gopu anna writes to Raji from the war front. Interestingly, some sentences are struck off (while still legible) by the ‘Military Censor’. Such a small addition adds great depth to the words and what they mean for the family.
While Lubaina’s story is a complete work of fiction, deriving some inspiration from Gandhian Usha Mehta and the secret Congress Radio, Aditi’s (while also fiction) has many derivatives from family lore.
“Although Manikoil itself is imaginary, much of the setting was inspired by the places where my grandparents grew up. Some of the incidents are things that really happened — if not quite in the same form as the book — and have become part of family lore. I chose a village rather than a city like Trichy or even Madras simply because I felt like that was where I could most authentically recreate the world as it was eighty years ago,” she explains.
Two parallel lives in Madras and Bombay, questioning their purpose and duty under a colonial regime that are in many ways the same and completely distinct. Did every child in India at the time go through this? We’re waiting on the rest of the series to find out.