æon

æon. issue 01 jan 2019



hink before you speak. Read before you think. Reading continues to be one of the most import-
ant activities, for all generations alike, in building an informed and aware society. In this issue, we
look at why this activity is deemed as such, the potency it has in carrying the voice of a community,
and what is being done today to further its benefits. A writer shares, among other things, his views on why
one should read; we try to understand what influences the young readers of our country; we join the voice
of a community as it reaches an important milestone; we look at whether the advent of online commerce
really will kill bookstores; and, follow an NGO promoting the habit of reading at underprivileged schools.
Step by step, we can aim beyond a literate society, beyond even an educated society, at a well-read society.

Stories let you be someone else:

Yann Martel in conversation with Sampath G

Walking through a Wunderkammer:

A review of The Afflictions by Vikram Paralkar

More than just rigid punctuation:

Reputed literary periodical “Kahani Punjab” reaches its 100th issue

Learning to Swim:

Short story by Mimi Mondal

Share A Book India Association:

NGO is spreading the love of reading among underprivileged children

The rarest of them all:

2018’s best books on books

Food for thought:

What young India is reading, and why

In Memory:

Meena Alexander’s alphabets will ‘flicker and soar’ forever

No pleasure can compare:

Are bookstores becoming a thing of the past?

æon. 01 | 1

2 | æon. 01

Yann Martel
in conversation with Sampath G
æon. 01 | 3

You were a philosophy student in college. so I put it aside. Then I got restless. I didn’t know
How did your grounding in philosophy what else to do, so I opened my eyes and began to
shape your fiction? My approach see what was in front of me, and what I saw were
has always been philosophical. You can all these benign manifestations of religion that I had
see that in Life of Pi. The kind of ques- never noticed before. I became interested in the magical
tions I ask about meaning and interpretation of thinking that is religion, and I thought I should try
reality are quite philosophical, and it has influenced and understand it, and the result was Life of Pi. I
my approach to stories. Of course, stories are a way landed in India on December 31, 1999, and I stayed
of questioning reality, and I just came to that via on for six months.
philosophy. But you’ve never written a philosophi-
cal novel as such. None of my books are explicitly Instead of 1999, had you been writing Life of
philosophical, but there is a questioning of things. Pi in the India of 2018, would you have put
The premise of philosophy is that you ask questions, a cow on the boat? It’s true I needed
whereas the premise of art is effect. Aesthetics is about an Indian animal, and I chose the animals
beauty, and beauty doesn’t necessarily question things. I did for their symbolic resonance. The
The reason I write the books I do is that I want to previous reincarnation of the tiger was a rhinoc-
understand something. In Life of Pi, I wanted to un- eros, but I soon realised that I couldn’t have a rhino
derstand religious thinking, how it works, what it because it’s a herbivore. How can a herbivore survive
means. In Beatrice and Virgil, I tried to understand for so long in the Pacific? But you picked a zebra for
why we tell the stories we do about the Holocaust. the boat. Why not a cow? Well, the zebra died. If I’d
A novel for me starts with a question, with trying had a cow, it would have died too. I needed an animal
to understand something, and I do it through that would survive a long time and pose a threat. I
telling a story. didn’t think a cow would pose much of a threat.

How did India spark the idea for Life of Pi? You have maintained that there is always a
It was during my second trip to theological dimension to storytelling. How
India that I worked on Life of Pi. do you understand the recent phenomenon
I didn’t come here meaning to work on of people believing in fake news stories? Is this
Life of Pi. I had wanted to work on a book set in some kind of a perverse return to religion in god-
Portugal. But I didn’t know how to tell the story, less consumer societies?

4 | æon. 01

Well, there are many things that you can faith. I can’t take any religion literally. I can’t literally
do with stories. Stories can be lies. Fake believe in Jesus, Buddha or Krishna. To me they
news is a lie that can still be compelling. are all expressions of the same fundamental reality,
In fake news, you construct an alternative reading which you only get to by choice, by making a leap.
of reality, and you can do that. What’s interesting
about the great religions is that they can sustain You had a certain vision of Life of Pi when
their narrative. In the case of fake news, however, you were writing it. How closely does the
reality catches up. In fake news, you are living in film replicate that vision?
a state of denial. But religious thinking is not a The book and the film are very different.
form of denial, it’s a reinterpretation of reality that First of all, Life of Pi is a first-person
endures. People believe in them despite suffering. narrative. You never see Pi. And I never describe
It’s especially astounding when you see the degree Pi. But you see things through Pi’s eyes, you are
of adversity some religious people face. For instance, looking out. But in a movie, it’s hard to do that.
how Jews can still consider themselves the chosen So you see Pi, and right away the perspective, the
people despite the Holocaust is a tribute to how point of view, becomes very different. Also, the
the magical thinking of religion can endure despite narrative process is different, but I did like the
massive suffering. movie visually.

There is this famous line in Life of Pi, that Was it how you visualised it in your head
it’s a story that will make you believe in when writing?
god. Do you believe in god? Well, the life boat wasn’t like I had
In a very broad way, yes, but not in a imagined it, but fair enough, they had
denominational god. I wasn’t nurtured done their research carefully. As for the
religiously at all. But philosophically, I tiger, frankly all tigers look the same to me. The film
believe that there is meaning. And that’s a choice. didn’t resemble my book in terms of the narrative
I like to compare religion to a well. Each well is
different, but they all tap into this ground water of

æon. 01 | 5

6 | æon. 01

RESTRICTED

JOURNEY THROUGH A WUNDERKAMMER-
A REVIEW OF THE AFFLICTIONS
BY VIKRAM PARALKAR.

By
Jerry Pinto, for aeon
Author of Em and the Big Hoom

RESTRICTED

æon. 01 | 7

For official use only

MEDICAL REPORT CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF MEDICAL CARE

DATE SYMPTOMS, DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT, TREATING ORGANISATION

History of Past Medical Conditions- circle-

Amnesia inversa, Amnesia histrionis, Amnesia esoptrica

Lingua fracta, Aphasia floriloquens, Confusio linguarum

Corpus fractum, Exilium volatile, Bernards malady

Insania communalis, Corpus ambiguum, Conscientia errans

Forma cyclica, Mors inevitabilis, Renascentia, Mors transiens

Medication Allergies- NO YES

Current Medication- NONE YES

Exam Findings- Rating
Utilise Diagram and Space Below to Indicate Examination Findings.
If additional space required, continue on next page.

There is a single conceit on which the whole of
Vikram Paralkar’s The Afflictions is based. If you
fall in step and let it work, you will go under and be
submerged in a world of imaginary diseases. If you don’t
allow the author to take your hand and lead you through
a surreal compendium in a pseudo-mediaeval
library, the book will fail for you.
Perhaps it will depend on how much
you love your Borges, how much
you care for Calvino. These are the
two presiding spirits, one invoked
in the reviews that are quoted, the
other implicated in an epigraph. If you
are fanatical about these two, it is possible
that Paralkar may fail to work his magic.
If you are often beguiled but can only take
small doses of Invisible Cities or The Book
of Imaginary Beings, it is possible that you
might pick your way through The Afflictions
as if you were in one of those old-fashioned
Wunderkammers.

For official use only

8 | æon. 01

For official use only

Additional Space

Here is a disease I just thought up. It is called Here is what Paralkar wants perhaps to say about
Reviewers’ Syndrome. The first symptoms come death that will not die: “The tremendous distress
when the sufferer is presented with a book called that this disease inflicts on mourners is unques-
The Afflictions that has a list of diseases in it. tionable. The trauma it inflicts on the rich
The sufferer is unaware of his condition until he history of intellectual accomplishment is less
stumbles upon an imaginary disease that seems acknowledged, yet every bit as pernicious. Mors
to have a resemblance to the human condition transiens has poisoned with doubt what was
as we know it, rather than as the author has imag- once an immutable given. By stripping human-
ined it. The crisis comes quickly as the reviewer ity of the fundamental absolute of civilization,
begins to look for the possibility that under the Mors transiens threatens, in one fell stroke, to
whimsy lies gravitas. topple the magnificent edifice of philosophy, art
and literature that has rested on the finality of
Could it be that the many amnesias that death since the day Eve ate of the forbidden fruit.”
Paralkar invents—Amnesia inversa, Amnesia his-
trionis, Amnesia esoptrica — are gesturing towards If you cherrypick your way through the book,
the way in which our society seems to be willing to there is another way of looking. These are not
forget at the cost of having to relearn? Could it be diseases that are imagined. They are the human
that the many diseases involving language—Lingua condition under strobe lights. Take Tabes arcana:
fracta, Aphasia floriloquens, Confusio linguarum, “Once touched by the affliction, their bodies be-
for instance—indicate the authorial unease with come susceptible to the corruption of death even
the way language has been mauled, the Orwellian as they speak and breathe.”
barometer of the collapse of language pointing to
stormy times ahead? Or here is a case study from Corpus ambiguum
which is supposed to be a condition in which
We all had anxieties over identity; these have the sufferer can “only with great effort... recog-
been, we know, thrown into sharper and clearer nise their skins as the boundaries of their bodies.
relief by social media. Are the many identity The slightest distraction makes them lose their
maladies Paralkar imagines — Corpus fractum, sense of where their bodies end and the sur-
Exilium volatile, Bernard’s malady — tropes rounding world begins.”
meant to illuminate this brave new e-world?
Or are the ones in which entire communities Paralkar then goes on to talk about a
become infected by each other and/or suffer well-documented case in which a woman bent
in harmony—Insania communalis, Corpus the disease to her will. “She took up the study of
ambiguum, Conscientia errans — indicative anatomy and became a healer. By laying hands
of the new corporal us-ness we must now enjoy? on invalids, she would sense their pain, identify
Perhaps there is something deeper here, some their pathologies, even manipulate their organs
concern for the way things are, for the cycle of into expelling the stones and cysts that had laid
birth and death, hinted at in Forma cyclica, Mors them low. Then she began to expel demons from
inevitabilis, Renascentia, Mors transiens. the epileptics. The local priests resented this
intrusion into their domain and accused her of
I should have explained each of witchcraft. She fled the place leaving the towns-
these ‘new’ diseases, but it is difficult. Let me folk to the privacy of their own afflictions.”
simply take Mors transiens where the body dies
and seems to even undergo putrefaction only
to revive itself again. Could that be botox and
liquid nitrogen?

For official use only

æon. 01 | 9

MORE
THAN
JUST
RIGID
PUNCTUA

10 | æon. 01

“Kahani Punjab” meticulously maps how Punjabi lan-
guage traverses beyond its well-defined regional and
spatial confines.

Though pop melodies set in Punjabi folk also published pulsating and wilful reminiscences
tunes enjoy enormous popularity and of the “first love experience” of many eminent au-
longing for love and being loved and the thors such as Karamjeet Singh, Jaswinder, Jaswant
cherished desire for spiritual sublimity in the Singh Kanwal, Bhupinder Kaur Preet and Surjit
‘spectacle society,’ people still seem quite unaware Gil. The never told-before stories revolving around
of the inherent potentiality of Punjabi literature the first love encounters steeped in nostalgia unfold
that explores the inner realm of feelings and the many layers of experience that transcend the usual
complex gamut of external reality fabulously. Pun- romantic hankering of lovers in separation.
jabi, a language having 90 million native speakers
across the globe and reckoned as the eleventh most At a time when waves of hatred are washing
widely spoken language, exudes both warmth and over us, the journals published stories that offer a
innocence with equal vehemence and its literature satirical commentary on the justification for ongo-
produces a nuanced narrative of the lost world ing widespread intolerance and vividly portrays the
of innocence, wonder, nostalgia and emotional grotesque aftermath of hatred and revenge.
resilience. It does go beyond its immensely pop-
ular verse genres such as Janam-Sakhis, Bechans, According to the editor Krantipal, an accom-
Goshts, Paramarathas, Parchis, Unthanks and plished author, the special issue carries a judicious
Bhule Shah’s Kafis and proverbial tragic love story assessment of short stories, anecdotes, interviews,
of Heer and Ranjha and how it is vastly relatable poems and translations that have appeared in the
for the readers. It is what has been brilliantly de- previous issues.
lineated by a reputed literary periodical of Punjabi,
“Kahani Punjab” through its 100th issue that The selected content zeroes in on the complex
appeared recently. mosaic of multi-cultural aspirations and linguistic
Romantic tales diversity of the country.
The journal astutely edited by Dr Krantipal carries
sensitively rendered short stories, perceptively The literary quarterly, primarily devoted to short
argued essays and stunningly told poems that stories, was launched by the prominent Punjabi
betray a wide spectrum of feelings. These creative novelist and fiction writer, Ram Sarup Ankhi in
outpourings are contributed by many celebrated 1993. There exists a long standing tradition of
Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu poets. The readers are literary journals in Punjab and Preet Ladi, Panja
also exposed to Hindi, Rajasthani, Iranian and Dariya, Punjabi Duniya and Arsi are the widely
French stories through translations. The journal respected periodicals but no journal makes the
short story the object of a single pristine look and
Ankhi tried to supplement what has been left out.
The latest issue of “Kahani Punjab” reproduces the
editorial that appeared in its tenth issue through
which the editor candidly spells out his priority.

ATION.by Shafey
Kidwai

æon. 01 | 11

The third time I float into awakening, Raon is “Homecoming Mage XXXVII was destroyed. Also
leaning over my face. XXXV, XLI, and XLIV. They became detached from
“Am I dead?” the fleet and flew directly into an unforeseen rock
Raon’s skinny, anxious face doesn’t make any storm. No one from either ship came out alive.”
sense, not leaning over the cramped twin bed in “Raon? Why are you saying that?”
my college dorm, not anywhere else. “Wake up, Uma. You must live.”
I don’t recall much about my first awakening,
“I pushed you back,” they sing. “You must live.” except that my father beat me up so hard after I
“What does—” returned that afterwards, locked up in my room,
A wave of hand, a flick of long grey eyelashes I clawed deep into my arms to punish myself for
looking away. A claw in my heart reminder of an not having swallowed enough of the sleeping pills.
entire year spent missing those eyes. Everything was so physical before ingesting those
Why is Raon here? pills, every sensation, every reasoning. After the
“Why are you—” first awakening, nothing else ever was.
“I never made it.”
I swallow. “. . . to Sylphia?” Nothing is ever the same once you sink then
They shrug. “Never reached the home planet. come back up for air. The world you burst forth
Never breathed the tart nitron air they sing so into isn’t the same one you’d torn yourself from.
much about, never smelled the fresh red soil, never There is a rupture, and if you wait long enough,
got to try out vocalizing without having to project. light from the other side.
Trust me, I was almost beginning to get curious.”
“But.” I look around the room. My roommate’s After my first awakening, I had started to sing.
Rooted Earthlings poster still hangs from the far
wall, the dark brown stick figure digging its feet
into the ground as its arms sprung into branches
and leaves. “Is the ban lifted? Is everyone back? Are
you going to sit for the college entrances this year?
You can have my SAT practice books, and—”

12 | æon. 01

Learning
to Swim

by Mimi Mondal

In the second
kingdom of the stars
there is only
You

–Richard Brautigan

æon. 01 | 13

The priests at my town’s temple are certain that Every Wednesday evening, Raon’s family went to
I couldn’t have been a Sylphian in my past life, a support group for others like them. They held
although, correspondent to my karmic backlog, I parties, went on field trips, had mixers for young
could’ve been anything from a cockroach to a adults, and play dates for even younger children.
hammerhead shark. Sylphians have no meaning in Raon, however, came back to school and hung
our religion, despite its claims to define the uni- out with me.
verse and all life. Which makes me wonder what
Raon might’ve been before they were here. Raon never learned to sing at the correct pitch,
intone with natural cadence. They could decipher
“An abomination,” they sang with a grin when the Lores if sung to them, slowly and softly, but
I asked them at school next day. “Forbidden never managed to memorize them or sing them
words uttered into the air. Dust. Molecular mass. back. Raon was innocent of history, a child of their
Waves of energy.” own time and place. How could you be a proper
Sylphian if you couldn’t even sing?
Then they saw the look on my face—confused, How could you be a proper human if you sang?
probably hostile, though if asked I would give my
life for Raon in a second. They conceded, “Let’s say What if your song was sweeter than your speech,
I’m a new soul at the beginning of my karmic cycle. resplendent with the scarlet skies and inhuman
Let’s say there was nothing before.” histories of a planet in a faraway galaxy that you
would never get to visit?
I nodded, uncertain.
“Hey, the Sylphian Creation Lores don’t say The second time I drowned I was singing, the
much about anyone like me either, but what can incantations lengthening as my vision grew darker
you do? My dad just no longer sings them.” and I drifted from the backyard of my father’s
Raon’s dad also didn’t like to answer to “Dad.” house into the nitron waves of the Sea of Cerulea.
“Uncle” or “Mister” congealed in my throat every The earth surrounding me red with fluid from my
time I met them, resigning me to calling them veins, spilling from freshly slashed wrists.
by their given name, Zona. Raon’s mom, whom I
had met first, gleefully dismissed my attempts to Then there was screaming. “Uma! Uma! Some-
address her as “Mrs. Zona.” Even so, Samantha one call 911... the stupid bitch has done it again!”
was easier to understand. Samantha of the long, And then: chaos. Chaos chaos chaos. Being yanked
dark hair and a laugh like a mountain stream; back by rough hands I’d wished would never again
who opened her legs and womb to birth her touch my skin. Being wrapped up, tied up, driven
offspring. She almost reminded me of my own off, doused in a different senselessness.
mother—if there’d been any kindling of memory
to spark off at all.

14 | æon. 01

This time, the hospital was like a war zone. Turned “If you are attracted to one of the humans in the
up to full volume, the tv in the reception area erupt- hive, there’s no shame in that.” Samantha’s voice
ed news like scalding lava as the interstellar wars was kind, but I felt the colour in my cheeks rise
raged through the larger cities of Sylphia and Earth. like a hot-air balloon.
I had never seen a war before. I remember, from the
hospital, is so much blood—red and shimmery and I had nothing in common with the two other
glutinous—dragged through the floors, walls, slosh- humans in the hive. Thanh, in his late eighties,
ing in the blood bags that the nurses kept passing spoke no English but was possibly the most elo-
around, seeping through peeling bandages, oozing quent human singer, one of the earliest converts.
out of festering wounds. More blood than I could’ve Connor—mid-thirties, blond, athletic—was a
ever released from my veins. banker. The cell next to Connor’s was Raon’s.

Let off from the hospital, I wandered over to “Take your time,” said Samantha, as we stepped
Raon’s family hive. Samantha made me a steaming in to say hello to Raon. “There’s no hurrying love,
bowl of ramen and a bed in one of the cells. It or predicting when it will come for you.”
was no problem, she assured me. The members of
a Sylphian family hive kept circulating, the nest I remember staring at them from the threshold
forever swelling and ebbing. Even as Earth became of the cell, mother and teenage offspring. Her
unkind to their existence, a slow trickle of people small nose and delicate jawline was reflected in
circulated. What would be left of the Sylphian way theirs, though the rest of Raon’s features were dis-
of life if they didn’t? tinctly unearthly. Raon’s kind on Earth numbered
fewer than five thousand—the first generation of
My cell held only a bed, but I was welcome to mixed-species offspring. No one else in our town.
any of the food, clothes, and entertainment in the We were both sixteen, friends and fellow nerds for
hive, Samantha explained. “You can also mate with years, but Raon had never shown inclination to ac-
anyone you choose, I hope you know.” She tossed quire a mate, human or Sylphian. Would they ever?
her long hair as she showed me around
the hive, introducing me to the What if it wasn’t me?
rest of the family.

“I do.”

æon. 01 | 15

We kept the tv down at the hive, so the children I was drowning too—drowning again. The endless
wouldn’t cry and the older people wouldn’t get news of war, the raging propaganda, the seething
anxious. The first time a Rooted Earthlings poster hatred that had seeped into the streets of even our
appeared at our town square it was torn down by boring town... it was too much for my ruptured
other humans in the dark of the night. Our town mind. There was no escaping the war—no safety,
was small, neighbourly. Most of the townspeople even within the walls of the hive, even with the
had been born there, had never lived anywhere pillows pressed firmly over my head. Several times
else. Going off to college in a different state was each day I felt the waters closing in on me, but
the biggest adventure we could imagine, and even Samantha would pull me out each time. She kept a
that was two more years away. Who among us hawk’s eye on me. She made sure we kept going to
could contemplate being sent to a different planet, school—Raon, me, the younger children—and sat
thousands of light years away? with us each evening as we did our homework.

Even my father, who took savage delight in re- “All this foolishness will pass,” Samantha would
ferring to the Sylphians as bugs, had never been to say, putting bowls of nourishing pho in front of us.
the land of his ancestors, and that was just on the “And then the two of you will be the only ones not
other side of the planet. Some humans called my going to college, because you never bothered to
father and me another, uglier word, but the noise study when that was the only thing you should’ve
they created was increasingly drowned out by the focused on.”
surging Rooted Earthlings chant. People needed
an enemy. My ancestors had once been that “We’re going to college together, or neither of us
enemy; now it was the Sylphians’ turn. is going,” Raon told her one day.

The next time those posters “Then you better get your grades up, little
went up, they stayed. offspring,” she replied. “Do you know how rare
it is to get admitted to the same college? We have
to make sure Uma gets a scholarship, too.”

My father, whose threshold I hadn’t crossed
since my return from the hospital, was not

going to pay for my education. My father, who
always—at least—wanted me alive,
was probably now happy to
see me drown. And I would
be happy to oblige
him, but Samantha
held me tight in
her grip.

16 | æon. 01

She pulled me aside, into corners of the hive, out So I went. The universities on Earth no longer
of earshot of others, and whispered, “If they are offered Sylphian Studies, so I picked up some ran-
all sent back, if it comes to that, it will be left for dom subjects. History. Sociology. Political Science.
you and me to take care of old Thanh. Connor can None mentioned the decades of coexistence on
blend in with the Earthlings—he doesn’t want to, Earth with the descendants of a distant planet. I
but he has a thriving career, human friends—and turned up on campus in jeans and a plain green
it’s best for all of us to not add to the number of t-shirt, my hair in a ponytail, as rooted in Earth as
outcasts. Thanh and I are too far gone. We will be anyone could be.
left homeless, penniless, unemployable.”
I folded Raon in on my heart like a secret
Samantha’s gaze bore into me like cinders, send- wound. It bled in slow drips every day, making it
ing little tremors down my spine. “Don’t you dare harder and harder to live.
give up on me,” she said. “Uma? Wake up! You have to wake up. You must live.”
Weighed down by Samantha’s secret, I went about
my days, smiling and cooing at the children, “Now, Raon? Now that you’re gone?” I am yanked
bringing meals to Thanh in his cell, discussing my back in, and everything hurts.
college plans with Zona and Irip, holding Raon
just a moment longer in my sight while they leaned “Especially now,” they say. “My mother must
intently upon their homework. It sat like a stone never know. It will destroy whatever is left of her.”
in my heart as the whispers turned into a blizzard,
unleashing panic and tears. Samantha was holding “Samantha will find out from the news by herself.”
the fort. I did not dare leave. “How long have you not followed the news?”
Raon laughs.
The day after we drove our Sylphian relatives I am caught. I have never turned on the tv, nor
and lovers to the base of Homecoming Mage XXX- logged on to any news site, since the day the space-
VII, knowing we would never see them again; the ships left Earth. I don’t have friends who tell me
day after we handed in the keys to our cars; the day anything; haven’t tried to make friends, though I’ve
after we abandoned our hive, loaded in trucks like spent nearly half a semester at college. There are
refugees in our own town, headed toward homeless Rooted Earthlings everywhere, triumphant at the
shelters, Samantha made sure I ate my meals, did reclaimed purity of their planet. Everyone smiles;
my homework, turned up at school the next day. everyone goes to class, soccer practice, poetry read-
Samantha had been defeated too many times by ings, frat parties as if just about everything hasn’t
life. If I did not go to college, that would be her been altered in just the past few months; as if we
final defeat.

æon. 01 | 17

Share A Book India Association

is spreading the love of reading among under-privileged children, and helping
students exchange their everyday realities with the world of imagination.
with Shantanu Kishwar

Prahlad Modern Public School is located in an their regular school work aside and for the next two
urban slum in north Delhi. Here, at 11 a.m. ev- hours, peek into worlds imagined by others. Just
ery Saturday, something a little out of the ordinary for this little while, their lives revolve around sto-
happens: students between Classes III and VIII put ries rather than sedate textbooks or real-life worries.

18 | æon. 01

Bonding over books Although Sabia has designed its modules in such a
The volunteers who guide the children to the fiction- way that the volunteers can withdraw within three
al worlds of kings, fairies and ghouls belong to Share months of setting up the library, they often contin-
a Book India Association (Sabia), an NGO working ue working longer with the schools. The general
to improve the reading abilities of under-privileged reluctance of teachers means that the volunteers
children. They are doing this by setting up libraries in often have to go back to the school and request
government schools and by conducting reading ses- teachers to let students access the books, which lie
sions. The brains behind the operation are two young forgotten in the teachers’ lockers. Notwithstanding
women from Kota, Priti Birgi and Srishti Parihar. these glitches, Sabia has been successful enough to
scale up. Aided by dedicated volunteers, they have
Birgi, a dentist by training, and Parihar, an en- expanded into Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, and plan
gineer, bonded over their love for the written word to venture into Bengaluru next.
while growing up. In 2016, on discovering the
absence of libraries in schools around Kota, they The work is not easy, Parihar acknowledges.
set their careers aside to begin addressing this gap. The level of reading among even the older stu-
dents is very low, and they are all drawn to picture
“Despite offering to work for free, we didn’t find books and comics rather than to longer stories.
many schools that were willing [to host us],” Parihar “We like these more than our NCERT books,”
says. “Quite often, reading books is seen as a luxury the children tell me in unison, “These are easier
and a distraction from the syllabus. Even when to read.” This is reflected in a survey of Delhi
principals are enthusiastic, class teachers often aren’t government schools, which revealed that 74% of
because they fear this will add to their workload.” students are unable to read their textbooks. This
Teachers’ involvement is crucial to the project since had prompted Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister
they supervise the reading hour with Sabia. Manish Sisodia to launch a reading challenge
among schools for the 70 days between Teacher’s
The students, of course, seem to be enjoying Day and Children’s Day last year.
these sessions, and look forward to them. When
I visit, I find them listening intently and taking While it didn’t work any drastic magic, it did
vigorous notes on the new words and phrases they spark off a beginning. Meanwhile, the Sabia team
encounter. As the session ends, they scamper to is doing its bit to bring change. In an attempt to ig-
pick the best books on offer that they can borrow for nite minds last Diwali, they ran a nationwide book
a week at a time. I see them making a beeline for donation drive endorsed by the likes of Shashi
the ever-popular Akbar-Birbal, Pinocchio, Tinkle Tharoor, and collected over 1,75,000 books.
Digest, or the Amar Chitra Katha series, and smile to
myself, remembering my own childhood.

æon. 01 | 19

Guided by Shiva Nallaperumal
All sourced content used for educational purposes only
D J Academy of Design 2019



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