When the school year ends, one imagines hours of reading time. Exploring books and indulging in relaxed reading. Not so at Bookworm. We were rounded up and assigned library reading tasks. To soften the task it was called a Drop Everything and Read in the Library. My task, was to help a fictitious child from a fictitious school find books to explore a project on HOMES. I was asked to share a list of recommendations.
I can say right at the start that I dropped everything, including caring for my home while I immersed myself in this project.
When I first read the task, the first image that flitted through my mind was about my home. My home is my comfort zone, my safe house, sometimes messy, sometimes squeaky clean, a space which is mine and belongs to me and my loved ones. As I thought about this more, the first two books that came to my mind were Sameer’s House by Deepa Hari and Deepa Balsaver & Homes by Nina Sabnani. Sujata had firmly mentioned that our task could not include books we were familiar with, those we use in school. She wanted us to explore the collection in the library amongst a different set of books. That ‘cautionary warning’ immediately eliminated Sameer’s House.I felt that Sameer’s House would have given this phantom 10 year old boy a different perspective of where our home is in relation to the entire universe.
Water pipes may be in textbooks to show how water is carried from one place to another, but showing the reality of a pipe as a home which it is for some people in India was a first for me in Homes by Nina Sabnani. This I felt was very important and this boy should be made aware of this reality that people live in a pipe and make it their home too. Another important illustration that was needed to be seen by the reader was about families that stay in these different types of homes – The book, Homes shows same sex parents as a family living in a home too. It is quite rare to find a progressive book of this kind and I felt it was important to represent realities like this. As a parent, I imagined the marks/grades for this phantom project being important and felt that Kaavad structure of this book could give the parent and the child some ideas about how to present the project in a unique way
I found a lovely book called ‘A Very Special House’ by Ruth Krauss. The character in this book has all kinds of animals and objects in his house. And he enjoys all the laughter, noise and silliness that ensues in an absolutely carefree manner. For me, this book would remind the project researcher that homes are also places of shelter, fun and joy.
Anandita mentioned a book called the ‘House Held Up By Trees’ by Ted Kooser. I had heard the name but could not recollect this book at all. When I saw the book on the shelf, I immediately realized that my memory had miserably failed me because this is a brilliant forget – me – not book. In this book, the house is alive as long as people live in it. And as the people who love it, abandon it and go, it starts crumbling….physically and even mentally as if it has a mind and a soul of its own – it does. Every home has a soul of its own. This book was a must in my recommended list. The 10 year old boy has to be made aware that a house, a home is just not four walls and a roof but it is something full of life.
As I browsed and searched using our online catalogue system and keyword searches, I even came across a couple of non-fiction books which I promptly added to my growing list. A book on Castles…and why not, is a castle not a home to the people who live within? The second book that I found was ‘Anglo Saxon Household’. This book has illustrations depicting how a house was built in the 18th century. My boy needed to know that too.
I pulled out ‘Uncle Andy’ by James Warhola. This book is about the famous artist Andy Warhol and it has illustrations of his house. And what a house….the author mentions it being like an amusement park with so many artifacts, art pieces, statues, pets, soup boxes and what not. It does not look like a normal regular home with a sofa set, a coffee table and a dining table at all. Yet it was a home, Andy Warhol’s home, filled with his quirkiness and messiness.
Through all this searching, I was also thinking about one other facet of life. Not everyone owns a home of their own. There are so many people who live in somebody else’s houses as tenants. They take care of these houses and make them their homes with love. My boy needed to know this too. And I found a perfect book called ‘A Flat for Rent’ by Leah Goldberg. This book has the flat in a five storey building being described as having very narrow rooms, a small kitchen, a dark hallway. This is an absolute fact for many today looking out for flats on rent.
I read ‘Real Neighbours’ and ‘The Fifth Lane’ both by Madhuri Purandare and I was immediately transported to my childhood. This book begins by showing how the housing area was before modernization and how with buildings turned into a concrete jungle. But one Society manages to retain the old world charm of community with neighbours talking to each other, main doors kept open the whole day, neighbours walking into each other’s homes and helping out as if it was their own home with neighbours and shopkeepers like an extended family. Do we even get to see our neighbours in today’s world? This was a culture that is disappearing fast. And I miss it so much.
‘The Fifth Lane’ is so much like my grandmother’s lane that I felt like I recognized and knew most of the characters from this book. The only difference is my grandmother’s lane was Lane No 2 and this is the Fifth Lane. The Champa tree that is given the status of a brother in the book reminded me of our Jamun trees stuck to my grandmother’s chawl. My ten year old needed to know about these people and the homes, not only theirs but other homes too that they made warm and loving.
Another addition to this list was ‘Going Home’ by Eve Bunting. Here home is a special village and its people. Not special because it is a fancy place, is well maintained or manicured with big houses or anything but because the family has left their village in search of opportunities for a better life for their children. The yearning, the longing of one day going back to our home, our village, our space – so many of us have migrated for better jobs and better prospects, leaving behind our people, our homes, our land, everything. We have made new loving, cozy homes in faraway lands, we may even have made lots of money but that yearning to go back to our home lies within everyone who has left a piece of his heart back there. This book had to be in the list which is growing crazyily.
‘Fly Away Home’ by Eve Bunting was another book that had to be in the list. For so many days, I was looking for books on different types of Homes but what about people who do not have homes? This book portrays one family in particular – a father and a son as well as many other families that live at the airport as they have no homes. Airports for us are a space from where we go forth to a destination or arrive at one. How could that common space be a home to someone? Did I not say that a home is a safe space, our comfort zone? But my boy needs to think about these homes too, they are commercial and public areas to be used by one and all but at the same time, they are somebody’s homes too.
‘Stitching Stories’ by Nina Sabnani was another such book that portrays people being displaced due to war and how they face difficulties and overcome them. Leaving one’s home is very difficult and unexplainable and going to another place full of uncertainties and trying to bring a semblance of normalcy and building a home in a refugee camp must have been a harrowing experience. Not all of us are aware of the impact of war, to survive war and make a home and fill it with love, this needed to be shared with my boy.
‘Sitti’s Secrets’ by Naomi Shihab Nye also speaks of two homes, one home which had Sitti surrounded with traditions and the other home created halfway across the world by her son. This book shares Sitti’s sadness about being alone on the other side. Sitti is however brave and in the face of adversity still has her home, her culture, her traditions, all interlinked. It is important to understand that not everyone lives in a free country, but even when there is trouble around, we can have the security of our home.
And the last one on this never ending list for now was ‘I Have a Home’ by Claudia Legnazzi. An abstract book about a girl who feels that a home is where the heart is. How true is that! Does it even matter how big, small, simple, fancy, rented, temporary, bizarre, crowded or spectacular our home is? It is that feeling that goes with our mind, heart and soul that makes these four walls a home and that can happen here, there or anywhere.
This project made me reflect a lot and I realised that a home is never the same. It has different connotations, layers all depending upon the people living in it and the circumstances surrounding them. I must add that I was impressed once again with the collection our library has. Bookworm has such a diverse collection and the books that I collected were all different and looked at Homes from so many different perspectives. Imagine how enriched a child would be when he/she is exposed to such a varied collection on any theme.