Sweet Dreams are made of these

My niece has been reading my blog and was offended that I hadn’t mentioned her existence on my blog. She sent me a count of the number of times I have mentioned other family members. So yeah… I have a niece. Woohoo! (I don’t like mentioning my family too much because I invariably get into trouble. I mean what is the point of screaming free speech when your own family won’t allow it?) I became an auntie even before I hit my teens which is why I find it really difficult being an aunt when our age gap is so less. I find that my nephews and niece relate better to me because they have the freedom to discuss anything under the sun with me and they know I actually keep their secrets which makes me the fun aunt who is never called auntie and that in itself is a big win.

My niece was on an internet lockdown which meant she had to adapt to means of entertaining herself the way I did way back in the dark ages when we didn’t know how far the internet would go and was just becoming the public’s new best friend. She wanted me to recommend books for her to read. She is in the 10^th standard so I asked her to read The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. She started it and after 20 pages told me she couldn’t get “into” it. It depressed me to know that we share some genes and she couldn't read one of my favorite books. I then recommended, "The perks of being a wall flower” by Stephen Chbosky. She told me she’d seen the movie. (I didn’t know the book was made into a movie when I asked her to read the book. I downloaded and watched the movie. I thought it was done nicely but I still like the book better.) She read the book and halfway she called me to tell me that Charlie’s English teacher gave him a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and that Charlie read it thrice back to back. I told her I knew that. She told me that wasn’t made clear in the movie. I told her movies never clearly tell you the story as books do. To understand the movie you need to read the book and you find more comfort in the words of the author rather than the actors, however good they are because when we read we are giving each character a voice and we hear them say and do things as we best know to imagine them to do those things. She then decided to get back to The Catcher in the Rye and by evening she was calling me again and crying about Holden and how she realized that she is Holden and how glad she is that she heard him. Then she proceeded to read The perks of being a wallflower and then called me late in the night to cry some more. She was telling me how she was listening to Heroes and how she discovered David Bowie. She said,” Have you heard of Sloane’s song by Macklemore? He asks his kid to listen to David Bowie and that’s why I listened to his songs and I LOVE Space Oddity and Rebel Rebel.” I told her nobody asked me to listen to David Bowie he was all over music channels when we had just one and they did play his music frequently enough for anybody who heard him to want to hear more. She told me I was really old. I didn’t have that artist recommended to me and that made me old. You are apparently recommended artists when there is a chance of them having grown so old that you wouldn’t have heard of them in recent times and since DB was nearly 70 and that I have heard his music when it was “relevant” makes me old. But then she said she started listening to The Beatles, Queen and DMB and Alanis Morissette because of my blog and just like the Grinch’s heart mine grew too.

The one good thing that came out of this episode was that my niece wants to read more. BUT she went and told her friends about the books I was recommending and she was sent home with a note asking her parents to supervise her “reading habits and to kindly make her stick to age appropriate and language appropriate books.” When she told me that I was shocked and then I realized many kids may not have books as easily accessible to them as I did and I for one was not supervised after 6^th standard. My parents didn’t particularly ask me not to read a certain book. We were even allowed to read banned books. The only time they bothered supervising my reading was during the exams. That was the time when my mother would tell Mrs. Librarian to not lend me any books. I used every possible means of getting her to lend me books – made puppy faces, promised to ace my papers and finally sent a friend to pick a book. None of these schemes worked. Mrs.Librarian was told what she was dealing with. I waited for Mrs. Librarian to take a break and went to Mr. Librarian on whom it was so much easier to pull the afore mentioned schemes. The poor man got bombed by his Mrs so bad. I apologized so much and I think I would have cried too if Mr. Librarian hadn’t promised not to lend all the new books to anybody else till my exams were over so that I could still be the first to read them.

That’s why when people mention age appropriate and language appropriate books I don’t quite understand what they mean. Young adult is not just about romance as it is now being defined thanks to the many Vampire books. It is so much more than that. When did YA become something about just one aspect?

When you say Fault in the Stars is okay for 16 year olds to read any sensible human would question how is it appropriate for cancer to be the protagonist in a book and how is it that only a disease can make one realize about life. Do these authors mean that if you are terminally ill it is only then that you’ll push yourself to be the best you? Nothing else is motivation enough? Just the fact that you are dying has to be that trigger for a life? What happened to stories about regular people not inflicted with diseases who still go about life on their terms and come out winners? Are you seriously okay with telling kids, “ Yes, you can have sex because you have cancer and you will die so it is okay. Even if your parents won’t approve they won’t disapprove.” As opposed to being with someone because you want to irrespective of having or not having cancer.

I asked my niece if she knew anyone in her age group who had cancer and she said she didn’t. I told her to stick to real books and stay away from the phony ones that only talk about what can be done in the moment and are done only in the moment with no heed to Carpe Diem. I think she understood that. She told me she understands Carpe Diem isn’t YOLO because YODO.

I think she may still have a chance.

P.S: The day I heard about her note, I had a nightmare and couldn’t sleep and had to ping my friends and tell them about it. It was a very Fahrenheit 451 ish nightmare and I was in my home with walls covered with book shelves and had a black Labrador for company. Suddenly my house was on fire and I couldn’t save myself or the Labrador. It was all very frightening. I also had a fever. I HATE nightmares. (Not that I know anyone who particularly likes them.)

P.P.S: I met my best friend after 3 years, 3 days back and I promised her I wouldn’t be writing any more depressing posts like the last two but then David Bowie died as did Alan Rickman and I cannot not mention them here. I guess I should be glad I didn’t promise not to write about death. I decided writing about someone dying, especially icons need not necessarily be a sad thing instead it could be about why I liked them.

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, soul to soul. 

Peace.