The Hindu : Other States / Rajasthan News : Touching collection of childhood memories

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Wednesday, Dec 15, 2004

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Other States - Rajasthan

Touching collection of childhood memories

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR, DEC. 14. The senior bureaucracy in Rajasthan once again got together to celebrate the release of a book this past week-end. But unlike on the previous occasion when the author was someone from among themselves who penned his first novel, this time it was the turn of a family member of the IAS fraternity to invoke the muse.

The book, `Bijoli's Patchwork Quilt' by Geeta Mathew, warmed the season's chill on Sunday morning perhaps both with its title and content at the Pink City's cultural hub, Jawahar Kala Kendra. The Chief Secretary of Rajasthan, R.K.Nair, who released the book in the presence of a good number of senior civil servants, their family members and book lovers, termed it as a `touching collection of reminiscences'.

Geeta Mathew, who teaches English in local St.Xavier's School, is the wife of C.K.Mathew, the Secretary, Education, who had come out with his first novel, "The Mustard Flower'', in August 2003. Mr.Mathew, who narrated the saga of a child bride in Rajasthan's Alwar district was that time the Secretary to the then Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot.

Like in the case of "The Mustard Flower'' which covers two States--Kerala and Rajasthan -- the new book from the family too covers two States--the native Kerala and the distant West Bengal, where the author grew up as a young girl. Dr.Geeta says the stories have been with her for a few years as she went through them over and again. "They have afforded me many moments of undiluted delight, as they rise to my call and surround me with their magic'', she notes.

The 150-page book with illustrations by three students of the Lalit Kala Academy here has 67 chapters carrying loosely knit episodes, like colour pieces in a patchwork. "I wanted them like that,'' Dr.Geeta says dismissing the suggestion that the dream-like episodes could have been made into short stories. "They are honest narrations and I stand by them,'' she says rather possessively. As the name denotes the book is a patchwork of childhood memories which Dr.Geeta terms as "everychild's story''. Bijoli is herself in many of the vignettes but outgrows her in some of the anecdotes where fleeting memories make cat-like appearances. "They could be quiet and gentle or sudden and startling. So like the cat itself,'' Dr.Geeta explains the feline which looms large in the book that talks about the innocence of the childhood, its fantasies, its culinary pleasures and the delight of growing up amid coconut fronds in the dreamy ambience of the God's own land.

The nostalgic child's patch-worked worldview has the Vembanad lake, the backwaters, the rustic people and Syrian Christian men and women and also, the by now celebrated town of Kumarakom, which had formed the backdrop of Arundhati Roy's Booker winning novel, "The God of Small Things''. More is likely from this family of authors now. Mr.Mathew is working on his second book.

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Touching collection of childhood memories