Book Review: Sanika Deshpande’s Kya Tum Ho Meri Dadi?

Publisher: Jugnu Prakashan (Ektara Trust)

Year of Publication: 2020

Price: Rs. 130/-

Sanika Deshpande’s Kya Tum Ho Meri Dadi? begins with little Avani wondering why there are suddenly so many people at her house. No one seems to want to answer her question and, to top it all off, her grandmother – the one person whom Avani could count on for an answer – is missing. That the first spread of this picture book depicts the scene of a funeral was clear to me as an adult reader. The expressions of grief on people’s faces, their hands held out in comfort as they talk, and a child standing amidst it all curiously as she wonders what has brought on this change in her everyday life led me to my conclusion. Avani, however, cannot interpret these signs yet. She is the only one in colour in the otherwise black and white page. While she has already noticed her grandmother’s absence, she is yet to experience its finality and the sense of grief and loss that it will bring. Deshpande’s book captures how ritual, memory, and nature can come together to help a young girl process grief after her grandmother’s passing.

The ritual followed in Avani’s house gives the book its overarching structure. Avani’s parents tell her that a diya will be lit for thirteen days and kept on a plate of flour, following which her grandmother will be reincarnated as the animal whose footsteps appear in the flour. The book opens up a narrative about processing grief through Avani’s curiosity about this ritual as it depicts a series of encounters between Avani and different animals in whom she sees parts of her grandmother. A butterfly reminds her of how her grandmother used to pluck flowers for her prayers, a squirrel of how they used to collect berries, nuts, and leaves while playing with her kitchen set, a fish in the pond of how they used to play hide and seek, and a cat of lying in her grandmother’s lap when she was tired. Instead of physical presence in the illustrations, the only markers of Avani’s grandmother are a pair of spectacles worn by each animal and her words as remembered by Avani. By making this choice, the book allows the reader to view Avani and her grandmother’s relationship through the lens of absence.

All Avani has now are memories, and the encounter with each animal is like memory itself – not only does it show what Avani and her grandmother would do together, it also contains snippets of the dialogues her grandmother would say. I found the butterfly and the squirrel calling Avani from the window particularly moving, as they may be considered representative of how memories knock at the windows of everyday life, bringing with them snippets of what is now missing but remembered. The memories in the book point to the depth of Avani’s loss and the change that it has wrought in her life – her grandmother was both a playmate and a caregiver, an active and constant presence in her everyday life. The love shared between the two is also visible through the way her grandmother addresses her in the snippets of dialogue, calling her beta, bittu, Avu. During each encounter, Avani is by herself and follows her curiosity towards remembrance. There is no rush, as each encounter takes up an entire spread or two pages, with a considerable amount of blank space. The activities that Avani is engaged in, like drinking milk, plucking flowers, mixing berries and leaves, and sleeping, bring out a sense of calm and repose. Through these choices, the narrative seems to suggest that children’s grief should not be minimised, and that children should be given time and space to understand and process loss. While children’s books have long been viewed as a source of instruction, this book may be seen as aiming to instruct parents as well about a topic that may be difficult to address with their kids.

Avani takes her parents’ explanation of the ritual seriously, sitting up with her drawings of animals at night as she wonders “Kaun hogi meri dadi?” – “Who will my grandmother be?” (Deshpande 9). Her urge to follow the animals she meets reflects the longing of a child for her grandmother. At the same time, this urge is also perhaps the urge to find meaning in loss, a fact of life that is simultaneously unavoidable and inexplicable. This search for meaning is reflected through a play of colour in the book as, once again, only Avani and the animals that surround her are in colour while the rest of the page is black-and-white. In a world that has suddenly become colourless due to absence, the encounters imbued with colour suggest presence.

Deshpande connects this metaphysical theme to the ecological. As Avani recognises different aspects of her grandmother in each animal, she reaches the realisation that her grandmother may perhaps be found in all of them – that is, in nature as a whole. “Shayad yeh sab meri dadi hain!” – “Maybe all of them are my grandmother!” Avani thinks towards the end of the book in her garden, surrounded by all the animals she’s met (Deshpande 27). The answer to the refrain in the book, “Kya tum ho meri dadi?” – “Are you my grandmother?” – is therefore answered in this way, indicating that Avani’s grandmother’s presence is no longer finite or specifically located (Deshpande 12, 16, 19, 20). This connection between nature and ancestral spirits is brought out in the blurb of the book, which is more conceptual than synoptic, “Dadi ki dadi ne jis ped ko dekha hoga, vah abhi bhi dikhta hai. Dadi ki Dadi ki tasveer nahi hai par vah ped hai. Use choone se behtar apne poorvajon ko kaise yaad kiya ja sakta hai?”– “The tree seen by our grandmother’s grandmother is still visible. There isn’t any photo of our grandmother’s grandmother, but the tree exists. What better way to remember our ancestors than touching that tree?”. Nature’s enduring presence offers a way to remember even when records of memory are absent. This ecological aspect of the book can be an avenue to open up conversations about human relationships with nature. At stake in the ecological crisis is also the emotional role played by nature in human life.

Deshpande’s book brings together the themes of ritual, memory, and nature through a reference to creative work. Avani draws and colours each encounter with an animal and, on the last page of the book, a page displaying all the animals is hung up next to her grandmother’s framed photograph. There is no reference to the footsteps that may have finally appeared in the plate of flour, indicating that Avani has interpreted the ritual in her own way, finding an answer beyond finite physical presence. 

Author Bio

Anagha Gopal is currently pursuing her PhD in English at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests include the study of form, narration, and authorship in Children’s and Young adult literature.