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Petit Magic

Writer's picture: Suvarup SahaSuvarup Saha

In this unimaginably big world, to come close to millimeter-sized people is bound to bring in a perspective that one would seldom stoop down to see. So with that curiosity, we went to see Toby Alone - two episodes to be precise, of a many-part animated series based on an eponymous book, and listen to his creator Timothee de Fombelle, at our oft-visited haunt in the lower levels of Attagalatta, on a Saturday pregnent with uncharted promises.


A was to go away for work for more than a week, across the seas, that very night, and these days it is hard to get a buy-in for such an event from N, who has started not to publicly demonstrate his deep love for the magical. Wary of making the day unnecessarily busy and rigid, we approached it with the nonchalance of our early-adulthood Sundays and ended up in Conçu for a perfect and petit lunch. It is hard to compete with old loves, but somehow its gentle bustle, the unpretentious but delicate salads, oozing grilled sandwiches -  all reminded us of our Boulder cafes and bistros - Le French Cafe, River and Woods. We had walked past its tall-ceiling all-glass store front so many times in our strolls up and down the ever-bustling 12th Main of Indiranagar, classily lit up in the late evenings, and wondering how to pronounce its name. At the very back of the store, where the casually set tables end, stretched a twenty-five feet long display of entremet and other sweet delectable. We promised the noir eclairs, we will be back.


Back at the Atta Galatta, we waited in the auditorium for some more folks to trickle in, but the beatiful blue rugs laid out for the children to sit, lay bare. Of the many, many young parents who call this garden city home and choose to be out and about, none showed up, holding their kids' hands. If they did, the children would meet two other young minds - Timothee and Bijal. Timothee, having spent many summers in the the French country-side as a kid, doing nothing productive, incidentally had written his first book not intended to be a read for kids or young adults. But the success of Toby Alone with the children made him realize if there is cord to be touched and a lasting friendship to be made, it is in those unshapely growing up minds. With Timothee, sat and talked Bijal Vachharajani, author and climate activist, a familiar face in the small world of books and letters of Bangalore. Bijal, as a shy kid, had once taken refuge in the magic of the farway tree that Enid Blyton had planted so many years ago.


The lights dimmed and we watched on screen the little people of the tree, in a world of their own. But the emotions seemed too familiar - the joy of a father and an inventer who could fix his child's toy, and in the process discover something so precious that he could not just let it be usurped by collective greed; the tearing apart of friends as Toby's family gets banished to the lower echelons of the tree where the residents are not afraid of the demons that the upper branch people scare-monger about and the blooming of a teenage love as wild as it is tender. At the end of the second episode, the echos of our doomed modern world were all too loud, yet we were left with a yearning to know more, for some hope.


Timothee and Bijal talked about his other books - a sequel to Toby alone, as well as a Vango duology - Between Sky and Earth and A Prince Without Kingdom. His travels with his father to North and West Africa formed a basis on which his Alma seried of books are written - story revolving around 18th Century European slave trade and a thirteen-year-old Alma. The english language translations remain tangled in the controversies of cultural appropriation and the right voice.


Tomothee has been traveling in India - Pondicherry, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi - in a whirlwind of a tour, as a part of the Pardon My French initiative which aims to make translated French literature more popular easily accessible. Post the formal session, as we chatted a bit, he promised to be back for a more leisourly time in India.


His latest book, The Book of Pearl, starts with a Peter Pan quote -"Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. In an unhappy and unjust world we have inherited and done little to fix, if we were to imagine any better state of being - we need believers of magic.




Little Treats
Little Treats
Toby Alone!
Toby Alone!
Timothee and Bijal
Timothee and Bijal

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