Map of my Childhood
Right here on these shelves is a map of my childhood.
While I was a toddler, I would admiringly flip through the pages of my fairy tales and picture books. Glass slippers would fit, dragons would get slain, sleeping princesses would wake up with a kiss, mermaids would fall in love with man, and genies would pop out of lamps and so on. Of course I couldn't read at that time. But I would look through the colourful illustrations in my books everyday in awe.
By five or six, I started to read Roald Dahl. He wrote about ordinary characters who would often encounter extraordinary events. My heart went out to "Matilda," who was six years old just like I was at that time. We both shared a love for books. Of course, I was only reading ones written by her creator, Mr. Dahl, but she was reading at quite an advanced level - Charles Dickens. Other than that, she was also very lonely just like me. She was lucky to find a breathtakingly beautiful, kind-hearted class teacher who adopts her as her daughter at the end of the story. I would ache to meet a Miss Honey in real life.
During my preteens, I fell in love with another British author - Jacqueline Wilson. Her characters were usually adolescent girls, almost all of whom are from broken or dysfunctional families. The psyches of these characters were astonishingly relatable. Wilson meticulously documents the thoughts of girls around that age group, dealing with issues like first love, first heartbreak, even first periods and body-changes. To me, Wilson's books became a go-to for all the private emotions I could not share out loud.
During my mid-teens, I discovered Nicholas Spark's work. His novels consisted of some of the most common and clichéd themes of love stories. The star-crossed lovers were often from different backgrounds, there would be separation and there would be love letters. The setting will usually be a beach house or foreign location which ignites the readers' imagination with the theme of escape or adventure. The stories bring out hidden emotions in the reader which perhaps they didn't even know existed. Hence, I wonder why I have never been able to put down a Nicholas Sparks novel without tears streaming down my face. What is it that I was reminded of? What is it that the novel had which I felt I was missing?
Finally at eighteen, I started university. Due to my love for reading, I decided to major in English. The only difference between what I used to read then and now is that I no longer get to choose what I read. It now depends on course outlines printed and predetermined by my course teachers. I would give anything to find the time to read for pleasure again. However, it's not that bad. I have fallen in love with Shakespeare, Keats, Browning, Frost and many more. Come to think of it, their poems, plays and novels deal with issues just as complex as the ones I have had exposure to through my books growing up. It's just the language that seemed a little intimidating at first. Very recently, Robert Frost became my favourite poet. Depression is a recurring theme in his poetry. Sometimes the very idea that somebody, somewhere, has lived to relate to my pain, becomes all the therapy I need.
So there you have it, a map of my childhood; a map I try to trace back to, only in memory.
Shamael Mortuza is a 9th semester student doing her BA in English at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.
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