Fairyish Tales by Sumit Mullick (New Release)

Transcript of my review speech at the book launch at British Council on Nov 30, 2009

He was born in Bengal, worked with the Indian government for many years, discovered himself as a writer, wrote a first novel based on his personal experiences in the administration and expressed in the form of fiction, and then wrote another book with the original title "a fairy story", which is a satire on human folly, a fantasy fable, a hatred of all major ideas of utopia, and arguably the greatest criticism of the world order and state of humanity. Can anyone guess who I am talking about?

No, it's not Sumit Mullick. I am talking about George Orwell.

The year is 1945 and the month is August, the time when capitalism and communism joined hands to introduce the world to the atomic bomb and changed the course of history. That same month, political expression and artistic expression joined hands in the mid reaches of the mind of George Orwell to introduce the world to Animal Farm and changed the way we understand the course of history. Orwell was creating his work almost in parallel with the Manhattan project, and his book release in the month of the bombing must have given Orwell a sense of sad, ironic satisfaction. The jury is still out on which is mightier, the pen or the sword.

Today, the violence of humanity probably consumes as many lives everyday that the atomic bomb consumed since Aug 1945. Yet, the world continues to live oblivious to this violence, why even accelerates it further by inflicting it behind several facades. Fairyish Tales is an expression of this violence inflicted by humanity, upon humanity and upon civilization and upon earth and upon the universe. Mullick removes this facade in the form of 8 fairyish stories, 8 satires of fantasy, questioning our every notion of a perfect civilization.

In the first story, the Gods get together and create earth out of vanity, then commit mass suicide out of boredom; themselves confused about their origin and purpose. In the second story, a Prince on earth, in the ultimate quest of beauty in order to woo the Princess, urbanizes earth while destroying everything beautiful in it. In the third story, the only surviving God uses a human messenger to create religion to destroy humanity "... to destroy the unholy, unclean, caricature of the immortal masters of the universe. They created you so as to serve their own memory. Now I shall destroy you, so as to serve my memory of them." In the fourth story, indeed, humans form six nations that carefully and methodically lead to the destruction of the human species in a holistic saga of world politics. Democracy, theology, socialism, communism, tradition and poverty; all seem to share one common purpose, that of keeping their nations at a permanent and inconclusive war.

In contrast with the first half of the book where humans are born out of Creation (in the Biblical sense), the second half begins with the re-birth of the humans, this time due to Evolution from viruses. In this alternate reality, the combined sensibility of the viruses, the Mother, destroys humanity all over again. However, this time it is out of a resolved sense of correction, rather than vanity. Intelligence of the species is not good enough to escape the power of evolution. The sixth story redefines traditional notions of sex and violence, operating in the guise of morality. It tells how an amorous world that worships the Bonobo monkey is more civilized than nations engaged in violence inside and outside their territories with corrupt control of sexual frustration. The seventh story uses the Indian caste system to demonstrate the painful irony of the social order of our civilization and how our society destroys every right of a citizen, using precisely those powers vested in them to enforce that right. The eighth and final chapter is the confession of Earth to her Creator and Mother, the Sun, about her own duplicity, her identity crisis as being a prophet or a prophecy in a creation so evil, where the evil must seek out its own ultimate potential.

Here's why this book matters. In the quest of establishing our identities, we created religion, class, geography. In the quest of establishing an order, we created governance, wealth, power. Yet, we have forgotten our identity as humans and our natural order as inhabitants of the Earth (as Carl Sagan said, a "pale blue dot" in the universe). Fairyish Tales does not preach how we got here or what are we supposed to do. But it reminds us of some obvious follies of humanity that all civilization seems susceptible to: nationalism over humanity, morality over humanity, and finally self-righteousness over understanding.

The book will remind you of the works of thinkers like George Orwell, Stanley Kubrick and Oscar Wilde. Mullick, in the preface, claims inspiration from Carl Sagan, who "searched for intelligent life on this planet. Disappointed, he searched for intelligent life beyond. The search continues...". While being a fantasy set in an unearthly context, you would not find one page in the book that is not relevant to the life you and I live as humans in this world, every day. While the book reminds of many artists and genres, you would find this book to be profoundly original and surprisingly holistic.

Finally, if you are anything like me, who either knows too little or is too lazy to try and make sense of the universe, one piece at a time; Mullick's book provides a framework that re-defines violence, morality, nationalism, sex, origin, purpose, etc.; and helps understand the significance of everything that it questions. It makes you hopeful, by first making you hopeless. While Animal Farm had the unfortunate privilege of hitting the shelves in the same month as Hiroshima, I hope we do not need a nuclear holocaust to make this a cult. Consider it a little favor to yourself and therefore to humanity.

To order this book, click here or call 0-922-222-1947 to ship anywhere in the world.