Roots

After 3 long months, the longest I have ever taken to finish a book, I finished Alex Hailey’s, Roots. I found it very hard to believe that Hailey actually traced back his ancestors, and that too, a good 200 year  old ancestor. Inasmuch as I would like to believe him, am glad ‘Roots’ is classified as a novel and not an autobiography. Though Hailey tries his best to give us a 12 year account on how he managed to trace back his Roots, he does work hard in lodging some evidence to back up the fact that most of what he wrote in the book, is true. A bit of searching and wiki-ing threw up plenty of controversial stuff on him- plagiarism, incorrect statement of facts and more. So much for one of the best selling books for years.

 

Having said that I also believe, no good thing should be analyzed too much. If you do enjoy something, let it just be. Delving too deep only brings out more skeletons, makes things murkier.  So, I will let Alex rest in peace. But then, Alex did give me a thought or two to chew on.

 

Have we ever thought of tracing back our family tree? Have we ever thought why our grandparents always told us stories about their forefathers, festivals and the like? And why with each generation, we know a lot less about our forefathers than what a generation above us knows.

 

And and even more troubling thought:  what am I passing on to the next generation, in turn? My daughter is growing up on a staple diet of stories that range from Mickey and Minnie to Spiderman and the animated Hanuman. I wonder if she will ever know what her great grand father ever did. Or how the women swung in Cuttack during the ‘Raja’ festival. Will Meeshu ever know what “Podo Pitha’ tastes like? Will she know that Nilamoni Das, her great grandfather was a great story teller and an even better story teller was his father, whose name, I don’t remember myself. Oh! What shame!

 

I don’t care if Roots is a book with a bunch of facts or all was Hailey's brilliant imagination put to use. I worry, Meeshu’s grand daughter will not know either Ma’s name ……..or mine, for that matter.