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There is no dearth of books for children to gift them on their birthdays. Instead of buying one, Frau Huber sat day after day, putting the album together, writes B.N. Goswamy "Question: What goes down into the sea but does not get wet? Answer: The Sun. Question: Which ring is not round? Answer: Herring. Question: In which month do sheep eat the least? Answer: February, for it has only 28 days."
What I felt most moved by, however, was an album, which a simple but grand old lady who lives nearly next door, brought. It was all done by frail hands, and had an amazing range of things in it, page after page filled with colourful clippings and drawings, stories and nursery rhymes, sage words of advice, even riddles of the kind I have cited above: everything neatly written in long hand. All in German, of course, because that is the language she knows, and all somewhat too early for little Madhav—it will be some time before he can get to read and value this treasure—but done from the heart, and with great, painstaking care. Fascinated, I looked at the ‘album’ and leafed through it for long. There they were in scores of pages, some predictable things, others new: artfully drawn mice and cats and birds, "muh, muh, muh/so schreit im stall die kuh", images of the universe, and sayings of the wise. There is no dearth of books for children, especially in Europe, I thought, and had she wanted it, the lady could simply have gone ahead and bought some. And yet there she was, having sat day after day, putting the album together, pouring herself into it. Frau Huber—that is the name of the lady: Wilma Huber—has been a friend of the family, but is not a relation; she is not young, being past 70 years of age; she is a simple homemaker, not a maker of books or an illustrator. Questions about what she had made with so much care therefore came naturally to my mind. How long did it take you to prepare this, I asked Frau Huber first? "A few weeks", she said, making it appear to be a routine matter. "I knew Madhav’s (she pronounces it as ‘Madoff’, as if it were some Slavic name) birthday was coming, and I wanted to do some small little thing for him that was very special." "For he is very special", she added after a pause, filled not with hesitation but affection. Why not give him some printed book or books? "Some of them are lovely to look at, but there is no love in them; they are for everyone. I wanted it to be my buchlein (meaning little book) for him, with things I know by heart, things that have meant something to me in my own life." Continuing to speak to her, I gathered that this was not the first book that Frau Huber had ever made: long years ago, she made one for an ailing sister of hers who had liked it very much, for it was full of shared memories. They had led a difficult life that began with growing up in Nazi Germany, and gone on with several disruptions afterwards. But memories kept piling up. And in that first book, they surfaced. Somewhere in it there was history. Like there will be in this book for Madhav, for in it is gathered a host of memories and images and snippets of thought that belong to a given time even as it seeks to build a bridge between cultures. Come to think of it, there is something very special about it. In many ways, I thought, this volume—I have described it as an album, for want of a more appropriate term—comes close to being what used to be designated as a ‘Commonplace Book’ in the English-speaking world at one time: recording "good sayings and notable observations". The great philosopher, John Locke, wrote in 1706 even a manual on New Methods of Making Common-place Books, recommending the proper technique for the preservation of proverbs, quotations, ideas, speeches and the like. At the more common level, they turned into less serious enterprises, for they came generally to contain a wide variety of printed material, as well as paintings, drawings and, as someone said, "...a medley of scraps, half verse and half prose and some things not very like either, where wise folk and simple alike to combine, and you write your nonsense, that I may write mine." They were especially popular among young ladies of some social standing who often wrote florid and sentimental verses, but, when family and friends got together, the commonplace books could easily make for endless and pleasant recreation. But, I continued to think, Frau Huber’s book was different. It was clearly not like a diary; so, was it more like a scrapbook, I wondered, considering that ‘scrapbooking’, as it has come to be called in today’s commercial world, is "a method for preserving a legacy of written history in the form of photographs, printed media, and memorabilia contained in decorated albums". But I would still find
it difficult to describe Frau Huber’s book for Madhav simply as a
‘scrapbook’. This because no retailer made it for her; she did not
put it together for any of her own children or for the delectation of
her immediate family; there is nothing of herself in it except
affection, and wisdom. And it will probably continue to be called Frau
Huber’s Album.
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When I was in
Switzerland recently, attending the first birthday party of little
Madhav, my grandson, many guests came. There was joy in the air, and
friends brought many gifts: elegantly crafted toys and games and baby
suits, even thoughtfully chosen books, including one on How to Talk
to Children about Art.