Gulistaan

I was lucky to grow up in a time when people who wrote children's literature and made children's media had good intent. They really wanted to inculcate good values in children. The editor of Balhans in the 90s, Anant Kushwaha is one of my personal heroes and I loved the Chitrakatha Visheshank that Balhans got out twice or thrice in an year. I remember each magazine, each comic book had a distinct vibe back then. I had a huge comics collection till highschool and each comic book had a distinct vibe to it. If you are into the job of reading and writing you ultimately realise that reading and writing is actual magic and those who read and write are actually magicians. Professionally my domain is of a healer too and I find myself adequate at my job, not too good but not bad either. I'm an average healer, but my professional domain deals with magic too. And then I write, so I deal with two types of magic. In the past decade I realised that children's media in this country in contemporary times is made by individuals who are complete scum, they do not have good intent, either that or they made bogus animation on YouTube and parents put those animations on for their children or worse, children grow up watching instagram reels. Five or six years ago I was travelling by train and a mom was playing Monopoly with his 9 or 10 year old kid with extremely fat glasses. I'm just glad that I grew up with Meena, even though it was government propaganda and matured with Courage The Cowardly Dog who did the right thing despite being scared witless. If you read comics and if you have the privilege to maintain your savviness you would end up graduating to graphic novels. The journey is from Cartoonist Pran to Alan Moore. And it is when you reach Alan Moore you realise what a shitshow the world we live in is. Cartoonist Pran just used to soften the blows and, to instill hope and values, showed the good winning, Alan Moore writing for a mature audience has no such compulsion. I have seen Hindi literature collapsing, I have seen Hindi literary magazines deteriorating and I am talking about magazines for adults. Literature is the mirror of society and the mirror was removed because all it would show is exploitation and rape just in a civil language because people who are in literature are civil people and not like the rapists who rule over people in this country. I would thank my foray into transgressive fiction in my early 20s that I don't give a fuck about any such obligation. The news is that feudal slavery is back and this time in the form of fate. While a few kids will study in schools that will take them to Japan for picnic, majority of kids would get salt and rice in midday meals and will grow up throwing stones at passing trains and hitting the copulatory tie of dogs with a stick.