Grandpa Fish
And the radio
Grandpa Fish and the Radio by Venkatramana Gowda, illustrated by Srikrishna Kedilaya and translated by Dr. Divaspathy Hegde; and Listen to My Body by Noni, illustrated by Angie and Upeshk
The first of these two is a story about not very much. Theoretically, of course, it’s a story about an old man (or rather a fish) using his mind while all about him were losing theirs. But mostly it’s about how more than one type of person is necessary in society for it to work, how wisdom and knowledge actually matter, and how we all need to think a little more and listen a little less to gibberish and distractions.
The world is full of distractions, of course. For the fish in this story, the main distraction is the radio. They all want to listen to the radio all the time, even though they are all underwater. (Perhaps it’s a waterproof set.)
The grandfather of the — well, I want to say house, but since they’re fish, they don’t have one. The grandfather of the family, then, wants to listen to the news. There’s a lot of news that’s relevant to fish, you know. But his grandchildren want to listen to music. They care more about music than can be imagined. The grandfather fish, though he tries, is powerless to get them to turn the dial. (Possibly the fish have adapted their fins to turn radio dials; or there might be a special device, a kind of grabber of the sort that’s used for litter-picking, to enable fins to turn radio dials. I don’t know.)
Eventually, each evening, the children have danced enough — if fish can dance — and finally Grandpa Fish sees his chance to commandeer the radio.
Anyway, poor Grandpa Fish tries to turn the dial to listen to the news — the human news, which also includes news pertinent to fish — but all he gets is the final sign-off to tell him that the news is over now. See you tomorrow!
And of course, to any Grandpa, fish or otherwise, this might seem something of a blow.
The cycle repeats a few times. Grandpa Fish attempts to listen to the news from the beginning, but he is somehow thrown off by something someone else — some fish else — is doing.
Will the good grandpa, Grandpa Fish, be able to listen to the news at all?
Happily (and of course necessarily for the story), Grandpa Fish does get to listen to the radio at least once. And what hears will shock you. Grandpa Fish hears that the humans are about to do something to the river or the lake, or wherever it is that these fish in particular live.
Are they going to dump batteries into this body of water? We’ve long been told, by the government, the WHO, the UN, the WEF, to throw batteries into bodies of water, so we can help electric eels recharge. It’s possible that this was what was being announced. Or possibly, the humans said they were about to start dredging the body of water, or fishing it more intensely, or polluting it, or damming it somewhere, or in some way affecting its character.
Oh no, thinks Grandpa Fish. This will affect the fish. And affect the fish it will.
Grandpa Fish has to think. He has to think fast. What would a smart fish do, one who has listened to the news of the event? Grandpa Fish knows what he must do. He must talk to one of the leaders of the humans who live near the body of water. They go way back, he and this leader of the humans. They have an arrangement. So Grandpa Fish sets out to the edge of the body of water, intent on making contact, and who does he see but the daughter of the big man, the leader of the humans? She’s washing clothes or fishing or doing something and Grandpa Fish surfaces and says he wants to have a word. He says something that she understands. Humans and fish share a language in this universe, it seems.
Soon, Grandpa Fish and the daughter are having a conversation. She promises to relay his concerns to the big man — the leader of the local humans. And then, perhaps, the humans will not dredge the body of water, or pollute it, or fish it harder, or dam it, or throw their batteries into it (for the recharging of electric eels).
She departs with Grandpa Fish’s warnings in her ears.
Eventually, the news comes back — the humans have had a big think, and they’ve decided to leave the body of water alone. They won’t do whatever it was they were going to do. Grandpa Fish has been successful. And it was all thanks to his persistence and determination in trying to listen to the news on the radio, without which he would not have heard what he needed to hear — without which, the place (underwater) would not have been saved.
And this is the lesson of the story of Grandpa Fish, which seems to tell us, in sum, that the damn kids must turn their music down or off — some of us can’t here ourselves think!
What about the other book in this collection, Listen to My Body? This is a picture book about making sounds, about whistling, about stamping our feet, and clapping our hands. Make some music today, the author says. It’s fun. She may be right. It may be fun. But of course, if you’re making music and joy and happiness around Grandpa Fish (let’s assume that you, too, are a fish for the sake of this example), he will not be happy. And if it keeps him from his news programme on the radio, heaven help you.