Hello, Wikipedia novel
A teenager who does not have friends because their mother keeps shifting them from one school to another. They both are running from the father, who did bad things; one doesn’t quite know what those bad things are. The only friends the teenager has are on Catnet, an online forum moderated by Cheshirecat. Who is Cheshirecat? Why do they intervene when a teacher turns nasty or when a sex education robot is not scripted to answer any questions on homosexuality? Wait, what do you mean? This story has a robot that teaches young adults about sex?
The plot of ‘Catfishing on the Catnet’ is as tight as a businesslike naada knot. Your salwar secure, you hurtle through the book, and it is a given that you will read the sequel, ‘Chaos on the catnet’. By now, you are also friends with those kids on Catnet.
A friend was amused - you are reading young adult novels? And I realised, I have a special fondness for young adult fiction. There’s an innocence I find myself reaching out for; these are adults in the making, and so there’s still hope, there’s possibility. It is like trying to smoke for the first time. There’s a sense of doing something not quite ok, and at the same time, the decision is up to you whether you will continue or not. There is discovery, and there’s time to change your mind.
Young adult novels follow a trajectory. There is an atmosphere of antsy-ness. Not to be confused with angst, which is its boring adult cousin. Angst is what Guru Dutt has singing ‘Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai’ which was demolished by Paromita Vohra in full style as the Pyaasa Syndrome. On the other hand, antsy-ness is a feeling of not quite there. You do loosen up to have fun and giggle, and then teeter at the edge of the existential plateau. Should you jump and let go, or just stay there at the edge. Who knows, and why care.
After antsyness, the plot takes over. There’s friendship. There is a special friend or many. Then there’s the sexual awakening. Are you her, him, they, them, zhe? Do you need to be one or the other?
‘Catfishing on the catnet’ is also sci-fi, or speculative fiction, however you choose to order your bookshelf. The change in the technology register does not deter from the very human conflicts the characters go through. Enthused, I picked up another book, ‘I’m waiting for you’, and felt disoriented. There was too much intergalactic travel, calculations of years, months, and conversions between this metric and that, and the letters seemed shoehorned. Sci-fi novels have to do that — it is a new world, they need to tell you what’s this world they are building for you. Whether they tell you or show you — therein lies the readability, at least for me.
For, shorn of the psychic universe of the characters who inhabit imagined lands, the book becomes a wikipedia entry. A wikipedia novel, if you will.
Have you read a Wikipedia entry about a certain historical event? It tells you what happened. If you read about a person, it’ll tell you about their life, but as a series of events. It is as if it is devoid of people — the drama and their turmoil is tucked away, hyperlinked for that’s not what Wikipedia is interested in. A wikipedia novel is like that - it will take you through different concepts, ideas, happenings, and events, and somehow you’ll come away emotionally unscathed. You aren’t holding your breath wondering if she would do this or that; you aren’t worried what will happen when they tell the truth about that evening to each other; and you are already busy clicking on other links into a rabbit hole.