Mina's Matchbox

 

Looking back at one’s life, recalling a special phase from it with the larger history of a city or country set in the backdrop, a little like James Hilton’s Goodbye Mr. Chips or Neela Padmanabhan’s Where the Lord Sleeps, that’s Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder; I would tell a friend who asks me what the book is about. 

The book opens beautifully with Tomoko recalling the first vehicle she rode, an elegantly designed baby carriage sourced from Germany, trips on her father’s bicycle clinging to him tightly until he died from stomach cancer. As a 12 yr old she’s sent away from home to stay with her maternal aunt and begin middle school and Tomoko recollects all that happened during this period 1972-73 when she stayed with her cousin Mina and her family in a big mansion at Ashiya. Though 30 years back in time, her memories of this year stay fresh and clear.

Tomoko’s quiet aunt who corrected typos, her half-German uncle who owned a beverages company, her frail and asthmatic cousin Mina who collected matchboxes and had a pygmy hippopotamus named Pochiko for a pet are interesting characters. Along with grandmother Rosa who is German, Yoneda-san and Kobayashi-san who are more of family than mere caretakers, this endearing bunch gladly welcome Tomoko into their lives. Each one of them with their quirks, stories to share and secrets to safeguard make Mina’s Matchbox a character-driven, slice-of-life narrative marked by a sense of atmosphere and slow world build up.

Japanese author and Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata’s suicide, 1972 Munich Olympics and Giacobini meteor shower unravel in the backdrop. Quite a few reviews have lambasted the author’s treatment of the Munich Olympics massacre but from the viewpoint of two pre-teen girls who are passionate about volleyball and keen on seeing their national men’s team clinch Gold, I felt the references made here were in-place. 

The prose is lulling and the pacing remarkably slow in the first half but it turns incisive and agile respectively in the latter half. About two girls who are friends-for-life than cousins, not just their wallowing in nostalgia but as a coming-of-age journey, Mina’s Matchbox is both heartwarming and wholesome. 

Yoko Ogawa was born in Okayama and now resides in Ashiya (Tomoko shifts from Okayama to Ashiya for a year to stay with her cousin Mina's family) and would have been 10 yrs old during the 1972-73 period detailed in the book, so does the book tap a little into the memories of the author's childhood? 

Mina’s Matchbox is my first by Yoko Ogawa. I read a lot of reviews that stated how this book is different in terms of theme and tonality from the rest of her works. While a few who have read The Housekeeper and The Professor, Hotel Iris and The Memory Police have found this underwhelming, I felt it was a great starting point and I sure want to read the author more (And of course, the translator more). You may not highlight sentences and paragraphs as you read this book but the cumulative effect of the prose is gently illuminating. 

Sharing below a few favorite passages from the book - 

“If you wanted to describe Mina in a few words, you might say she was an asthmatic girl who loved books and rode a pygmy hippopotamus. But if you wanted to distinguish her from everyone else in the world, you’d say that she was a girl who could strike a match more beautifully than anyone.” 

“Mina would slide open the box and select a single match with her delicate fingers. Then she would close the box and hold the rounded, reddish-brown tip at a slightly odd angle against the striking surface. Up to this point, everything would happen in a relaxed, tranquil manner. Nothing forced or hurried. Her lips pressed together, her eyes lowered. Only the tips of the three fingers that held the match seemed animated with the knowledge of the deed they were about to do. Then, she would hold her breath for an instant and her fingertips would fly, followed by a sound so sharp that you wondered how such a frail girl could achieve this kind of velocity. I was captivated, realizing for the first time how transparent the flame of a match could be. If not for the slight odor of phosphorus, I might have been tempted to believe that Mina had produced the flame magically, out of thin air, or that, given the clarity of the light, it was her finger itself that was burning.”

Books Read in July 2025

 

Three collections of short stories 

Three novellas

Two short story singles

Giants

 

“The village—Ayito-phu—was located on the top western flanks of a mountain, a strategic choice that had made it virtually unassailable during the old days of headhunting. If one were to be completely factual, the days of headhunting were neither old nor gone, for in the areas that bordered Burma there were still tribes who took great delight in lopping off heads and stacking skulls like the macabre hoard of some unknown devil.”

It is in this village, far away from Kohima that our protagonist, a 12 yr old boy named Kato lives with his parents who till the land and labour hard. Kato’s mother, maternal grandmother, even his father at times, regale him with stories - of an uncle who saw a big giant in the forest, of Alhou who created the whole world and different spirits to guard different realms, of rivers that had a will of their own. Kato consumed these stories hungrily, remembered them but could not tell them to others for he was mute. What happens when a timi-ala (a forest giant) named Kene visits Kato on full moon nights, gifts him a voice for the night when they are together, tells him stories and convinces him that he is born to tell stories and save his clan?

‘The land is the oldest and it is very much alive. It is the land that sustains everything that lives.’

But, what when this very land is under the threat of a face-off between the British soldiers and Imperial Japanese army? For a people who had nothing to do with WW2 and were in awe of the simple rifle, the bombs, cannons, roaring fighter planes and endless machine guns sounded like the end of the world itself. How could a young, mute boy tell stories to avert disaster, save his clan and his land that now reeked of the smell of metal and blood? Read Giants by Huthuka Sumi to get the answers. 

Even though the story doesn’t offer crisp and straightforward answers, even when magic is overpowering, even confusing at places that the reality slips away, Giants offers an intimate and authentic portrayal of the way of life of people, the Sumis, a major ethnic group native to Nagaland. The clan’s reverence for nature and the land they live upon, their faith in traditions, skepticism to anything modern that may alter a natural order shine in the narrative that meanders, strays and moves languidly. Pork cooked in axone paste has an unmatched flavour, aqhumi, a shawl woven in a certain way has a special social status, description of farming seasons and tiger hunt, there is a lot to learn from Kato’s tale suffused with magic filled with spirits and witches that guard or abduct people. 

‘Memories are roots’.  Without stories we have no memories and without memories our roots shrivel and die'. The crux of the book - that stories on who we are, where we come need to be told and retold lest we forget our history or identity - though beautiful isn’t delivered in a crisp and convincing fashion, the storytelling never gathers steam and fails to deliver an impression. The illustrations by Canato Jimo are mere motifs alongside the chapters' titles, they don't supplement the storytelling or add detailing.  It is the portrayal of emotions that hold the fort - loyal friendship, love, loss, grief, guilt, shame, hope, standing tall with confidence and self-acceptance and redemption populate the book. Tighter editing could have cut it short by at least 50 pages and saved the read for us. Overall, a good read!

 

A Teashop in Kamalapura & Other Classic Kannada Stories

 A Teashop in Kamalapura & other classic Kannada stories, a collection of 18 stories, begins with the dedication - ‘To the many forgotten translators who forged the paths we tread.’  Luminous notes from the editor and translator that dissect complexities associated with the process of translation and detail the evolution of Kannada short story (sanna kathe) through its different phases of development - Navodaya, Pragatishila and Navya mark its beginning. That these notes don't analyze the stories that follow leave the pleasure of reading and comprehending them intact for the readers. 

Panje Mangesharaya’s story At a Teashop in Kamalapura set in a bustling harbour town, light-heartedly reveals the trouble that the owner of a tea shop runs into by serving his customers tea and coffee along with colorful tales of his travel adventures riddled with lies. The shortest story in the collection, The Child, A Teacher by Nanajangudu Thirumalamba packs a mighty punch, the writing strongly reminded me of Tamil author Jeyamohan.

Equations between man-woman assume the centre stage in many stories, these brim with love and desire but there’s restraint too. Passion doesn't break boundaries and there is an earnest happiness in staying selfless. Kodagina Gowramma’s ‘Vani’s Confusion’ and HV Savithramma’s ‘An Episode’ depict the above with an understated charm.

Who decides what's moral and immoral, that social reforms can have terrible side effects is highlighted in Ajampura Sitaram’s ‘The Girl I Killed’. Giribale’s ‘The Battered Heart’ opens with the murder of a compassionate yogi and his murderer, a young woman, has a different and chilling story to tell, but who will listen?

From the first Navodaya short story to be ever published to a story by the first woman writer and editor in Kannada, this collection reveals all that has changed over years and a little that hasn't. Reading these stories felt like looking at an infant's toothless grin with a sparkle reaching uptil the eyes - you know the smile is precious & timeless, but you also know that the simplicity and naivety at its core will definitely erode over the passage of time. A lovely collection!

Notes:

This series also boasts of collections of classic stories translated from Malayalam and Odia as well. I picked the collection of Kannada stories first as the translator is a favourite of mine. Without her efforts, I couldn't have read Vaidehi’s stories - Krauncha Pakshigalu and other stories or Na D Souza’s Dweepa, books that are firm favorites. Reading authors - Kodagina Gowramma, Triveni and Sara Aboobacker in this collection has rekindled my interest in looking for their works in translation. While Kodagina Gowramma’s collection of stories, translated by Deepa Bhasthi is available, Triveni’s Sharapanjara and Sara Aboobacker’s Chandragiri Theere remain unavailable/out of print.

It is the editor Mini Krishnan’s Oxford Novella series that significantly enhanced my interest in works translated from different Indian languages, so it's only befitting that I end the post sharing a few lines from her note - “Languages are like opposing reigning powers, and translators are the ambassadors who flit between two kingdoms. The encoding they pack at one end and unpack at the other for another language readership naturally calls for great skills. Translation is a deep reading of a text. Every story or poem has a voice , inward, human. It asks you to believe the feeling locked into the printed word, and it reaches you through your reader-ear. We read as listeners because the origin of stories is orality.”

Books Read in June 2025

Books I Read in June