Brains, Books and other things like Murder.

Despite the looming MRI scan that had everyone convinced my brain needed checking, I managed to convince my grandparents to take me to Big Bad Wolf on our way back home.

For those who are unfamiliar with the event, it’s like the Colombo International Book Fair, but more gourmet. You get to put books you like in large shopping carts and wheel them around as if you are in the ultimate supermarket, but of course for books. If you think you can think of something that's cooler than that, I swear you can’t.

After having a neat picture of my brain taken (which I proudly used for years whenever someone called me brainless, just to prove them wrong like “Jokes on you, here’s a picture of it certified by a neurologist”), I was driven to the venue. My mother had to physically hold me back from jumping out of the car before we found a parking spot, thus successfully preventing me from getting run over in the heavy traffic.

The minute I stepped on to the giant hall, I felt like a mosquito waltzing into the blood bank. The smell of fresh ink and crisp pages hit me like a tidal wave, leaving me dizzy with giddiness, a feeling which only book lovers can relate to. I can’t remember a day when I was more excited than that.

My mother grabbed my wrist before I could sprint in like a headless chicken and told me, “You have thirty minutes to look around”

I swear I have never before talked back to my parents out of filial piety, yet I know that the expression I had on my face at that precise moment can only be translated to “Ha ha... no."

My face must have made it clear how displeased I was with this arrangement because Mama smiled and said, "You’re unwell, and Grandpa is in a hurry to return. We’ll come back next year."

(It is worth mentioning that she, in fact, did not take me there next year.)

To add insult to the injury she further proceeded to tell me that I could get only one book.

One book.

The stress. The dilemma.

If my brain had been fine before, it was definitely short-circuiting after that.

I could barely decide whether to suffer through spinach at lunch or dinner (obviously, the dream scenario was no spinach. Ever). And now she expected me to pick one book out of a thousand? That’s like asking someone to pick their favorite fry in a bag. Impossible.

After what felt like an episode of Breaking Bad on steroids, I found myself at the cashier, clutching a single book and looking longingly back at my whirlwind thirty minutes in book heaven.

Now, I for one, absolutely hate when someone says that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

We absolutely should. And we do.

Whoever says otherwise is a pretentious hell-hated barnacle.

Hypothetically, if someone was given only thirty minutes to pick just one book, which is inarguably one of the worst situations one can find themselves in, they can’t possibly judge a book by anything else but the cover!

So, they would certainly go for the most odd-looking cover, with the most 'what-in-ever-loving-heck-did-I-just-read?' blurb on the back.

For me it was “See What I Have Done” by Sarah Schmidt. The front cover featured a half-eaten pear and a few flies that piqued my interest. The synopsis said and I quote,

I yelled “someone killed father”

Just after 11 am on 14 th of August 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden are discovered. He’s found on the sitting room sofa, she upstairs on the bedroom floor, both murdered with an axe.

Just to be clear, picking a book about a disturbed daughter hacking her parents to death with an axe and my intense resentment towards my own for cutting my shopping spree short? Yeah, no correlation whatsoever. Totally a coincidence... Yet, unbeknownst to little me, this gory, visceral account of double homicide and the events leading up to it would shape my writing style in the years to come.

Even more bizarre was how comforting and painfully relatable I found the tale to be (Minus the parricide bit, of course) from age 12 to even now, despite its stomach-turning content. Often, I found myself with a handful of rage and a heartful of even bitter disappointment directed at my parents (like all children do, at some point). Then I would pick this book up again. It’s weird how I see pieces of Emma, Lizzie, Bridgette and Benjamin in myself, and bits of me in them.

Emma is the part of me who feels suffocated by how homebound I am. There is a certain resentment one cradles when they must tear themselves apart and give them up for the family. The belly full of anger one feels when they are confined to the familial role they are forced to play, at the cost of any sense of individuality. And the guilt. Oh, the guilt!  The clawing at the walls of your heart when you try to break free from your roots. The guilt that keeps you tied to the loop of suffering.

Bridgette is the part which clutches desperately at any and every piece of happy memory. She is the embodiment of all-consuming homesickness a child feels when they move away from their safe haven of home, in pursuit of greater good, to pull her family out of the pits of poverty. She is the walking, breathing version of the feeling,“I want to go home”. I still think of her every now and then when I sit on the staircase leading to my six-people boarding room that is slightly larger than a shoebox. I think of her, and I think of mom. I think about everyone in Uni who has travelled miles and miles away from their homes because they wanted to change something.

Benjamin portrays betrayal in a way that is painfully relatable. What is it like when someone you deeply cherish works hard to fix their flaws and becomes the best version of themselves—for someone else and not for you? It’s hurtful when they completely erase you, as if you never existed, and start fresh with someone new. And it’s all the more painful when that person is your parent. In modern slang, Benjamin was in such a mood. One of the most memorable lines from the book, spoken by this borderline sociopath, became my mantra for many years—though for all the wrong reasons. It goes something like this:

'In my mind, I bashed the stone in his head and felt a whole lot better.'

Finally, there is Lizzie. Honestly speaking, I don’t know what is wrong with her. She just has a screw loose.

If you have the chance, please read this unsettling masterpiece of a debut by Sarah Schmidt. The plot was so dark that I couldn’t see what was going on in half of the book. It was a brutally realistic depiction of a loveless home, and how that piled up resentment and tension would unexpectedly go Kaboom one day. The writing style was vivid and so out of pocket that I absolutely loved it. The author's love to play with readers’ senses with her signature short and punchy sentences and odd similes was magnificent.

One part that really struck me was how Lizzie refers to her father’s hacked up face as “Book of apocalypse”.

However, the neat part came a few years after I first read the book.

I was indulging in another five-hour binge rewatching of Buzzfeed; Unsolved (This show is an absolute delicacy. Can’t recommend it enough), when I saw a familiar name pop up in one of the titles.

So, imagine my surprise when I found out Borden Axe murders were real! The book was indeed based on true events! Lizzie Borden was a real person, who actually murdered her parents and very cleverly got away with it! It was like the Potterhead equivalent of finding Hogwarts was real! ( ok, maybe I shouldn’t sound this excited about a crime. My bad)

Needless to say, I fell down a very deep rabbit hole for the coming week and made the grave mistake of googling and finding photos of the crime scene. I 100% does not recommend it. They looked like a boiled and peeled tomato. (Don’t do it).

I would like to wrap this up with the infamous rhyme that goes,

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.