Book review: Tik-Tik, The Master Of Time

Tik-Tik, The Master Of Time
Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Rupa
253 pages
Rs250

There’s nothing that interests a child more than decoding adult behaviour. Adults are oppressors as well as providers. They have access to knowledge and power. Playing ‘house’, ‘doctor-doctor’, or ‘soldier-soldier’, children spend their free time trying to bridge the gap between them and adulthood.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi riffs off this idea in his new children’s book, Tik-Tik, The Master Of Time. Tik-Tik is a child scientist frustrated by the limitations of his planet Nopter. Here, children take “an awfully long time” to grow up (only a quarter of an inch a year). The adults enjoy complete freedom — eating what they fancy, going out or staying in at will. It’s “age discrimination”, concludes Tik-Tik grimly while formulating the Growing Up Project with his best friend, Nib-Nib. The plan is head to planet Earth because Tik-Tik has a sneaking suspicion that this slow growth is a planet-specific problem.

Tik-Tik’s grandpa, Kip-Kip, takes the same blasé approach to cosmic travel as most of us do to an enjoyable jaunt around the park, so Tik-Tik hops smuggles himself into Kip-Kip’s “space egg” and lo and behold, they’re on Earth. Earth turns out to be a troublesome planet. With its extreme weather, aggressive penguins and a tilted axis, Earth is upsetting to Tik-Tik’s scientific mind. First, he straightens the planet by hanging a comet off the bottom. A thought then occurs to Tik-Tik: if Earth moved faster around the sun, more days would pass. Wouldn’t he then grow older faster? The resultant chaos, with Nib-Nib and Dum-Dum (Tik-Tik’s pet) showing up, makes up the rest of Tik-Tik, The Master of Time.

Tik-Tik speaks like a disgruntled, curmudgeonly scientist. Problems “should not be allowed to continue unchallenged”, enemies are pitted against each other with Machiavellian cunning and Tik-Tik’s grandiose plans are constantly foiled. Tik-Tik is, of course, the smartest of them all, which makes his slow growth even more infuriating. With his self-importance, conniving plans and half-baked knowledge, he ends up doing a passable imitation of the average adult.

But adulthood turns out to be a traumatic experience. Friendships are broken, Grandpa Kip-Kip is irretrievably harmed, and Dum-Dum almost dies. But this is a children’s book, so the ending is neatly tied up with reconciliation and scientific fixes. The language is simple and the author’s empathetic approach to the longings of childhood will be appreciated by an adult reading it to their child. The illustrations add to the book’s charm. As Farooqi makes clear, there is no going back to childhood, but this book conjures up all the frustrations and dreams of a thwarted, oppressed child.