A king who has never travelled and a tree tired of being rooted set out to wander the world with the help of a mind mender — Lavanya Regunathan Fischer in her book One Tree, One King and The Open Road creates a friendly, fantastic world with quirky toasters and an odd machine called a zug which helps them travel from zone to zone.
The friendly tree and the king leave part of their essential selves behind to deal with their day to day work to give them the freedom to explore adventures. This is useful because the king’s two selves can consult with each other about things encountered and the left behind king can always pop into a library to check up on travel information to pass onto his bipolar self.
The tale meanders along pleasantly like the road with amiable squabbling between the protagonists and the mind mender — perhaps the King and the Friendly Tree actually needed to be given names of their own, though I’m presuming that Fischer chose to evoke an allegorical format by keeping people to categories. There is the promise of a quest for an exceedingly dangerous monster referred to as the Brekken that does not materialise for the protagonists.
Much of Fischer’s tale owes its origins to known fantasy worlds like that of Harry Potter and even Narnia. The Sea of Mystery which tells people stories comes from Haroun and the Sea of Stories. What the book does require is more description — occasional flashes of green gloop and hollows that contain mysterious keys do not help the reader’s imagination to conjure up Fischer’s world and the roads her protagonists follow. Perhaps, as JK Rowling does in Harry Potter, it also needs a few more magical gadgets along the way — the silver box is never shown conjuring up sandwiches and nor is the tiger’s wink flying into the box described.
At the book’s heart is a quest for belief in the self — it is lack of this belief that destroys, rather like the children’s lack of faith in fairies almost destroying Tinker Bell. Fantasies and fairy tales dovetail into each other and princes need princesses, though perhaps friendly trees never do become romantic palace dwellers since they have to return eventually to their roots. The only touch of romance is in the story of an amiable short sighted tiger who guards a city for love.
In the end, it is a book that talks about change being vital for the good of the soul. While much of the story can and will appeal to children, frogs, chocolates and all, adults would probably read more into it — which is logical since the author moonlights as a philosopher in between court cases.
— Anjana Basu is the author of Rhythms of Darkness
