Rough Hewn: The Tale of "A Tale of a Fairy Tale"

The Keeper: A tribute to Boa Sr., the last voice of the Aka-Bo language. From the Rough Hewn series by Shon Mehta

Although "The Girl Who Asked Why" is one of my most well-known stories, "A Tale of a Fairy Tale" is the one closer to my heart.

I often give generic names to characters in my stories to keep the focus on the core philosophy, but when I heard about Boa Sr., I decided to name the protagonist "the peasant girl" as Boa.

Boa Sr. was a Great Andamanese elder, the last known native speaker of the Aka-Bo language. I changed the name of my protagonist not just as an homage, but as an attempt to pronounce what cannot be translated.

When I think of Boa Sr., I do not think of extinction, archives, museums, or recordings. Instead, I think of silence. Her voice was not the absence of sound, but the presence of something no one else could understand. She lived knowing a language that had no listener left. When she became the last speaker of Aka-Bo, her loneliness stopped being personal, it became historical. An entire world was folded inside one woman, with no one else left to witness it.

I recognize that kind of silence -- the kind that deepens each time you speak and no one understands, leaving you lonelier and more silent than before. "A Tale of a Fairy Tale" was born from that place.

The protagonist begins by believing in the stories told to her by others -- stories that promise a place in society if you are beautiful, brave, or good enough. These stories suggest that belonging must be earned through virtue, or else you will be discarded. 

Along the way, she meets figures who misunderstand or misuse her hope. The lion wants her unchanged, the frog uses her belief for amusement, and the prince desires her admiration without offering anything in return. Each encounter leaves her more isolated.

This is how loneliness truly works -- she is surrounded by others, yet alone. Boa Sr. lived among people, yet no one could speak her tongue. She stood in crowds, yet belonged nowhere. Both women were separated from others not by distance, but by the lack of being understood.

Yet, neither was broken by it.

Boa Sr. survived by remembering, by holding on to the songs and words of her tribe even when they echoed only inside her own mind. The girl in my story survives by walking forward, refusing to return to the illusions that failed her. She walks forward, though she does not yet know toward what.

When she finally helps build a new kingdom, she does not inherit a fairy tale, she creates one -- perhaps flawed, but entirely her own.

Boa Sr. was not just a lonely woman. She was a woman whose solitude carried an entire world. She was not the "end" of the Aka-Bo language, she was its keeper. Similarly, the girl in my story is not the protagonist of a "failed" fairy tale, but the creator of a new one.

We are accustomed to measuring worth by multitude, how many speakers of a language or how many readers of a story. Yet, perhaps a language held faithfully by one person is not entirely lost. Perhaps a story remembered truly by one heart has not vanished.

Boa Sr. carried Aka-Bo alone. Now I carry her in my thoughts. I do not know her words. I cannot speak her songs, but I remember that she once did.

Whenever I read “A Tale of a Fairy Tale,” I will think of her. That too is a kind of keeping.

—-

Shon Mehta is an author and philosopher known for creating the Jivavarta Universe, a fictional setting used to explore sociopolitical themes, human resilience, and moral philosophy. Her work has transitioned from contemporary fiction to foundational academic material used in several countries. Rough Hewn is her series of reflective essays, where she explores the personal memories and philosophies behind her writing.