{"id":33944,"date":"2025-11-13T21:41:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/midnight-motorbike-a-lullaby-of-wonder-for-the-sleepless-inspired-by-the-whimsy-of-south-india\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T21:41:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:41:41","slug":"midnight-motorbike-a-lullaby-of-wonder-for-the-sleepless-inspired-by-the-whimsy-of-south-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/midnight-motorbike-a-lullaby-of-wonder-for-the-sleepless-inspired-by-the-whimsy-of-south-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Midnight Motorbike: A Lullaby of Wonder for the Sleepless, Inspired by the Whimsy of South India"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Midnight<\/a><\/p>\n

You know that moment late into the night when the body, famished for rest, is kidnapped from the land of sleep by a mind aflame with rumination, paging through the ledger of regrets \u2014 the message you shouldn\u2019t have sent, the hand you should have raised, the kindness you withheld \u2014 until the temperature of the self rises to an untenable degree. These are the 4A.M. reckonings James Baldwin wrote of<\/a>, those plaintive inner cries for \u201creconciliation between oneself and all one\u2019s pain and error.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such fevers of selfing are only ever cooled by turning the mind outward, worldward, wonderward. But the lullaby of unselfing doesn\u2019t come to us easily \u2014 often, we need someone wiser, someone more awake to wonder, to whisk us into a chariot of perspective and gallop us out of ourselves, toward what Willa Cather knew to be the secret of happiness<\/a> \u2014 being \u201cdissolved into something complete and great,\u201d which, \u201cwhen it comes\u2026 comes as naturally as sleep.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Midnight Motorbike<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), writer Maureen Shay Tajsar and artist Isihita Jain tell the story of a little girl too hot to sleep through the Indian night that \u201cstretches its dark arms beyond the banyan tree grove and the red earth canyon, all the way to the big indigo ocean,\u201d and her Amma, who whisks the child away on the back of her motorcycle in her shimmering sari to tour the bright variousness of the world \u2014 the snake eyes and bougainvillea flashing in the headlights, the wet kiss of the painted elephant, the dance of planets and comets across the starry sky, the enchanted loom at the silk shop, the old man braiding jasmine blossoms, the silent temples full of stone monkeys praying under golden crowns \u2014 until the tired girl is blanketed in wonder and drifts to sleep. <\/p>\n

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Pulsating beneath the story, told in lyrical words and vibrant illustrations textured with feeling, is the universal yearning for something that holds, a cradle of time we can rest into.<\/p>\n

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On our motorbike tonight, feet in the wind, we reach the edge of the world. There, Amma tells me, the belly of the moon will be waiting for us, just as it has been waiting all the rainy seasons of forever.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

\u201cGoodbye, day,\u201d I breathe into the dark, and the moon holds us until tomorrow.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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This elemental dialogue between loneliness and forever<\/a> animated Tajsar\u2019s own youth. She writes in the author\u2019s note:<\/p>\n

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When I was nineteen, my mother moved to rural Tamil Nadu, South India, and I spent the next several years of summers with her, on her motorbike, zooming in and out of adventures. Every autumn when it was time to say goodbye, she wrapped me in a garland of jasmine and I started the hours-long, all-night taxi drive through banyan groves back to Chennai Airport and back to my university life in Ireland. During those melancholy rides, I was comforted by the busyness of the Tamil night that flashed by; somehow knowing that the night was full of activity and gathering made me feel less lonely. The dark swirled around me like a mother\u2019s embrace, and I longed for the forever of it all, and was grateful for everything. And the moon was always there, hanging low over the Bay of Bengal, silently accompanying me on my journey.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Couple Midnight Motorbike<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with The Night Life of Trees<\/em><\/a> \u2014 a whimsical portal into Indian folklore illustrated by indigenous artists \u2014 then revisit Maurice Sendak\u2019s cure for insomnia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

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newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know that moment late into the night when the body, famished for rest, is kidnapped from the land of sleep by a mind aflame with rumination, paging through the ledger of regrets \u2014 the message you shouldn\u2019t have sent, the hand you should have raised, the kindness you withheld \u2014 until the temperature of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 18:24:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}