Dear Reader,I hate year-ends. Marking the passage of time, they remind me that I am inching closer towards turning into the stereotype of the old cuckoo who lives alone in a crooked house, talks to her potted plants, eats veggies out of a bag, and keeps her dentures in the cupboard lest the dog steal them.As if in confirmation of the premonition, the books and movies that found me at the end of 2025 were all about cranky old coots who quietly wreak havoc when others are not watching. In an earlier newsletter, I had talked about reading Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, featuring the indefatigable Marian Leatherby, who goes about solving cases involving naughty nuns at 92. The book I found myself holed up with in the last few weeks of 2025 was Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, about the adventures of the 80-something Janina Duszejko whose general hatred of all impositions, including religion, begins with her dislike of her given name. “I think my real name is Emilia, or Joanna. Sometimes I think it’s something like Irmtrud too. Or Bellona. Or Medea,” she says. With the last two preferred choices of name—Bellona is the Roman goddess of war and Medea is the Greek superwoman with a fearsomely vengeful streak—we have a hint regarding what is coming.Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is an existential mystery thriller that is outrageously funny. The character of Janina (also the narrator), who lives by herself in a remote Polish village close to the Czech border, has my heart. The very first sentence gives an inkling of her zany but practical personality. “I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.”A compulsive reader and translator of Blake, she is an ex-bridge engineer turned school teacher, a passionate lover of nature and animals who calls deer “Young Ladies”, a compulsive writer of letters and petitions to the authorities, a firm believer in the power of birth charts to foretell personality arcs, and an astute observer of human nature. She is also given to capitalising words—a habit that gives her narrative a quaint charm.Ghoulishly eccentric, she is one of the most lovable characters in fiction. Fond of children, because they are unfettered by adult, utilitarian morality, she is like children herself in her refusal to be corrupted by life. You want to believe every word she says, no matter how outlandish she sounds. The fact that nobody around her—except her closest friends—pays her any attention tells us something about the way the world treats old people, especially women.When a string of men—public figures among them—end up being dead, Janina floats the thesis that these are revenge killings perpetrated by animals whose kin were hunted by the murder victims. While everyone is busy smirking at her idea, she tells the reader that she had two dear dogs who went missing, and she believes that the hunters are involved in their disappearance. The connection is confirmed later in the novel, when she spells out what she had seen but not explained fully at the beginning of the narrative.Nobody except the children in her class commiserates with her loss. When she tells the visiting priest that she desperately wants to find her dogs, if only to give them a decent burial, he replies, “It’s wrong to treat animals as if they were people... God gave animals a lower rank, in the service of man.” And so, he signs his death warrant.The novel questions all hierarchies, reminding us about the rights of animals and nature. Just because nature doesn’t protest, is it alright to maul a mineral-rich valley and set up industries on once-pristine lands? Is it just to farm foxes for their coats? Or hunt deer for their meat? How is that punishment for murder does not apply to the killing of animals? Who has decided that animal life is less valuable than that of humans?These are some of the issues that we should be pondering deeply now, as yet another year of the Anthropocene comes to an end. Of course, they can be endlessly debated, with arguments piled up in favour of each position, but what cannot be doubted is the value of kindness. In a pitiless world, to hold on to kindness is an act of courage. By that measure, Janina is as brave as any Greek hero (swinging frozen plastic bags, she also has their muscle strength). Her kindness might be of the radical variety but it leaves its mark as an act of resistance.Pointedly, Tokarczuk does not punish her for her extreme deeds. At the end of the novel, she is happily living in a forest in the Czech Republic, having repudiated Poland. “I have learned...that most Insects hibernate. Deep inside their anthill, the Ants cling to each other in a large ball and sleep like that until spring. I only wish people had the same sort of confidence in each other.” This is a quote worthy of being framed. Literature utters truths that no politician will—which is why writers are hated. Tokarczuk has also been vilified by Polish nationalist groups as unpatriotic, anti-Christian, and a promoter of eco-terrorism.I told your earlier that Drive your Plow “found” me. I had picked it up never guessing that I would discover a sister like Janina in its pages. With the same fortuitousness, I chanced upon Memoir of a Snail, a stop-motion animation produced and directed by Adam Elliot, now playing on Amazon Prime. It combined my current favourite topic—snails (and snail-like humans who retreat into their shells)—with my other preoccupation, as explained above—zesty old women.Memoir of a Snail is not about an old woman, but it features one in a prominent role. She is Pinky, a puckered-like-a-prune octogenarian in oversized, retro glasses, and with a few strands of dark hair standing straight on her head like pine needles. The heart throb of many over the years, she is fond of reading and dancing half-naked on tabletops. When we first meet her, she is dropping library books into the garbage chute, mistaking it for the chute for returned books. Indefatigable and kind in an insane way, she might be Janina transported from Poland to Australia.Highly impressed by Memoir, I checked out the other animation films by Adam Elliot. The central characters in all of them are free spirits who old, disabled, bullied, battered by life, but irrepressible. They will make you laugh and cry in equal measure. (You can find most of the films on Youtube.)Drive your Plow and Adam Elliot lifted my mood so that I ended 2025 happily reconciled with the thought of getting older. There is no time to brood too, with so many books to read and newsletters to write. The mails I am getting about all the new releases of 2026 are making me sweat—there are so many! But secretly, I am happy since it means that no matter what, books are here to stay. This was proved by last year’s huge crop of books too. Check out Frontline’s list of the best books of 2025 here and here.So, here’s a toast to literature and all the Janinas of the world, both fictional and real! May they thrive and excel in their job of cocking a snook at power.Catch you at our next date, on January 10.Till then,With heartfelt best wishes for the new year,Anusua MukherjeeDeputy Editor, FrontlineCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS