In his 1936 essay titled, The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov, German philosopher Walter Benjamin says that the “art of storytelling is coming to an end”. He points to the essential task of storytelling – “the ability to exchange experiences”. The developments following the First World War, he wrote, has left the world “poorer in communicable experience”, where one finds one’s bodily experience ruined by “mechanical warfare”, and one’s moral experience ruined “by those in power”. Although written around 90 years ago, Benjamin’s essay might resonate with those who find a world being steadily undone by technological and military developments that leaves its inhabitants impoverished in having any communicable experiences. Benjamin’s essay anticipates a world enamoured by the generative (the G in GPT) reserve of useful information rather than the communicative exchange of worthy experiences. While one would like to hear, read, and exchange such experiences, one might find oneself losing one’s voice, hands, and indeed life itself before one has the opportunity to write, or write of, an experience worth communicating and exchanging. The disquiet of sensing that one’s life may end before one has lived – and had the chance to write of – an experience worth communicating: this forms the wellspring of this book. Sebastian Vattamattam,Sugarcane Field : The Limits of Desire, God, Dreams, Language, Self,NavayanaI read Sebastian Vattamattam’s Elephants in a Sugarcane Field as sharing in that great tradition of practicing philosophy as an art of storytelling. Hence, I echo Sundar Sarukkai’s words in the blurb when he writes that this book marks “the truest expression of philosophical spirit, one that aims to make ideas inclusive and treats its readers with respect and affection”. The fact that this book treats philosophy in the vein of storytelling is what makes its ideas inclusive for a wide readership, and the fact that Vattamattam’s exploration of ideas in this book is slow and free from unnecessary jargon reveals his respect and affection for his readers. So, what is the story that Vattamattam wishes to communicate to us? Simply put, it is the story of his life. Or, at least, the story of how he outlived the anticipation of his premature death. The very first line of the book reads, “This book was born out of an old companionship with death” (15). He was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease when he was sixteen years old, with a prediction that patients with this disease rarely live longer than 25 years. His treatment required him to remain indoors for two years, when he was largely accompanied by his books. He is now in his eighties, having taught mathematics in schools and colleges in Goa, Nigeria, Qatar, and Kerala. For those who despair at the “real-world impact” and “application” of philosophy, Vattamattam stands as a living testament to philosophy’s life-giving force. Christians name this life-giving force “grace”; students of philosophy might simply recognise it as a way of being in the world that wonders at and examines life, which, in the words of Socrates, is the only kind of life worth living. In this vein, I read Vattamattam’s book as belonging in a genre of books that combines autobiography with philosophical meditation – a noteworthy contemporary example in this genre being a short pamphlet titled Martin Heidegger Saved My Life (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) from the Cornell University-based philosopher Grant Farred. Like Heidegger for Farred, Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek emerge as life-giving figures for Vattamattam.How does Vattamattam treat his two main interlocutors, Lacan and Zizek? In two parts consisting of 15 chapters, each devoted to exploring the ideas of these two thinkers, along with an introductory chapter on Ferdinand Saussure’s theory of linguistics, Vattamattam describes and narrates their main philosophical ideas and contributions. More importantly, he thinks with their ideas to make sense of what might be called an experiential history of places he has lived at, most prominently, Kerala. For example, discussing Lacan’s concept of “symbolic death” as opposed to mere biological death, Vattamattam brings up the practice of caste-based excommunication as marking an instance of symbolic death. In this practice, he tells us how in Kerala, women expelled from their Savarna families due to violating the norms of caste were considered as “lifeless objects” (saadhanam), and “as part of the ritual [were] symbolically rolled down from the top of the house” (73). Similarly, in discussing Žižek’s theory of ideology as a “sublime object”, Vattamattam gives the example of a communist party leader from Kerala who happened to visit an agraharam (Brahmin quarters) and commented, “The agraharam looks like a slum” (134). Vattamattam then notes how this communist leader was unconsciously labouring under an ideology that presumes Savarna poverty as being undeserved. Or, an ideology which believes that “Brahmins are not supposed to live in slums” (134), a contradiction for someone who otherwise believes in the equality of all human beings. These, among other examples in this book, is how he brings Lacan and Žižek home – to a place alien to these thinkers’ “original” intellectual contexts. Vattamattam’s home is a place which appears differently with the aid of these thinkers’ ideas, showcasing why their ideas would matter for someone living in Kerala.However, these examples are too few and far in between. It is in the paucity of such examples that I found Vattamattam’s method of reading Lacan and Žižek to do insufficient justice to the task of storytelling. While a reader largely unfamiliar with the ideas of Lacan and Zizek would surely benefit from having their key ideas explained and narrated in a language free of unnecessary jargon, I was searching for more such examples and experiences in the book that make the ideas of these thinkers gain relevance as a life-giving force in places that are alien to their original contexts. The examples cited above are among the most thought-provoking illustrations of the distinctiveness with which Vattamattam deals with his main interlocutors. But these examples, few though they may be, are largely relied upon to verify the correctness of Lacan’s and Žižek’s ideas. The book could have benefitted from such examples that might contradict or call for revisions in Lacan’s and Žižek’s ideas as well. The deficit of a critical engagement with their ideas is perhaps this book’s main shortcoming. If, say, each chapter in the book were to be bookended with such illuminating examples and experiences, Vattamattam would have more adequately fulfilled the task of weaving philosophy and storytelling together. Ankit Kawade is a PhD student at the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.