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Literary Review
Happy reading
GROWING up in the remote hills of Nagaland, and in the pre-internet era, if there was one thing in short supply it was books. So, we would read extracts from R.L. Stevenson's Kidnapped or Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women in our school texts and yearn for the unabridged version. The one bookshop in town could hardly fulfil our reading needs, and yet we would pay a visit, time and again, to find out whether a favourite book had arrived. At home, we would pester parents for stories who would gladly delve into anything from Lewis Caroll to Sukumar Ray to keep us occupied. Things have changed, and though Harry Potter has, some would argue, brought back children to reading, you often hear teachers and parents complaining that children aren't reading enough. This beautifully illustrated collection of stories, edited by Mala Dayal, is a perfect book to entice children — and adults — into the world of reading.
A few of the stories have been extracted from novels of master story-tellers like R.K. Narayan and Salman Rushdie, but it is quite a thrill to find the irrepressible Swami and his friends and the unforgettable Haroun and his sea of stories in one book. The wonderful introduction-story, Mahasweta Devi's "The Why-Why Girl", sets the tone. It's about a girl called Moina who exhausts everyone around her with her "whys". A good story revs your imagination, and also opens your mind to the world around you. Moina is a Sabar girl, and the Sabars are poor and landless. Moina's questions are endless: "Why do I have to walk miles to the river for water? Why do we live in a leaf hut? Why can't we eat rice twice a day?"
Dayal has chosen a wide range of themes — fantasy, humour, historical fiction and real-life incidents — to give us a glimpse of some of the best Indian children's fiction in English today. So, we have Shama Futehally's "The Tunnel" — where a burkha-clad Saeeda auntie comforts a very frightened Ankush. In our communally charged world, this simple tale of harmony teaches us a lesson or two. As does Hemangini Ranade's story of hope, "Sorry, Best Friend". Poile Sengupta's "The Lights Changed" does a reality check — and we are back in the world of riots, and the difficult, inequal, poor, tense surroundings we often find ourselves in.
Then there is Premchand's beautiful story — "Festival of Eid" — about little Hamid's selfless ways and Bhisham Sahni's "The Boy with a Catapult" in which a bully, Bodh Raj, turns bird saviour. There is Ruskin Bond's hilarious "Snake Trouble" about a boy and his grandfather and their unusual pets; Satyajit Ray's bizarre "The Hungry Septopus", about a carnivorous plant; extracts from Dhan Gopal Mukherji's "Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon" and Shashi Deshpande's "The Narayanpur Incident"; Paro Anand's ghost story about a dog called Shadow; and Kalpana Swaminathan's story about a three-legged prince, aptly named Teentang. And as if this weren't enough, there's Vikram Seth's "The Elephant and the Tragopan" (Beastly Tales from Here and There) — a tale with two quasi-morals. "The first is that you never know/ Just when your luck may break, and so/ You may as well work for your cause / Even without overt applause;... The second is that you'll find friends/ In the most unexpected places, / Hidden among unfriendly faces... "
So before the fifth Harry Potter frenzy begins, bring home this collection to keep both children and adults happy.
The Puffin Treasury of Modern Indian Stories, edited by Mala Dayal, Puffin (Penguin Books India), p.187, Rs. 399.
RUMA DATTA
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