Aai-Papa encouraged us a lot when it came to reading. No wonder, I was an avid fan of the Aesop's fables, and the Panchatantra. As children, that fantasy world is highly appealing, like Alice's adventures in the impossibly probable wonderland. Yet the animal forms linger forever in our mind.
As we grow old, we realise that the animal forms are actually from the human world. So the bunny rabbit is never merely shy. Nor is he the timid one worried about the falling sky. He is also somebody horribly sure of himself, and hence degrading others. Well, this animal form we meet repeatedly in the real world rabbit, eh, rat race!
The other animal forms met equally regularly, if not oftener, are the wicked wolf, the dodging fox, the cute but crafty cat, the fence-sitting bat, the shrewd and dangerous serpent in the grass, and so on.
The most difficult ones to meet in the public space are the regal lion, and the shy fawns. Yet in our private familial space, they are the regulars as wonderful parents caring for you as if they are the king, without nary a worry. That forever protection lingers a lifetime, even when they are no more. Similarly, the gentle grace of a shy fawn is the sister who continues to be the (s)cared little one who needs a generous hand-holding.
Given such animal form(s) from both the real and the fictional world, no wonder, George Orwell thought of the Animal Farm as a parable of human foibles, and, most importantly as a political allegory, exposing the grand failure called the Russian Revolution. In brief, animal wor(l)ds matter the most!
Pratima@ "I could turn and live with animals," said Walt Whitman. Read his "Songs of Myself", especially No. 32, and the entire argument would resonate with you.
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