Throwback Tales

 April might be the cruellest month according to T. S. Eliot. Yet, for most school and college going students, it is the nicest month. Results are yet a fortnight away! The vacation has not as yet started getting booooringly loooooong. 

Summer is setting in, bringing along the koel song and mangoes, musk melons, water melons and "thanda thanda, cool cool" drinks (I am referring to the innocent ones. Please! These days there is no knowing actually!) 

And thus set in the times for reading! Throwback tales indeed! Panchatantra, Aesop's Tales, Sindabad, Gulliver, all sorts of fairy tales, even Ramayana and Mahabharata in the abridged, simplified version. What wonderful days indeed! I have literally grown up on books. 

My parents gifted books on all occasions. I adored the gift. Why, we had the monthly subscriptions of "Chandoba" as well as "Reader's Digest". Just trying to remember those days when Birbal and Tenali Ram were my best buddies is a throwback to 'wonder-ful' times in all senses of this term. 

Sure, I started reading Literature early enough. By sixteen, I was in to the world of Austen; by eighteen, Camus' "The Outsider" was my read! As I was doing French then, I had tried reading a bilingual edition, not terribly difficult, given Camus' lucid prose. 

I need not list all such adolescent adventures, be it Sophocles or Shakespeare. Yet I love my childhood reads a lot. The sense of  innocence, wonder and enjoyment they induce, the subtle seeds of ethics thus planted, a unique perspective on life they gifted, these throwback tales are indeed a world apart. 

In today's times of cartoons and the online reels, I do not know how much children read these days. The world has, moreover, changed drastically, so much so that "Shyamchi Aai", one of my most beloved books, may now appear senti, pompous, and "boring"! 

Why, it is, moreover, fashionable (actually downright stupid, however chic it might be considered) these days to dismiss the fairy tales as politically incorrect! Fairy tales do NOT create a false world. None is a Peter Pan! We all grow out of our 'Snow White' days. The childhood reads, however, create  fantasy wor(l)ds that forever enrich us in imaginative, incredible, infinite ways! 

Pratima@ In fact, at times, they give a unique paradigm to our adult attempts. During the Corona period, I wrote seven vignettes on the Corona times which have been included in an international anthology. To bind them together, I initially used the Vikram-Vetal narrative in an ironic way, which suddenly added a unique depth to vignette series.

Quote of the day:                                                          "Books are a uniquely portable magic, " says Stephen King. 

Word of the day:                                                            Skimming (getting the hang of the general outline) and scanning (paying careful attention to minute details) lead to better comprehension/understanding of a(ny) text.