|
Bharat said: Crawl careen, shuffle-huff, crawl-shuffle careen huff… What’s that noise? Nothing, only Deep the Diplodocus and Sally the tiny Saltopus taking a walk together!
Talking Tales is an apt name for a book of stories where sounds play a vital role. These stories are rendered with all the characteristics of oral children’s literature and can be actually considered folk and fairy tales of today. The literary interest of this book is that it is illustrative of the composite multilingual and story-telling culture of contemporary India
Bharat Shekhar has an original, unpretentious, and effortless style all his own, a mixture of alliterative prose and come-as-you-please rhymed verse. Words are often found strung together higgledy-piggledy making perfect sense to children (and adults with open minds):
“Heth the Ethplorer” “ was poking and nosing (...) toddling and tumbling and rolling and bowling along like a bubble of mischief” Can you top that for expressiveness?
‘The Tiger The Toy Cupboard And The Tiny Twitch’ is obviously named after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis , ….It’s all about animals, toys, pretend games and dreams , creating a childlike and innocent world , where anything is possible ! Which animals inhabit the toy basket? What can Can Grew Can Grow the kangaroo do? Where did the wicked looking tiger sitting in the corner of the cupboard come from? Who put him there? What is he doing in the children’s dreams? Can Balu, Shalu and cousin Pakhi transform into their toy animals in their dreams?
At places Bharat writes with such poetic beauty that it creates indelible images in the readers mind:
“The world of dreams
Is not what it seems
A drop of moonlight falls
As it spreads its silver it calls:
Wake to dreams, in dreams awake!”
The moon tumbles from a cloud and drips its beams on Shalu. She wakes, or slips into the silver whispers of dream where she is awake
The most endearing character is found in the story The Eighth Dwarf. It’s a twist in the tale of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ . Snow White is trying to wake the Seven Dwarves one morning when she realizes there’s an eighth one!….and wonder of wonders it’s a little girl dwarf in a ponytail…with twinkling dark eyes and a complexion “the colour that parched earth is when it first receives welcome rain” She doesn’t know who she is and why she is there…but is determined to stay until she finds out. They decide to call her Brownie, and since “Brownie also sounds like Bauna” …reasons Doc…the name fits well!
Well, there are the other characters in the other stories too…many, many, of them, with funny names and strange things to do….all in Bharat Shekhar’s inimitable style full of wit and wisdom..but you’ll have to read the book now to discover them as they all can’t fit into this review
MARIAM KARIM AHLAWAT. |
