We all love going on trips as soon as holiday season kicks in, don’t we? But have you ever been on a journey that ended with you travelling to another plane of reality, maybe one from the books you’ve read? Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?
Well what if we told you this happened?
Get ready for the gripping story of young Chintamani Dev Gupta who while on a birding camp is magically transported to an unknown world of improbable creatures. Things get stranger still when he meets the master of illusions, Ghatotkacha and his mother, the demoness Hidimba.
Read on to know what happens next!
I am Chintamani Dev Gupta, male, 4’11”, thirteen years of age. Almost fourteen. It won’t surprise anyone to know that my name was, at an early and vulnerable age, shortened to Chintu, then mutated to Chintu Pintu. It’s ignominy to have a name like Chintu Pintu, but it’s a cross I’ve learnt to bear. I feel like telling them—the sneerers—‘Man, you don’t know where I’ve been, you don’t know what I’ve seen!’
The story that will unfold in these pages has been recorded with all the memory megabytes at my disposal, but when you— one—me—travel through time, across time, the grey cells tend to seize up and short-circuit in transit.
But let me begin at the beginning. If there ever is a beginning, if time follows a straight line, follows a predictable geometrical pattern in its unfolding. Which I happen to know, from my incredible personal experiences, it does not.
Those of you (possibly in the minority) who have read Carl Sagan’s book Contact might appreciate wormholes and the ways to fool or get fooled by time. Whereas those of you (more hands up this time maybe) who are fans of Terry Pratchett, might remember that he said, ‘Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.’
But I’ve nattered on enough. Let’s get to the flashback with Chintamani Dev Gupta (aka Chintu Pintu) off on an enforced holiday to the Sat Tal Birding camp. I remember it as though it were yesterday. My parents had just split up, even though they continued to be holed up in the same house. Mum’s lady lawyer practically camped on our living room sofa. Papa hadn’t shaved for several days. Things were bad. And to get me out of the way, I had been dispatched here, to an insect-infested field near the aforementioned Sat Tal Lake.
It’s not as though I was wildly interested in birds. I suspect it was just the most convenient way to pack me off, dumping me in ornithology heaven. So there I was, amidst the tweets and the cheeps and the trills and twitters of birdsong, dreaming of football and butter chicken and the joys of home.
Can’t wait to find out more? Don’t forget to be the first one to grab your copy of this magical tale of time-travel, unusual friendships and a whole lot of adventure!
12 Things You Didn’t Know About Magandeep Singh
A certified sommelier, Magandeep Singh found his calling in wines while working in France. In India, he likes to divide his time between food and wine tastings, and writing columns about wine. He has also hosted a show called “Around the World in 85 Plates” for NDTV Good Times.
His latest book ‘The Indian Spirit’ is a treasure trove for those who have the palate to enjoy their drink and curiosity to know where it came from.
Here are a few things you should know about the author.
How many of these facts did you know about Magandeep Singh?
Jawahar and Edwina, the greatest love story of the twentieth century? Fact and fiction
By Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang
I know about historians. I am married to one! They look at the evidence, interpret it and make judgements to give you a balanced and judicious account. If you want a critical assessment of the historical setting in which Jawahar and Edwina developed their friendship, then you need a solid work of history. But if you want to understand the feelings, emotions, personal histories, tensions, contradictions and passion that drove them together, then you need a work of fiction.
The historical novelist does not pretend to be a historian. In some ways the net must be cast wider than that. Not only must a historical novelist have a thorough grasp of the period of the relevant political and social history, but they must also have an understanding of fashion, food and psychology- in sum be a jack of all trades! My aim in writing The Last Vicereine was to transport the reader back to the chaotic last days of the British Raj. I wanted to put the reader in Edwina’s and Jawahar’s shoes so that they could empathise with them and live moment by moment with them in their world. Unlike the historian, the historical novelist is not there to judge or assess, and needs to remember that historical figures and imaginary characters do not have the benefit of hindsight. This requires constant vigilance when writing. People in the novel might attempt to predict the outcomes of certain decisions and calculate their actions accordingly. They might genuinely believe that they were doing the right thing in the circumstances, and be acting out of the best of intentions, but history might judge them to be wrong. Today we all know that partition was a disaster, but no one at the time, neither British nor Indian had a full grasp of the horrendous short term consequences, never mind the long term implications of the decision to divide British India along religious lines.
So how exactly did I go about bringing Jawahar and Edwina to life? I began by avidly reading all the standard history books of the period and general histories of India. I then moved onto autobiographies and biographies particularly of Nehru, Gandhi and the Mountbattens, and supplemented this with as many diaries and memoires as I could get my hands on. The next step was to spend time in the Mountbatten archives going through the papers of Countess Mountbatten of Burma and some of those of her husband, the Viceroy. And finally I undertook a research trip to India so I could truly soak up the atmosphere. Only when I felt I had a full grasp of the locations and historical period and could enter the minds of the key players, did I begin to write.
It was at this stage that I stopped playing historian, pushed aside my own judgements, and put on my novelist’s hat. It was then that history moved from the foreground and took on a different function. It became both background set and plot driver. We know for example that some of Edwina’s letters of Jawahar were stolen in the run up to the transfer of power. What was in these letters? Who had sight of them? How did the characters react and what might have been the political consequences if they had been leaked?
Furthermore, Jawahar and Edwina were characters of their time. Both were born with silver spoons in their mouths and were respectively members of the British and Indian elite. This imposed certain restrictions, privileges, duties and obligations on them that conditioned their world view and actions. They cannot be judged by today’s standards.
While a historian might dread gaps or ambiguities in the record, the historical novelist can turn them to advantage. The blanks and omissions in the record are fascinating and exciting and are where stories lie. What are they hiding? What is missing? What might have been said or not said after a big meeting? Perhaps the minutes don’t exactly tell the full story. What might have happened at the party? What did the gossips say and what were the consequences of rumour and chatter on the political process?
The gaps leave space to imagine and create. For example, we know from the records that Lady Mountbatten had two female English secretaries on her staff. Unlike the men of Lord Mountbatten’s staff neither of them appears to have kept a diary or written or published memoires. Here was my opportunity to create the character of Letticia, Lady Wallace, a widowed school friend of Lady Mountbatten who served on her staff and became my narrator. She was privy to many private conversations, she became our eyes and ears and she took on an exciting and exotic life of her own.
For various reasons the main histories and records have dithered around the relationship between Jawahar and Edwina, partly because it was a private friendship, partly out of respect to the parties involved and also because it has been in the interests of both the British and Indian Congress establishments not to ask too many questions. Nevertheless, it is clear for example that Lady Mountbatten probably played a key role in saving the talks on the transfer of power from complete collapse in Simla in May 1947 and I enjoyed dramatizing this.
Today, with the benefit of hindsight, is easy to ask why on earth India should have been divided in 1947. The first thing to understand it that it was the end of the war. The Japanese had broken the will of the British in the Far East and the British people and State were exhausted. Nehru had spent years incarcerated in British jails and was no longer a young man. Jinnah too was old and probably knew that he was dying. In dramatizing the situation in Viceroy’s House in the spring of 1947, it was clear from my research that British India was in a state of virtual collapse. There had been a complete breakdown of law and order in some areas. The British were terrified, bunkered down with a siege mentality and planning for a mass evacuation of their nationals- to say this is not to absolve the British from their responsibilities.
In my novel, I attempt to reflect the sense that things were spinning out of control, the exhaustion, illnesses and at times sense of hopelessness and futility experienced by Edwina, Jawahar, the Viceroy and his staff. By May of 1947 it was obvious that a solution had to be found and quickly. It is not widely known that shortly after independence there was a real fear that the new government of India might have to be evacuated from New Delhi for its own safety. For a period of time the survival of the new India was in question, and Nehru had to work with Mountbatten as Governor General and the outgoing British administration to ensure the future of the new administration and preserve the illusion of central authority. Given this, perhaps we can understand the kind of pressures Jawahar and Edwina were under, their day to day experiences and the extreme stress they shared together, both of them constantly risking their own lives to serve India. Perhaps if we understand the kind of emotional stress they were under as public figures at an desperately traumatic time, we can they appreciate why they supported each other, why they cared about each other and perhaps also why some decisions were made in the way they were.
What is the truth of the Jawahar Edwina relationship? My own sense is that there was certainly a deep physical attraction but that it was a friendship between two older people based on emotions and the mind. Both would have counted themselves as socialists. They shared interests in art, history, music and poetry and enjoyed riding, swimming and hill walking together. Edwina was also an experienced aid worker before she became Vicereine of India. She was good with people, having a common touch, and worked valiantly to get aid to refugee camps both before and after partition. Again this is not really known in India today. But Nehru saw how hard Edwina worked and appreciate all she was doing for India. Both were public figures with a keen sense of public service and duty and they understood that this came at huge personal cost. Somehow, they managed to carve out a private space for their friendship and to continue to meet, correspond, and support each other emotionally until Edwina’s death in 1960. Perhaps one day, if the full content of the letters between becomes publically available, we will know more. But we will always need historical fiction to bring the past to life. Jawahar and Edwina’s friendship is arguably the greatest love story of the twentieth century. If Shakespeare were alive today, he might not have written Anthony and Cleopatra but rather Jawahar and Edwina.
About the Author
Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang is a British writer. Her work focuses on historical fault lines and themes that are globally significant. She studied Oriental Studies at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and is a non-practising lawyer. She is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese.
7 Quotes by Famous Authors That Will Make You Reminisce Your Childhood
As life brings with it moments of laughter and hardships in equal measures, the memory of childhood slowly begins to fade away. Or does it? Well, some of our favourite writers and personalities from history would beg to differ.
This Children’s Day, get inspired to grow ‘down’, because where’s the novelty in growing up?
The golden days of childhood were glorious, weren’t they?
Letters from a Father to his Daughter – An Excerpt
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, was one of the prominent figures during the Indian freedom struggle. He started writing letters to his daughter Indira when she was ten years old. He wrote to her about diverse topics, ranging from the origin of the Earth to history of races and faith.
In a collection of 30 letters, Pandit Nehru imparted wisdom to his growing up daughter, while steering the movement to Indian freedom.
Here’s an excerpt from the book.
We saw in our last letter that the chief difference between man and the other animals was the intelligence of man. This intelligence made him cleverer and stronger than enormous animals who would otherwise have destroyed him. As man’s intelligence grew, so also grew his power.
To begin with, man had no special weapons to fight his enemies. He could only throw stones at them. Then he began to make out of stone: axes, spears and many other things, including fine stone needles. We saw many of these stone weapons in the South Kensington Museum and also in the museum in Geneva.
The Ice Age, about which I said something in my last letter, slowly ended and the glaciers disappeared from Central Europe and Asia. As it became warmer, men spread out.
In those days there were no houses or other buildings. People lived in caves. There was no cultivation, that is working in the fields. Men ate fruits and nuts and the animals they killed. They had no bread or rice because they did not grow anything in the fields. They did not know cooking but perhaps they just heated the meat on the big fires they had. They had no cooking vessels or pots and pans.
One thing is very curious. These savage men knew how to draw. Of course they had no paper or pens or pencils or brushes. They simply had their stone needles and pointed instruments. With these they scratched or drew animals on the walls of caves. Some of their drawings are quite good but they are almost all profiles. You know that it is easier to draw profiles, and children usually draw in this way. As the caves must have been dark it is probable that they used some kind of simple lamp.
These men that we have described are called Palaeolithic men, or the men of the old Stone Age. That period is called the Stone Age because men made all their tools with stone. They did not know how to use the metals. Today most of your things are made of metals, specially iron. But iron or bronze was not known then, and so stone, which is much more difficult to work with, was used.
Before the Stone Age came to an end, the climate of the world changed greatly and became much warmer. The glaciers had gone far back to the Arctic Ocean, and in Central Asia and Europe great forests arose. Among these forests we find a new race of men living. These people were cleverer in many ways than the Palaeolithic men whom we have just described. But they still made their tools out of stone. These men also belonged to the Stone Age but it was the later Stone Age. They are called Neolithic men or men of the new Stone Age.
We find when examining these Neolithic men that great progress has been made. The intelligence of man is making him go ahead fast compared to the other animals. These Neolithic men made the very great discovery of cultivation. They started tilling fields and growing their food there. This was a great thing for them. They could now get their food more easily instead of having to hunt animals all the time. They got more leisure, more time to rest and think. And the more leisure they had, the more progress they made in discovering new things and methods. They started making earthen pots, and with the help of these they began to cook their food. The stone tools were much better and were beautifully polished. They also knew how to tame animals like the cow, the dog, the sheep and the goat. They also knew how to weave.
They used to live in houses or huts. These huts were very often made in the middle of lakes as the wild animals or other men could not attack them easily there. These people are therefore called lake-dwellers.
You will wonder how we know so much about these people. They wrote no books of course. But I have already told you that the book where we read the story of these men is the great book of nature. It is not easy to read it. It requires great patience. Many people have spent their lives in trying to read this book and they have collected large numbers of fossils and other remains of old times. These fossils are collected together in the great museums, and we can see there the fine polished axes and the pots and stone arrows and needles and many other things which were made by the Neolithic man. You have seen many of these things yourself but perhaps you have forgotten them. If you see them again you will be able to understand them better.
There was, I remember, a very good model of a lake-dwelling in the Geneva museum. Wooden poles were stuck in the lake, and on top of these poles a wooden platform was made. On the platform the wooden huts were put up and the thing was connected by a little bridge to the land.
These Neolithic men clothed themselves with the skins of animals or sometimes with a rough cloth of flax. Flax is a plant which has a good fibre used for making cloth. Linen is now made out of flax. But in those days cloth of flax must have been very rough.
These men went on making progress. They started making tools of copper and of bronze. Bronze, as you know, is a mixture of copper and tin and is harder than either of these. They also used gold and were vain enough to make ornaments out of it!
These people must have lived about 10,000 years ago. Of course, we do not know the exact dates or periods. All this is largely guesswork. You will notice that so far we have been talking of millions of years. We are now gradually getting nearer and nearer to our present age. From the Neolithic man to the man today there is no break or sudden change. But still we are very different from him. The changes came slowly, as is nature’s way. Different races developed and each race went its own way and lived its own life. The climate being different in different parts of the world, people had to adapt themselves to it and changed greatly. But we shall talk about this later.
One thing more I want to tell you today. About the end of the Neolithic age a very great disaster happened to man. I have told you already that at that time the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. There were just some lakes there and in these lakes many people lived. Suddenly, the land near Gibraltar, between Europe and Africa, was washed away and the waters of the Atlantic Ocean poured into the low valley of the Mediterranean. The water went on pouring and filling it up, and large numbers of the men and women living near or over the lakes must have been drowned. They could not escape anywhere. There was water all over the place for hundreds of miles. The Atlantic Ocean continued to pour in till it had filled up the valley, and the Mediterranean Sea came into existence.
You have heard, of course, and perhaps read, about the great flood. The Bible speaks about it and some of our Sanskrit books also refer to it. It may be that this mighty flood was the filling up of the Mediterranean. It was such a terrible disaster that the few people who managed to escape must have told all about it to their children, and they to their own children, and so the story was handed down from generation to generation.
5 Dan Brown Book Quotes Which Will Compel You To Pick Up The Books Again
One of the most acknowledged authors of thriller fiction, Dan Brown wrote some of the best-selling novels of all time. Best known for the The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Inferno, Dan Brown’s novels have been the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars.
His novel Origin is the new installment in Brown’s oeuvre.
Here are 5 quotes from his book.
Do you have a favourite?
Get your copy of Dan Brown’s latest book Origin here.
Books Ruskin Bond Recommends for Your Little One
Our introduction to the world of books, when we were children, was through our elders who would gift us a novel on different occasions. But imagine having a list of books recommended to us specially by one of our favourite storytellers while we were growing up, fantastic right?
Well, a book is a book, and honestly, no one is ever too old to read ‘children’s book’, don’t you think?
So gear up for some amazing recommendations by the inimitable Ruskin Bond who wrote this very special introduction for ‘Puffin’s Good Reading Guide for Children’, and don’t forget to pass them onto your child!
Adventure with Books
The palaces, lawns and gardens of Jamnagar, where I spent the first six years of my life, were just the right setting for a child whose first book was Alice in Wonderland. Princes and princesses were all over the place, and if the King and Queen of Hearts had emerged from behind the rose bushes I would not have been at all surprised. In one of the old palaces lived a rather dotty old princess who was rather like the Duchess in Alice. When I grew up I put her into one of my stories, ‘The Room of Many Colours’, and several readers remarked that she had walked straight out of Wonderland. And indeed she had. Our first books have a strong and lasting influence on our thinking and the way we look at life.
From Wonderland I travelled to Never Never Land, for my second book was Barrie’s Peter Pan. Not the text of the play but the book written specially for children. I did read the play (along with all Barrie’s works) when I was at school; and later, a young man in London, I went to the old Scala theatre to see the annual Christmas production of Peter Pan. That great actor Donald Wolfit took the part of Captain Hook, with beautiful Margaret Lockwood as Peter. I had expected the theatre to be full of children, but the audience consisted largely of adults. Peter, the boy who never grew up, must have appealed to the eternal child in each of us. And when, in order to save Wendy’s life, he appeals to the audience to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, everyone clapped, this writer included.
I believed in fairies, I wish I could still believe in them.
Barrie was one of my favourite authors and playwrights. It is not easy to find his works today (apart from Peter Pan), but if you come across his other plays— Dear Brutus, Mary Rose and A Kiss for Cinderella—don’t pass them by. They have a certain magic.
In junior school I moved on from Wonderland to the real world, enjoying realistic novels of adventure such as R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Jack London’s Call of the Wild. But it was only after my father died (when I was ten) that I became a voracious reader. He had been the perfect companion. There was no one to replace him. So I turned to books for companionship.
In my stepfather’s house there were very few books, and I had to look elsewhere for my needs. I did not have enough pocket money to buy books, and there was no library worth the name in 1940s Dehradun. But I was to discover some wonderful books in an unusual way.
My mother and stepfather were fond of shikar, and frequently went on hunting trips into the forests around Dehra. On one occasion they rented a forest bungalow for a week, and I was taken along against my wishes. I found these shikar outings very boring. The animals did not have much of a chance—not when they were shot at from jeeps or the backs of elephants.
Resentfully I went along, but declined to take part in the pleasures of the hunt. Left alone in the bungalow, I discovered a cupboard full of books in one of the unoccupied rooms. Here were many authors I had not read before, and I was soon immersed in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James, Love among the Chickens by P.G. Wodehouse (an early Ukridge story), The Thirtynine Steps by John Buchan, and a couple of Agatha Christie titles. While the shikaris came and went, cursing their luck—for most of the wildlife had already been decimated—I had the time of my life with this little neglected library. I don’t suppose it’s still there after sixty years. I did not take any of the books when we left, but in later years I went out of my way to acquire these same titles, and I dip into them from time to time. I love re-reading old favourites, especially authors who have a distinctive style or tone of voice—Wodehouse, ‘Saki’, Maugham, M.R. James, Walter de la Mare, J.B. Priestly, William Saroyan, Thurber, Joseph Conrad …
And, of course, Dickens.
I discovered Charles Dickens in my school library, when I was twelve or thirteen. It began with David Copperfield and it would be no exaggeration to say that this book set me on the high road to literary adventure. So closely did I identify with young David that I resolved that I would run away from home and become a writer. I was to run away (briefly) and be a writer all my life.
Dickens’s characters, often larger than life, appealed to me, and I went on to read almost all his works. My favourites after Copperfield were Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby and Our Mutual Friend. His descriptions of London’s dockland and East End led me to explore these areas a few years later. That London has vanished now, but in the early 1950s, parts of Dickens’s London could still be found and recognized.
When I became a senior at school, I was given charge of the library, which meant that I kept the keys with me. Whenever I had a little time to myself, I’d escape to this little world of books, make myself comfortable in a sunny corner, and read anything that took my fancy. It was the only place in school where I could have a little privacy, for boarding schools are not meant for solitary, reflective individuals. I must have read more than half the books in that library. This meant that I did not pay much attention to the subjects I was supposed to be studying; but I managed to get through my exams. And in any case, I had no intention of becoming anything but a writer
After school, I was packed off to England—or rather, to the Channel Islands, which were part of the United Kingdom. Over there I was terribly homesick—more for India and friends than for ‘home’. My office job was drab and monotonous; my relatives, with whom I was living, were unsympathetic to my literary ambitions. Once again, it was a library that came to my rescue—in this case, the Jersey Public Library, where I spent my evenings.
I read everything that I could get hold of that pertained to India—the plays and poems of Rabindranath Tagore, the memoirs of Sudhin Ghose, the novels of Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosein and Rumer Godden. I found Rumer Godden’s novels especially enchanting—Black Narcissus (set in Darjeeling), The River and Breakfast with the Nikolides (set in East Bengal); her journal Rungli-Rungliot, which described life on a tea-estate; and finally, Kingfishers Catch Fire, set in Kashmir. I think it was the combined influence of Tagore and Rumer Godden that made me determined to return to India as soon as possible.
But first there were three years in London, where I wrote my first novel; and there I haunted the secondhand bookshops and bought and read almost everything that came my way. But there were three books that always remained with me, and came back to India with me—my Copperfield, my Collected Tagore (the Macmillan edition) and Boswell’s Life of Dr Johnson.
My Favourite Books
(over the years)
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Just William by Richmal Crompton
Adventures of Dr Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Pickwick Papers by Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Boswell’s Life of Dr Johnson by James Boswell
Boswell’s London Journal by Boswell
The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence
Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerly
The Big Heart by Mulk Raj Anand
The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore
And Gazelles Leaping by Sudhin Ghose
My Name Is Aram by William Saroyan
My Uncle Silas by H.E. Bates
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies
Walden by H.D. Thoreau
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waug
You will have your own favourites, of course, and naturally they will be different from mine. I asked several young readers to tell me the names of their favourite authors. These were their chosen few: Roald Dahl, Emily Brontë, Enid Blyton, J.K. Rowling, Louisa M. Alcott, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Grisham, Thomas Hardy. A mixed bunch, indeed! And it only goes to show that the world of books is rich and varied, and that there are writers to suit every taste. So search for the authors that you enjoy most, and they will be your good companions wherever you go.
Ruskin Bond
Landour October 2005
Do we still have to convince you to grab a copy of this book? Hurry up and make sure you gift some of them to your little one this Children’s Day!
6 Facts about author MG Vassanji you might not know about
MG Vassanji transcends the boundary of his geography when he writes. A prolific author of seven novels, two collections of short stories, and memoirs, Vassanji has won many awards for his immense contribution to the literary world. Vassanji’s work has traveled beyond countries and has been translated to Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, to name a few. In June 2015, MG Vassanji was awarded the Canada Council Molson Prize for the Arts.
Here are a few facts about the prolific author.
Aren’t these facts amazing?
‘The Tale of the Turban’: ‘Junior Lives: Mahatma Gandhi’ — An Excerpt
Mahatma Gandhi’s journey is inspirational for reasons one and many. His struggle to lead India to independence did not only happen on home ground in India, it went far beyond that, all the way to South Africa.
In this excerpt from Sonia Mehta’s Junior Lives: Mahatma Gandhi, we catch a glimpse of the man with his principles and values holding steadfast even during an hour of crisis.
Was GandhiJi’s time in Durban a good one? Let’s find out!
Amazing, isn’t it? To share the lesser known story of the Father of our Nation with your child, grab a copy of the book today!
‘I will tell the king there are no supermen in this village’: ‘The Magic Drum and Other Favourite Stories’ — An Excerpt
‘I will tell the king there are no supermen in this village’: ‘The Magic Drum and Other Favourite Stories’ — An Excerpt
We learned our first stories much before we learned to read. Our parents and grandparents sat us on their laps and took us to wondrous lands of kind kinds and clever, talking animals who taught a valuable lesson silently.
A brilliant collection of such beautiful, heartwarming stories by Sudha Murty that she grew up on as a child, ‘The Magic Drum and Other Favourite Stories’ is sure to take you down nostalgia lane and fascinate your child on a warm, lazy afternoon.
Here’s a snippet from the book about men from a small village who thought they could outsmart everyone else!
The Supermen
The men of Suvarnanagari were very lazy. They only liked to gossip and tell each other tall tales. As soon as the sun rose, the men would tuck into a hearty breakfast and start gathering in groups. Then they would spend the rest of the day telling each other impossible stories. They came back home only at lunch and dinner time.
Suvarnanagari had fertile land all around it, and if the men had spent even a little time in the fields, they would have reaped wonderful crops. But as they did nothing, all responsibilities ended up on the shoulders of the women, who had to slave the whole day. They cooked, cleaned, sent the children to school, worked in the fields, took the crops to the market—in short, they did everything. One day, the tired women got together and decided the men needed to be taught a lesson. Someone suggested writing to the king, who was known to be just and kind, about their problem. So a letter was written and sent off. The women went back to their work, but kept a sharp lookout to see if the king would send any help. But many days passed, and slowly the women began to lose hope. After all, why would the king of such a vast empire be concerned about the plight of a few women in a tiny village like theirs?
A month passed by and soon it was a full-moon night. The men ate their dinners and, because it was so beautiful and well-lit outside, they gathered again to chat and boast. That night, they were trying to prove to one another that they were capable of performing the most impossible tasks. As they sat talking, and the stories flew around, a tall and handsome stranger joined them. Seeing his noble features and intelligent eyes, each man wanted to prove himself better than the others and impress him.
One said, ‘I knew the map of our kingdom even before I left my mother’s womb. As soon as I was born, I ran to the capital and met the king. My mother had such trouble bringing me back home!’
Everyone was impressed with this story. But not to be outdone, a second man said, ‘So what is so great about that? When I was just a day old, I could ride a horse. I sat on a big horse and rode all the way to the king’s palace. He received me with a lot of love and we had the most delicious breakfast together.’ At the thought of food, everyone got dreamy-eyed and the story was greeted with a round of applause.
Now a third man said, ‘Huh! That’s nothing. I sat on an elephant when I was a week old and had lunch with the king in his palace.’
Before the admiring murmurs could die down, a fourth one said, ‘I was a month old when I flew like a bird and landed in the king’s garden. He picked me up lovingly and even let me sit with him on his throne.’
While everyone seemed to be awed by these stories, the stranger spoke up. ‘Do you four men know the king very well?’
‘Of course we do!’ they replied together. ‘Our king knows and loves us. In fact, he is proud to have supernatural beings like us in his kingdom.’
The stranger looked thoughtful. ‘That makes my task so much easier . . . You see, I work in the king’s court. Some time back, the king had called four supermen to the city in order to repair a large hole in the city walls. As you know, we use the largest, toughest stones for building these walls, and they could be lifted and put in place only by these supermen. The four asked to be paid in gold bars and the king gave them the money. But that night itself they disappeared from the palace. I have been wandering the kingdom ever since, looking for them. The king has ordered me to find the four men and bring them back to the capital to finish the work. They will also have to return the gold they ran away with. It looks like my search has finally ended. I will take you four to the king, along with the gold you stole from him . . . And I shall be the rich one now.’
By the time the stranger finished telling this amazing story, the men’s faces had turned ashen. What trouble had their lies landed them in? Together they dived at the stranger’s feet.
‘Save us!’ they wailed. ‘Those were all lies. We are just a bunch of lazy men. If you forget our stories, we promise to stop telling lies and do some honest work.’
The stranger smiled. ‘So be it. I will tell the king there are no supermen in this village. Only hardworking, ordinary men and women.’
That night itself he left the village, and the women were sure they saw a happy twinkle in his eyes as he rode away on a handsome, white horse, fit to belong to the king’s stables!
While you keep digging up more from your childhood’s collection, grab a copy of this fascinating book!
And while you’re at it, don’t forget to pre-order a copy of the master storyteller’s newest book soon to hit bookstores!
