Angst In My Pangst

Something’s terribly wrong. The Ocean of Notions is being poisoned, and this means that all Stories, and the Art of Storytelling are drying up in the land of Gup. Things do not bode well for our storyteller Rashid Khalifa, who is losiing the Gift of the Gab, and his son Haroun has to come to the rescue. He has to journey to the perilous land of shadows and silence, the land of Chup, and stop the evil Khattam-Shud.

Somehow, the storyline sounds familiar, eh?

Been ages since I finished a book that made me sit back and grin, grin and grin more.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie. Nostalgia time: Target magazine gave a brilliant review of the book, once upon a time. (I dunno why, but I pity the kids of today, they don’t have a magazine that grows along with them. Target and me, we were born just a year apart, and we stayed together until I was fifteen and an atrocity named “Teens Today” hit the stands. Egad!) But of course, the thought of finding the book in Guwahati was, simply put, ha-ha-ha. Saw the book for the first time in Calcutta, but of course, it was a hardcover version, and well out of my budget.

Then, when I was in the third year, 33Man tapofied the book from this store in Chennai. But no, I wasn’t in the mood for a “happy” book just then, so I decided to skip it.

Last week, I found the hardcover at dear ol’ MR Book Stall.

Finished it in one sitting. Finished it two days ago, in fact.

The smile never leaves my face.

Haroun Khalifa. Rashid Khalifa. The orbitting-earth-at-the-speed-of-light moon of Kahani. Princess Bat-Cheat, whose singing sends shivers down every spine, and her suitor Prince Bol. Iff, the water-genie and Butt, the hoopoe, Haroun’s friends and companions on his journey. Goopy and Bagha, the two fishes who always speak in rhyme (and who come to the rescue every time).

This seems like a book tailor-made for Indian children, with puns and in-jokes galore in Hindi. At the same time, I couldn’t help but notice all the satirical connotations – the powere of Free Speech and Democracy over a society where communication is strictly regulated.

Russian children’s books, that were published by Raduga and Mir publishers once upon a time, had this same effect on me, I enjoyed reading them SO much, inspite of the Socialist overtones….some of them were SO blatant. But what the heck? They made me laugh, and I can still go back to them and bust my guts with laughter.

Thank you, Haroun, and thank you, Mr Rushdie.

By the way, did you know what makes Kahani go around the earth so fast? Pssst, it’s something called P2C2E. Short for “Process Too Complicated To Explain”.