Advance Booking

FOREVER CHARMING

You know those books which give you a really warm fuzzy feeling. Anne of Green Gables is one such book. I first read it a couple of months back (don't be shocked, I'm quite behind on my classics), but it struck me as a very Christmassy book. It’s a book that makes you happy, and also stays with you long after you finish reading it.

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert of Green Gables in Avonlea have decided to adopt a boy, but imagine their surprise when they find a girl waiting for them. The girl is no ordinary girl; she is the imaginative eleven year-old Anne Shirley, who on the drive from the station to the Gables, talks more than Matthew did in his entire life! After some initial hesitation, the Cuthberts decide to keep her, and thus a ray of sunshine enters their lives. The ray does get into numerous scrapes, is dreamy and scatter-brained, but wins the heart of everyone she meets.

Anne is one of the best heroines I have come across in a long, long time. She is highly imaginative, a chatterbox, vivacious and cheerful. I loved her flights of imagination and her honesty. She is uncomplicated, takes life as it comes and opens her mind to a variety of experiences, both real and imagined. She sees beauty in even the most mundane of things, enjoys the little things of life with as much enthusiasm as you would enjoy the big ones. You instinctively know you’d be great friends with her if you met her. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading this book, especially in a time when the other books I had at hand were irritating, to say the least. The book has an old-worldly charm to it, so different from the current whiny teen lit. I can’t say I wish we could be back in the olden times, but I dearly wish we could have some of the writers of those times back. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the book, which captures the essence of Anne.

“ ‘The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted Wood?’
‘The spruce wood over the brook,’ said Anne in a whisper.
‘Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?’
‘Nobody,’ confessed Anne. ‘Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so— so—COMMONPLACE. We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it’s so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there’s a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn’t go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.’ ”

CHOCO-MAGIC

I have a zillion books in my TBR and I go and read a book I’ve read so many times. Why? Because I love this book so much; it was, and still is, one of my favorite books.

Charlie Bucket is a poor boy living with his parents and four grandparents in the same town as Willy Wonka, the most famous chocolatier in the world. When Willy Wonka announces a never-before opportunity for five children to visit his Chocolate Factory and learn his secrets, Charlie’s family pool in to buy him a Wonka’s Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight for his birthday, but there is no Golden Ticket in there. But one cold winter day, Charlie finds a fifty-penny in the snow and uses it to buy a slab of chocolate, and lo and behold, it turns out to have a Golden Ticket. Thus begins Charlie’s journey into Wonka’s factory, a paradise of chocolaty delights, a trip that will bring him more than just a lifetime of chocolates.

If there is anything I can say against this book, it is that it made me HUNGRY! I mean, with all those delicious chocolates popping up at every instant, how can my mouth not water?

Mr Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change colour every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips. He can make chewing-gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds' eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little pink sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue.

Is that all? No, you have Hot Icecreams for Cold Days, Fizzy Lifting Drinks, Cavity-Filling Caramels, Wriggle-Sweets that wriggle delightfully in your tummy, and much much more. The book is an exercise in creativity, it’s a joy to read Dahl’s imagination run amok as he creates this fantastic little world every child (and adult) will love. I read that Dahl lived close to a Cadbury factory and dreamed of creating a new chocolate that would win the appreciation of Mr. Cadbury himself. Looks like he put all that inventiveness in this book. However, I must include a statutory warning. After reading this book, you will suffer serious hunger pangs and an urge to run to the store and buy up all the chocolates on display. Read at your own risk!

But this book is not all fun and games. Dahl subtly inserts some social messages into the story. He warns parents against spoiling their children sick, against giving in to their every whim, whether it be food or television. There is an air of a favorite uncle dispensing out wisdom to little kids, the feeling of him taking you on his lap and telling you how to be a better person. In a non-preachy way, he gets his message across. The book is as much about morals as it is about chocolates; it tells you that you can triumph all odds if you retain your values. A scrumptious book, a gem in children's literature.

SANDS OF TIME

This is one of my favorite Bengali books, one I read after I had just learnt to read Bengali. It has a special place on my bookshelf- a book I read again and again.

Pradosh Mitter a.k.a. Feluda is a private investigator hired by Mr. Dhar to protect his son, Mukul. Mukul is a young boy who has visions of his past life, and Dr. Hajra, an eminent parapsychologist deciphers the place of his dreams to be Rajasthan, and takes him there, hoping to shed light on such matters. Feluda, along with his cousin Topshe, travel to Rajasthan, and thus begins a adventure in the golden sands.

This is a really enjoyable detective story, simple in its plot yet elegant in its construction. There is a wealth of information and I learned a lot about Rajasthan. The writing is humorous, though many jokes are best rendered in Bengali, and I am not very sure how they can be translated without losing the essence of the joke. Ray's Feluda books are a must-read for lovers of detective fiction and if you can get your hands on a copy, please do read them. A movie has also been made on this book by Ray himself, and captures its essence well on celluloid.