JOKERTALK

BY KAVITA KANE

The other day I mentioned that as a kid one of my scariest moments was when I actually got down to finish reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. My open sentiment elicited hoots of raucous giggles from my daughters. “Ninny!’ they teased, amusement glittering bright in their laughing eyes. “How can anyone be scared of Narnia?” The older one shook her head unbelievingly; a small contemptuous smirk pinned on her face. For her, the C S Lewis novel is not a book but a supplement to the magnificent movie she wants to go for over and over again, to relive bravura moments. My trepidations linger – I still haven’t gone to watch the film.

Why was I scared? Enid Blytons were gobbled up within hours of rapt fascination but this slim novel took me over a month to get over, much to the chagrin of my classmates, who were queued up, awaiting their turn. “How’s it?” the next-in-line had excitedly asked me. “Nice,” I had mumbled vaguely and placed the book softly in her hands. That was one book I refused to buy to add to my much-envied personal library.

I was the proverbial bookworm, devouring two ‘books’ per day – that was my weekend pastime and a vacation habit. At eleven, I was fonder of the Five Find-outers than Famous Five whose series I was one of the first one to finish. My little, limited world was busily populated with Galliano’s circus animals, Mallory Towers, St Clare’s, Jack and Kiki, the parrot (from the Secret series) and even Chalet school, the wonder-brat William, Treasure Island, Huck Finn with Tom Sawyer, Uncle Tom, Tom and Maggie and the heart-stirring Philip Wakem (from Mill on the Floss), the Swiss family Robinson, those escaping Children of the New Forest and my everlasting favourites – Jo and Beth March and Laurie (from Little Women) and Elizabeth Bennet with the deliciously haughty Darcy (Pride and Prejudice) who remains my hero till date! And in this midst came a slender, mustard-yellow book - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - which soon became such a huge rage at school that if you hadn’t read that one, you were cruelly certified an idiot! I did - thrilled and curious - but unlike the other books I devoured greedily, there was no repeat read.

But why was I so scared? Almost twenty five years later, I have the answer. This was one book that was pure, unadulterated, unmitigated fantasy – a world of magnificent make-believe which was overwhelming and awesome but where my eleven-year old logic hated Edmund more than the White Witch, for turning treacherous and sly and betraying his siblings. Yes, Uncle Tom was grim, The Mill of the Floss tragic, The Five Find-outers happy and adventurous – but they were all real-life characters who lived in a fictitious, but realistic, rational, pragmatic world. I was ready to live in their world of fun and frolic, quest and escapade, pain and suffering but Aslan, however majestic, was too tremendous and breath-taking for my poor, impecunious imagination! The wardrobe was a symbol of my utter fright – that looming piece of stolid furniture through which one could slip dangerously into another, indefinite, strange world I did not want to be a part of…

although my 11-year old daughter might take me back to Narnia again.