I'm not sure how this conversation began, but I think it had something to do with Manthara.
We were sitting in the garden when my son announced, "If you're bad you get a hunchback. Like Manthara."
"Hmm. So you mean everyone who's bad has a hunchback?" I reeled of a few names and asked him if they had hunchbacks.
Of course he said no. I suggested that it was a good idea somtimes to tell a story where the outside of people is a lot like what's in their heads. But what if the outside is nothing like what the person is like, I asked him.
The bench was giving off all the accumulated heat of the day and I found myself telling him a highly potted version of Dorian Gray. At the end of it, my son looked rather puzzled.
"I don't understand, " he said. "Is it magic?"
"What do you think?"
After a minute, "I think the painting is a Horcrux."
Sigh.
Friday, May 16, 2008
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6 comments:
that boy needs a blog.
That is funny..
Actually, I am not sure Manthara was bad in the first place..I am pretty sure there was a reason for what she did that was rooted in some past injustice..but we never get to hear her story.
I was following your post all right until I came to the Horcrux part. I had to look it up. Sigh.
(I couldn't bear to read any more Harry Potter after the first 4-5 books).
The other example you can tell him (of a person's outside not being same as inside) is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No Horcruxes are involved :)
Lekhni: When I was nine, I had no doubt that Manthara was a "bad" person. (Maybe I watched too many Ram Lilas.) But such thinking is hardly childish or simplistic, no?
But this is excellent! I approve wholeheartedly of your son.
(As an aside, Four Ways To Forgiveness is available in a Delhi bookshop for rs 400 or so. Do you want it?)
The all-pervasive Hari Puttarisation of literature!
km: isn't one in the family enough?!
lekhni: you need to read harry potter, if for no other reason than to see how terrible it got towards the end.
And ya, he's got some weird version of Dr. J and Mr. H from, of all things, Tom and Jerry. I can see I have to step in.
Aishwarya: Mailed you! Of course I want it!
Dipali: I know. Sigh. I mean, how does The Boy Who Lived compare to the Dorian Gray, right?
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