Beastly Tales - and a poem

I read out Vikram Seth's Beastly Tales from here and there to Puttachi recently. We don't read much of poetry together, and this was a change. Some of the stories were familiar fables, from Panchatantra or Aesop,  with a different spin on it, and we didn't know the others. Initially, all the stories ended not very pleasantly, and though we were having fun with the reading, Puttachi wasn't very happy.

But by the time we reached The Cat and the Cock, things had become better. The repetitive nature of some stanzas in The Cat and the Cock caused us great enjoyment, and we repeated them together and swayed to the rhythm and the cadence.

At about this time, we started speaking in couplets in general conversation, taking care to rhyme the last two words, resulting in a lot of merriment.

The Elephant and the Tragopan was my personal favourite, as it beautifully explained real-life problems of the world - about man assuming that the earth and everything in it exists only for his benefit, and not caring about animals and their habitat. I think this will be a great introduction to children about the danger to ecology due to human greed. It didn't have a very happy ending, though.

Also, some of the humour and the issues in all the poems were a little too much for Puttachi to understand. I explained what I could, but I think that an adult or an older child will enjoy it better.

Anyway, the greatest achievement of this book, for me, was that it inspired Puttachi to write her first poem. Here it is:

At the Sea

My hair
Rustles in the air
I am sailing into sea
As blue as can be.

The waves splash against the ship
Seagulls squawk and nip,
Oh, wonderful is the sea,
As blue as can be.

The waves are so high,
So high! Oh my!
Darker and darker gets the sea,
But it is still as blue as can be.

The ship sails to land,
I swing down onto the sand,
I look back at the sea,
As blue as can be.