What children read….

The children of today are being brought up on a diet of Harry Potter and Superman. The cartoons they love to watch are animated versions of violence – the background is Space and spaceships. Gone are the days when they had Aesop’s Fables or Grimm’s Fairy tales or the Panchantra or Thakur-maar Jhuli (basket of stories courtesy the Grandmother). Those were the days of demons and Davids and Goliaths, of the beautiful Princess who could be awakened only by the magic touch of a lovely Prince who had to battle his way through innumerable obstacles o reach her and of Cinderella; it was the era of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, of Little Red Riding Hood, of Aladdin, Gulliver and Rip Van Winkle, of Alice in Wonderland with the mad hatter for company. They were works of fiction but had storylines that appealed to the kids as well as their elders. The charm they exuded got practically everyone entangled in their webs. Each of the stories carried a message, these are relevant even today. Unfortunately, the fast world of today has robbed the kids of those wonderful moments of story telling – there are hardly any grandmothers around who have the expertise to narrate the details in a way that can send shivers down the spine.
But one thing that I am sure of is that my Kids will be bestowed with this fortune as they will have their paternal and maternal grannys to narrate them classic old stories. Times have changed and so have we. However I believe that a few thing never change and never lose the charm in life.