Of Beastly Tales from here and there

Vikram Seth has written many literary masterpieces - from the Golden Gate to the Suitable Boy. 

However, one book, which he published earlier in his career, I feel, hardly got the recognition that it deserved. The book, titled 'Beastly Tales from here and there' is a book of poetry - 10 animal fables from countries such as India, Greece, Ukraine etc. 

The book is a sparkling display of wit, imagination, humor and lucid language, all through words that literally flow from his pen, match beautifully in couplets and leave one with a sense of awe and wonder at the ease at which he has penned down these tales.

His characters are brilliantly etched out; the animals are humanized and endowed with the virtues and vices of ordinary humans - vanity, foolishness, jealousy and the like.

Just as a sample, I'll talk about 2 of the poems here:

1. Hare and the Tortoise:

Everybody knows the old fable about the hare and the tortoise which preaches the moral of 'slow but steady wins the race'. In Vikram Seth's poem, his hare is a flighty, charming, luxury loving, empty-headed, attention-seeking lady while the tortoise is slow, calculative, hard-working and measured in his approach towards everything in life. 

He brings out the difference in the characters of the two protagonists beautifully in the following two verses:

He introduces the hare thus:

When at noon the hare awoke

She would tell herself a joke

Squeal with laughter, roll about

Eat her egg and sauerkraut,

Then pick up the phone and babble

-'Gibble-gabble, gibble-gabble'-

As for the tortoise, he says:

But the tortoise, when he rose,

Daily counted all his toes

Twice or three times, to ensure

They were neither less or more.

Next he'd tally the account

In his savings bank account.

Then he'd very carefully

Count his grandsons: one, two, three

As in the fable, they challenge each other in the race. What happens in the race is not the key point. The Tortoise wins the race as he did in the original fable. But it’s the end of the poem where Vikram Seth shows his mastery with an ironical twist. In a brilliant satire aimed at the modern life, that often gives more importance to style than substance and makes celebrities out of people who may not have achieved much in life, he says,

...the hare

Suddenly was everywhere

Stories of her quotes and capers

Made front page in all the papers-

....

Soon she saw her name in lights,

Sold a book and movie rights,

While a travel magazine 

Bought the story, sight unseen,

Of her three hour expedition 

To the wood called Mushroom Mission

2. The crocodile and the monkey:

In the Crocodile and the Monkey, a tale about betrayal of friendship which is as applicable today as it was ages ago, the crocodile and the monkey are good friends. It starts thus:

On the Ganga’s greenest isle,

Lived Kuroop, the Crocodile,

Greeny-brown with gentle grin,

Stubby legs and scaly skin,

The crocodile is used to fulfil every whim of his beloved wife. And his monkey friend keeps throwing mangoes from the river-bank for him to take to his wife:

All along the river-bank

Mango trees stood rank on rank,

And his monkey friend would throw

To him as he swam below

Mangoes gold and ripe and sweet

As a special summer treat

“Crocodile, your wife I know

Hungers after mangoes so

That she’d pine and weep and swoon,

Mango-less in burning June,”

But that's not enough for the wicked wife who suddenly fancies a taste for the monkey heart and says to her husband, Kuroop.

"Scalykins, since we've been wed,
You've fulfilled my every wish
Dolphins, turtles, mangoes, fish
But now I desire to eat
As an anniversary treat,
Something sweeter still than fruit,
Sugar-cane or sugar-root;
I must eat that monkey's heart."

But unlike an usual Hindi film where one friend sacrifices everything, even his life, for his friend, Vikram Seth's monkey is in no mood to sacrifice anything. So, in the end, after leaning of his friend's betrayal, he says:

"Tell your scaly wife to try
Eating her own wicked heart
If she has one for a start
....
Here's my parting gift" He threw
Mangoes squishy, rotten, dead
Down upon the reptile's head,
Who, with a regretful smile,
Sat and eyed him for a while.

Note how in the end he calls Kuroop just the reptile and talks about his regretful smile which leaves no room for any more words with the friend he had tried to betray.

Now, this is one book, I would love 6 year old daughter to read, and I would love to read again myself and lose myself in the world of Vikram Seth's imagination.