TO BE OR NOT TO BE JADED?

TO BE OR NOT TO BE JADED?

by Sasha Gupta

Having opened all her Christmas presents, she ran towards her most trusted confidant-her grandfather. Her tiny cherubic frame seemed to have been covered by all the goodies given by Santa Claus. But that did not stop her from going to the library or her “wonderland” as she put it.

The library was more to her than a repository for books as her love for them cemented her relationship with her old man. It was not about reading “ladybird publishers” and their myriad of illustrations but about seeing him enact and narrate the stories. These interactions were more memorable as they were not directly dramatized; they were contorted and manipulated.

In the modified version, Rumpelstiltskin was not about a girl who could spin straw into gold. It was about a queen who was infertile and in need of an heir. When challenged to guess his name, they were not Caspar, Balthazar or Shortribs like the original. They were Hironishin Furuhashi (of Olympics fame), Kagemusha (A Kurusawa masterpiece) and Lak Pak Shing (A Bengali term for lanky).This was done to excite and add humour to the Grimm’s brother story.

Rumpelstiltskin was not an exception. Every story by the Grimm’s brothers or Hans Christian Anderson or Charles Perrault received the same treatment. The above instance is probably common to every grandchild who has spent many summers with their old spectacled friends.

An interesting point to note is that each of these fairy tales have been altered a thousand times. For instance, Perrault’s version of Red Riding Hood ends with her being killed by the wolf. However, the Grimm Brother’s version has a happy ending with a hunter saving her. When one looks at a fairy tales’ history one realizes that it has been revised many a times with the aim of sanitizing it and making it more palatable. The version of Sleeping Beauty we all know might not have been so popular if it had not been changed. The original, describes her rape and impregnation by a king instead of being saved by a Prince. A story like that could take away a child’s innocence as William Blake’s Songs of Innocence describes “innocence”.

Seeing a grandfather improvise them would have seemed more random and with the intention of entertaining as mentioned above. However, one realizes that the reason to have stories with happy endings arises from the need to maintain their “innocence”. It is an attempt to make them see the world with rose tinted glasses. It is an opportunity to escape the harsh realities that they are entrapped in.

Therefore, justifying her eagerness to jump into his lap and listen to him narrate Cinderella (sanitized version). It is their time to escape and go to “The land of Happily Ever After” and find that pair of glass shoes. The aim is not be jaded and corrupted by the evil world outside.