Pangs of nostalgia… with memories of childhood books…

Best of Blyton: Famous Five, Secret Seven

My cousin’s son’s final exams just got over, and before he could heave a sigh of relief, he has been deposited in Brilliant Tutorials for preparing him to face IIT-JEE. When I resisted, These three years of life are crucial for him, he cannot afford to get distracted, declared my cousin firmly. Probably she is right, but I am glad I was not born in the midst of all this mad rush… For me and my brother, summer vacations meant lazy hours of reading when the sun goes up, and sweet hours of daydreaming when it was time for the moon.

As most kids do, we also started with Enid Blyton, the Goddess of children’s books. My brother, always a dreamer, never ended a book with its last page. He would dream about or even put himself in one of the characters’ shoes, and lived a book for more than a month after he has read it. Born out of his fantasy after reading mysteries of Famous Five and Secret Seven, was the group called the Super Six, consisting of a set of friends nominated by my brother, especially those he could easily boss over. I could hardly read the books that my brother, a good five years elder to me, thrust on me. But I knew [as also my brother] that there was always a sister attached to the main leader of the group, whose only duty was to act sweet and be cute; so I was happy that my position was secure.

The fist step was to rename ourselves: Hari became Harry, and Anu became Anne; my brother insisted that our parents call us by our new names, and encouraged boycotting by not responding to our maiden names. As the group became more popular among kids in the locality, thanks to my brother’s marketing skills, we landed up becoming the Terrific Thirteen towards the end of the week. We were a completely organized group; we gathered [of course only after saying the password at door] everyday sharp at 11 am, in the store room in the terrace of our house; [my brother made the extra effort to make it dingy, to bring in the effect, and I always kept away from it except when accompanied by my brother, who in my opinion, was the only person who could face anything/anybody with unflinching grit in life] we were all very business-like carrying a notepad and pencil; and we waited patiently for a mystery to pop up from the corners of one of the most un-happening, peaceful outskirts of Chennai.

And then the much-awaited came. A group member’s brother’s bicycle got stolen. Boy, were we thrilled! My brother, feeling very important as he always did, made all the investigations alone, and in the end, handed over a copy of the specifications in his neat handwriting, which shone more this time given the gravity of the situation, to each of us. Our main suspect was the watchman across the street at the new building construction, simply because we didn’t like him; he smelt strange, and his family wasn’t happy. We followed him “surreptitiously” everywhere, to wherever we could… Two days passed, and on one such following escapade, we saw him go into a mango grove, where apparently the security was his friend. Confident that the friend was also an accomplice in the theft, the strong-in-body-and-heart members of the group, inclusive of my brother, who wanted to be a part of the closing ceremony of the episode of the The Mystery of the stolen cycle, jumped the walls of the grove compound, only to realize after they did that it was not only guarded by a man but also by a couple of watchdogs. The rest is history. Stealing it from Bryan Adams, Those were the best days of my life...