The Timeless Beastly Tales by Vikram Seth – A Review

Haven’t heard of this book? About time you did…

I still remember that wet evening as I stood on the elegant staircase of CBT on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg and animatedly discussed the new book about to be released by Viking. The year was 1992 and I was talking to Urvashi Butalia, the known fiery writer and publisher and one of the owners of Kali for Women.

She asked me with a smile on her face, ‘You must’ve heard of Beastly Tales?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ I answered with a pinch of regret for sounding so out-of-date, and added, ‘not another of the story book launches by CBT, is it?’

‘It is a fabulous poetry volume by Vikram Seth. Read the papers, Arvind.’

Well, those were the non-PC and non-internet days and we all depended solely on the daily newspapers, the weekly and the monthly magazines, and the discussions on wet staircases! So when I reached home, I took out the past week’s papers and scanned them and read whatever there was to read on the new poetry volume by Vikram Seth. The next day I called up the publisher and asked him when he would be getting copies of this book.

‘In a week’s time,’ the clerk there said.

‘Ok. I’d like to book a copy please.’

Having so many friends in the publishing circle, I got a heavenly discount of thirty percent and paid seventy rupees for a thin hard-bound volume of ten poems!

Beastly Tales from Here and There… 1992 edition

‘Is this book really worth this much?’ asked my wife as I handed her the book in the evening.

‘Poems?’ remarked Pushkin, my son, ‘I love poems.’ Yes, he was around seven years old and loved to read books… all sorts of books. The three of us did not sleep that night. I was reading… and my wife and my son listened. There were short snack breaks and tea-n-milk breaks, and there was not a single poem left unread. All ten were read aloud… many times.

My voice is probably only less than half as powerful and tone-filled as it was then, but this video has me reciting a few lines from the book. Watch the video and begin your love affair with these great poems:

What is it that is so enticing and irresistible about these poems? Are the tetrameter couplets responsible for the euphoria that these poems raise even now after so many years? Are the witty drawings by Ravi Shankar the reason behind the popularity of this 4^th book of poetry by Vikram Seth? Has the availability of audio books in Naseeruddin Shah’s voice made them ageless and immortal? Whatever be the reason, I know I still love reading these poems aloud… and my wife still loves hearing me recite these poems. We still love the ‘gibble-gabble, gibble-gabble’ of the hare, the ‘Ed, and Ned, and Fred’ of the tortoise, the hapless nightingale… and all the other charming animals in the poems in this book. Reading these poems aloud itself makes this book the world’s best for me! By the way, I also love reciting the poems of Harivansh Rai Bachhan… but we leave that to another day, another review.

We were on the subject of the charm that a Vikram-treated tetrameter might hold. Well, ‘the meter does not always gallop Dr. Seuss-style, but awkward lines are rare’ writes Stephen O. Murray in a review. Murray goes on give us a pithy bird’s eye view of the role of animals in these poems and writes that ‘the content generally makes me smile with one clever and/or resourceful animal in each tale, including a monkey (having to manage an ungrateful crocodile), a mouse (doing extended battle with a snake that swallowed its friend), a goat bluffing wolves, a cat outwitting a fox (to save the cat’s friend, a not very bright rooster), a beetle (avenging its rabbit friend cruelly decapitated by an eagle), and a frog (avenging itself on a nightingale who produced more beautiful sound). The Tragopan becomes a martyr, though its comrade, the elephant may prevail in the longest of the tales where a confederation of wildlife opposes humans building a dam and flooding their habitat.’

For the yet uninitiated, this trim little volume has ten tales in poetry and two come from India, two from China, two from Greece, two from Ukraine, and two, as the author puts it ‘came directly to me from the Land of Gup.’

The stories are all recognizable, but the versions are all Vikram’s own… he has gone and created sensual dialogue to synchronise with a tetrameter scheme, made up encounters that add zest and spice to whatever is happening within a story, concocted a modern twist wherever he was able to and presented another immortal version of commonly known tales!

During interviews, Vikram Seth has admitted that his decision to write this Jungle book fable was an impulsive one, prompted by a hot, sleepy day. He says: “I decided to write a summer story involving mangoes and a river. By the time I had finished writing ‘The Crocodile and the Monkey’, another story and other animals had begun stirring in my mind. And so it went on until all ten of these beastly tales were born”

Here is an excerpt from the first tale in the book, ‘The crocodile and the monkey’, and you have no alternative but to fall madly in love with the flowing rhythm that is there in the lines:

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”
Then Kuroop the crocodile,
Gazing upwards with a smile,
Thus addressed his monkey friend:
“Dearest monkey, in the end,
Not the fruit, but your sweet love,
Showered on us from above,
Constant through the changing years,
Slakes her griefs and dries her tears.”
(This was only partly true.
She liked love, and mangoes too.)…’

I am not surprised to have read a review on the net where one reader proudly admits that ‘no one my age would have gotten past 7th grade without parroting Seth’s ‘The Frog and the Nightingale’ in Book A of English in CBSE curriculum.’

Srikanth Mantravadi, another reader, has commented on the poetry writing talent of Vikram Seth, and writes: ‘All the bloated prose-when he writes fiction, melds into pithy turns of exquisite phrase. They are incredibly rhythmic and sing song and a pure joy to read even without the little denouements he packs in at the end.’

I remember once while we were talking about the poetry of Vikram Seth, one rather critical journalist said, ‘What’s so great about these tales? He has just borrowed them and put them in his own words. They aren’t original.’

Well, ‘the tales may be borrowed, but Seth’s authority is stamped all over. Seth’s rendition of the story still remains the same: the coaxing prowess of women and need to keep head over shoulders when in danger. With Seth’s touch, the Panchtantra tale comes out more suave and literally tastier.’ (Rakesh 2011)

Here is another excerpt from ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’, a tale that most of us know so well, and yet as you read these lines you will want to read them again and again and again… they mesmerize you, take you on a ride a strange land where the animals appear so real and the tale suddenly becomes much more readable and you murmur: ‘Let me read this just one more time!’

“After the announcer’s gun
Had pronounced that he had won,
And the cheering of the crowd
Died at last, the tortoise bowed,
Clasped the cup with quiet pride,
And sat down, self-satisfied.
And he thought: “That silly hare!
So much for her charm and flair.
So much for her idle boast.
In her cup I’ll raise a toast
To hard work and regularity.
Silly creature! Such vulgarity!
Now she’ll learn that sure and slow
Is the only way to go –
That you can’t rise to the top
With a skip, a jump, a hop
That you’ve got to hatch your eggs,
That you’ve got to count our legs,
That you’ve got to do your duty,
Not depend on verve and beauty.
When the press comes, I shall say
That she’s been shell-shocked today!
What a well-deserved disgrace
That the fool has lost this race.”
But it was in fact the hare,
With a calm insouciant air
Like an unrepentant bounder,
Who allured the pressmen round her.
“Oh Miss Hare, you’re so appealing
When you’re sweating,” said one, squealing.
“You have tendered gold and booty
To the shrine of sleep and beauty,”
Breathed another, overawed;
And Will Wolf, the great press lord
Filled a Gold cup – on a whim –
With huge rubies to the brim
Gorgeous rubies, bold and bright,
Red as cherries, rich with light –
And with an inviting grin
Murmured: “In my eyes you win.”

Rachel Redford has written in The Observer, Sunday 30 December 2001: ‘Whatever the simmering subtext, the overall mood is great fun, enlivened with character voices, from a prima donna hare to the wheedling, nasal singing of a cat.’

The poems go on and meander through every conceivable emotion that one can think of… you have all of them expressed through the economy of a poem, and that is what makes this work really brilliant. Just read these lines from ‘The Frog and the Nightingale’ and you will sympathise with ‘the poor gullible bird, completely deceived and exploited by the pompous frog, finally leading to her death’:

Trembling, terrified to fail,
Blind with tears, the nightingale
Heard him out in silence, tried,
Puffed up, burst a vein, and died.

These poems complete or in parts, have been read by a lot of us… and a lot of children all over the world are reading these lines even now as you are reading this review. It is these people who know how much this book deserves more formal recognition than it has actually received so far. There are mothers who want to read these poems out to their yet-to-be-born child, there are those who swear that this book is for all ages and for all times, and there are those who write inspired fan poetry for this book… the pictures below are proof of what I say.

Can there be a better compliment for any book?

Yet another compliment for Beastly Tales

The book inspires people to write in rhymes!

Che, a writer and analyst, writes that ‘this book would be worth its very meagre price for its Illustrations alone. Each one precedes a poem and beautifully captures its quirky characters. Although these characters are elephants and cats and wolves and mice, their souls are unmistakably human. Seth uses these timeless fables to bare our darkest side to us. There isn’t always a happy ending here and almost never a ‘moral-of-the-story’, yet there is always an amazing insight into the most bewildering of all creatures. Humans.’

The inside cover on the book in my hands begins with this sentence: ‘From the impish to the brilliantly comic, Vikram Seth’s animal fables in verse can (like Diwali sweets) be enjoyed by young and old alike.’ I will not only agree with this, but also say that it those things that are enjoyed most that need to be treasured most. The obvious implication is that it is the treasured things that deserve the loudest applause, the grandest award, and the best smile!

Beastly tales_various covers and a list of tales included in the book

Details of the book:

Title: Beastly Tales from Here and There
Author: Vikram Seth
Publisher: Viking
ISBN: 0-67-084657-0
Price (in 1992): Rs 100/- only for the Hardbound volume

A short note on Vikram Seth:

Born: 1952. Lots of people do not know that Vikram Seth did his schooling from the Doon School, Dehradun. Also studied at Oxford, Stanford, and Nanjing Universities. Been a research scholar in Economic Demography.

List of awards already received by Vikram Seth:

1983 – Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet
1985 – Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) for The Humble Administrator’s Garden
1993 – Irish Times International Fiction Prize (shortlist) for A Suitable Boy
1994 – Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) for A Suitable Boy
1994 – WH Smith Literary Award for A Suitable Boy
1999 – Crossword Book Award for An Equal Music
2001 – EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Book/Novel for An Equal Music
2005 – Pravasi Bharatiya Samman
2007 – Padma Shri in Literature & Education

The poems still fascinate me!

A winner in my hands!

Arvind Passey
07 July 2012