Monday, March 19, 2007

I picked up a Gerald Durrell, from at cart on D.V.G Road. We'd read about him during school. I remember it as it was a pleasant read but, i don't recollect the story.

The book that i possess is 'The aye-aye and I'. I guess, most of his books talk about his journeys into deep forests, in search of a particular animal. This book s the name suggests, puts down his quest for the aye-aye. An animal which belongs to the group of lemurs, which is restricted to the island of Madagascar.

It has a couple of other animals like the fosas, lemurs, giant jumping rats and the ploughshare tortoises. Co-incidently these are endangered, and the author strives to locate them and breed them elsewhere.

Irrespective of whether one understands biology or not, the book provides good material Moreso, as the book is flooded with good-natured humor. I've had my share of giggles, laughs, smiles when travelling between home and college, when reading at home or at college.

Excerpts:

' Faint puffs of smoke wafted through the door that led to the kitchen, carryng a reassuring smell of food. On the tables, two cats sat folded up like pincushions in the extraordinary way that cats have........ From behindthe kitchen door, a bevy of tiny, curly-haired children, clad in tattered clothes, watched us with black eyes the size of eggcups, over-awed at this invasion of strange vazaha and their incomprehrensible unit. We must have looked lke visitors from Mars to them.'

* vazaha is foreigner in Malagasy(the native tongue)

' To say that i was in a quandry would be an understatement. The doors and furniture in Madagascar all seem to be made out of a form of wood that in wieght and consistency resembles granite, so it was impossible for me to do a James Bond and break the door down by charging it - I would only have dislocated my shoulder. '

PS: Links are attached.

2 comments:

Shiv said...

Mouna,

This reminded me of Purnachandra Tejaswi and his 'Karvaalo'.

In Karvaalo, the search is for the flying chameleon..right?

mouna said...

yes shiv, his writings are so simple and yet they provide so much fun.