young fare
Playful mischief
Gaurav Kanthwal

Lord Ganesha’s Feast of Laughter
by Meera Uberoi. Puffin Books, New Delhi. Pages 112. Rs 160.

Lord Ganesha’s Feast of Laughter contributes short stories and anecdotes of Hindu Lord Ganesha to the genre of children’s literature. This book comes in the domain of imaginative literature yielding pleasure particularly to the children of 8-12 years of age. It introduces various details of Lord Ganesha’s life, like how he got his elephant head, his mount, his brides, how he created tabla and other interesting anecdotes to its young readers. The universal figure of Ganesha and events related to him call for and even strengthen human motives. How Ganesha Made the Poor Man Rich, The Frog Devotee and Ganesha and Little Nambi by far are the best stories with a strongly marked moral flavour and ethical values hidden in them. They possess human values, which are abiding in nature with an appeal of warm and lively touch.

Uberoi’s conversational style creates a dramatic atmosphere to enchant children with the stories of mythology .The stories have been well chosen to bring out themes, which are easy to understand.

However, some of the stories are too brief to evoke children’s imagination and somehow fall short of catching the imagination with their dramatic beauty .The paucity of rich descriptive details doesn’t exploit the curiosity of a child.

The recurrence of difficult words obstructs the smooth reading and causes hindrance in deriving pleasure. One cannot afford to be impervious to the importance of simplified, paraphrased or advanced explanation of words in children’s literature, which is one of the pre-requisite of this genre. The title of the book proclaims a feast of laughter for its young readers but humor remains subdued due to hurried narration in all stories.

Playful mischief of Lord Ganesha, comic predicament based on an attitude of sympathetic acceptance of the human predicament form the basis of humour and pathos in this book.

The poor quality of illustration is another major weakness of this book. Line drawings/ sketches in some stories are mediocre. Illustrations play a major role in making a book acceptable among children as seen in the works of D.G. Mukherjee, Abanindranath Tagore, and Sukumar Ray in the past.

Nevertheless, the book addresses a serious concern of bridging the gap between urban and rural children by taking up a universal subject like mythology.

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