Three's a crowd!

Abhay’s school had barely reopened after Dassera vacations when it closed down for Diwali...again! I mean seriously…….why do these kids have so many holidays….that too two days before Diwali? With schools declaring holidays so often, they are hardly a bankable childcare option.  Without home support in the form of family or hired help, it looks as if there are no easy answers to childcare concerns in India too!  Anyway, with schools closed all over Bangalore and two of Abhay’s closest cousins visiting us, ours is mad house of three musketeers – aged 9,7 and 5!! I need not get specific as to who is aged nine, seven or five as when they get together – age is just a number and boys will after all be boys! J

So in order to temper down the boisterous boys, I was on the lookout for some quiet activity and sure enough, I turned to books. I recently discovered a wonderful series called the Baby Bahadur series authored by Radhika Chadha and illustrations by Priya Kurien. A couple of weeks ago, I had read “Im so sleepy” – the first in the series. Abhay loved it enough for me to hunt for the others in the series. One of my readers even suggested another story revolving around these adorable animal characters. So I had these boys tune to the tales from the land of Baby Bahadur. In the hope of getting them to do the same, I read “Snoring Shanmugam” – a book published in three languages – English, Kannada and Hindi. Not being able to find the English version, I tried my hand at reading the Kannada book –“Gorakegara Shanmugam”. Though it had been a while since I read the Kannada script, I must say that I didn’t let my school Kannada teacher down!:-)

Anyway, this is the story of Shanmugam, the lion supposed to be the king of the jungle, who spends most of his day, sleeping. As if that is not enough, Shanmugam is also infamous for his loud snores – khhorrhrrh……. and breathing out sounding like ‘phsheew”! Unable to carry on with this noisy sleepy habit, all the animals decide to put an end to Shanmugam’s snores louder than his roars. With the help of mother elephant, they turn Shanmugam sideways that stops his snoring. But a danger lurking in the forest gets all the animals to retrace their steps and rather rejoice in his snoring. Thank God for Snoring Shanmugam, he inspired many more to the same!