Bedtime stories -1- Ek Baccha Tha

I have always loved spending time with kids. Even when I was a grown up child, I would play with little children. In a public gathering I prefer to interact with children. It gives me unparalleled joy! Their approach to a situation, their thoughts about various happenings marvel me. This pleasure continued as I was blessed with two twins born an year apart. A girl and a boy! I would talk to them even when they were supposed to understand only mother's touch. I think it's only normal to babble, lisp or stutter when one talks to a small baby. Gradually I could notice that they started fixing their gaze on my face as I spoke. I understood that they were really listening. That is when I started narrating stories to them. I always wanted that my stories should be simple, the milieu should be basic for a child to enjoy, but I wished that each time their should be a novel element in them. My earlier stories were only few sentences, which would evolve as they would be repeated with addition of new content. As kids grew they started developing interest in the content of the stories. While earlier, my stories would last only as long as they finished their bottle of milk and passed to slumber, later, kids would look forward to what happened next and remain awake after finishing their bottles. That, in fact, was a problem as it needed a fresh effort to put them to sleep. So I would try winding up the story before the milk vanished from the bottle. The earliest story that I can recall is narrated below. It even developed a climax in its reruns.

" Ek baccha tha. Wo bohat pyara tha. Wo doodu peeta tha. (Repeated umpteen number of times)... (then content started getting added)

....wo sussu karta tha, wo potty karta tha ( actually added because of their doings)......

(Now kids started getting bored and looked forward to newer content.....)

.....ek baar wo jungle mein gaya, wahan wo rone laga. Tabhi wahan ek hiran aaya, usne poocha,'तुम क्यों रो रहे हो? वो रोते-रोते बोला, 'भूखी लगी है'! हिरन बोला 'बस इतनी सी बात! बतायो तुम्हें क्या चाहिए है? मेरे जंगल में बहुत फ़्रूट्स हैं!' बच्चा बोला, 'लेकिन मैं तो सिर्फ़ duddhu पीता हूँ!' हिरन सोचने लगा वो क्या होता है? फिर वो बोला 'तुम मेरे साथ चलो। हमारे जंगल में एक ऐसा जादुई तालाब है जिससे सबकी भूख मिट जाती है'। फिर वो दोनो उस तालाब के पास गए। वो तालाब एक दम साफ़ था और उसका पानी एक दम सफ़ेद (as I had safety issues in my mind about a child drinking from a pond.....suddenly I realized that it was time to wind up...) बच्चे ने उस तालाब से पानी पिया और ख़ुश हो गया और बोला 'अर्रे! इसे ही तो हम duddhu बोलते हैं, ये तो dudhu का तालाब है! And thus evolved the title of this story... "Dudhu Ka talaab".

As kids started talking, they would get irritated at the very mention of "ek Baccha tha" and they didn't want the story with the same set up with little twists. They probably needed something more complex as their brain was getting developed. And that is how evolved the series of stories, that started with the setting of Jungle Book, but I wanted to weave in the folk tales, mythology, historical content and yet keep it realistic and new. So came the story of 'Virbhadra'........