Catching ghosts and chocolate dickie birds

CHARLIE and the Chocolate Factory is a classic children’s story. Regrettably some of us came late to discovering Roald Dahl. In my case it was well into my teens.

That didn’t mean that we were deprived. Growing up in my Bangladesh Market district in Chatsworth, we had a great tradition of storytelling.

It wasn’t quite like the Pied Piper of Hamlin gathering the children of the village under a tree and conjuring up tales, but it came fairly close to that.

Owning a physical book was fairly rare. That allowed for a rich oral tradition to flourish. My dear mother mediated the reading cultures of the East and the West with a healthy dash of her own imagination.

Nursery rhymes like Two Little Dickie Birds and Sing a Song of Sixpence sometimes took mysterious and convoluted turns.

One moment you were singing like children in England and the next they veered into a local storyline with local characters.

Not unusual when you consider how Isidingo, 7de Laan or Isibaya draws a storyline from local issues or political foibles.

Now that played havoc with a youngster’s mind, where there is a certain predictability. What it did allow for was a great sense of the fantastic to flourish.

That skill came in handy when making up excuses for unfinished homework. One could stand up in class with a straight face and say lights had to be turned off at home as the family spent the evening catching ghosts. For years I was convinced Casper the Friendly Ghost was real.

Then there was this chap called Tenaliraman who did the most amazing things. In one incarnation he was so thin that he could walk between raindrops.

In another take on that tale a riddle is posed as to how it was that in a rainstorm Tenaliraman could emerge at his destination bone dry.

One answer is that he stripped off, bundled his clothes into a ball and carried them under his arm.

Tenaliraman did such weird things that he couldn’t possibly exist. Picture my incredulity then when I discovered that Tenali Ramakrishna was a 16th century Telugu poet and court jester to the Vijayanagara emperor in what is today Andhra Pradesh.

His legend is his witty and humorous take on everyday life – not unlike Dahl, who has brought Charlie Bucket, Willy Wonka and the Oompaloompas into the popular imagination.

Charlie’s tiny house bursting with his parents and four grandparents could easily have been the crowded conditions in the six family tenements in Chatsworth.

The golden ticket has a ring with the scratch card competitions that were all the rage in the ’70s and ’80s. Even in this age of diabetes and sugar tax, who hasn’t imagined falling in a chocolate river?

Dahl also had a great talent for making up words, some of which have now weaved their way into the Oxford Dictionary. You can easily tell the well-read who drop words like delumptious, gruncious, hopscotchy, propsposterous, rotsome, squibbling, uckymucky and whoopseysplunkers.

One of my favourite lines from James and the Giant Peach is where Centipede says: “I’ve eaten many strange and scrumptious dishes in my time.”

A cautionary note: don’t confuse good reading with the scoundrel R Kelly, who styles himself as the Pied Piper of R&B and mounted his own Chocolate Factory Tour.

• Higgins promotes #Readingrevolution via Books@antiquecafe in Windermere and #Hashtagbooks in the Shannon Drive Shopping Centre, Reservoir Hills.