Vandu Mama’s Bale Balu in English: Balu the Bully

Hi folks,

Apologies! Apologies ! Apologies and more of that. (is there a free soul kind enough to copy this and paste it for 1, 67, 000 crore times for me to make it up for all the delay and disappearance from the blogosphere? If so, let me know). I was almost non existent in this part of the world and with my designing work blossoming to a new level with lots of “Happening” things actually happening, am kind of allowed to disappear.

now, i was reading my regular dose of blogs and suddenly i read THIS post from Viswa and thought of breaking my ‘vrat’ from blogging. The only problem with that wonderfully written post was that it was in Tamil language instead of the regular English. Why am saying is, these are the posts and research works should be made available to most of the foreigners to Tamil language. I strongly believe that Tamil language has failed to give the due honour to people like VanduMama, Mullai Thangarasan, Charu Nivedita etc

As today is the birthday of the greatest ever story teller for children of all ages, am going to post one of my favourite childhood stories. Now, most of you would have thought that i will be posting something like Charu the smart (Oh, no – not this charu nivedita). However, i liked Bale balu a lot more than Charu the smart. Hence one of my all time favourite episode from that story line. Iam fortunate enough to have this story line in both the languages (Tamil & English) in my collection (Bless my chithra aunt for the collection idea). before it is a tad boring with my blabbering's, Friends, countrymen and bloggers, here i present – Balu the Bully in Tamil.

Now, this particular story was published in English in the English version of Gokulam from the year 2000 onwards. Let me narrate why this particular incident was more favourite than some of the better written stories of the same series.

I was studying in the 2nd year in my UG and during the summer vocations we travelled to our Aunt’s home in Vellore and there we had my nephew named balasubramanian doing almost the same tricky things that i used to do in my younger days – a la Bale Balu. so, when everyone else was calling him bala, i started to call him balu and he was curious to know why am calling him differently and i explained to him about the Balu character with my stories and also the latest Gokulam was available in the Mani aiyyar shop (next to that big pharmacy, oops i forgot the name of the pharmacy) and this was the story which was published in that particular issue of Gokulam.

Later on, he became almost a bully just like myself. now, let me get rid of those old memories and present Balu for the 1st time in English in the blogosphere. here is the same episode as that of the Tamil version.

Now, here is a BIG thanks to a person who made my childhood sweeter than anybody else. He is my companion, my knight in shining armour, my bed time story teller and my 4 AM friend in all those days when i was growing up. Thank you Mr Vandu Mama, You are my best teacher. In fact, You are the University from which i graduated with flying colours. Thanks for everything.

New Year Special post - Another small comics

Hi folks,

now that i got an answer for the last post's queries, am recharged to do more posts of such kind. these comics stories were lesser known and hence not much of information can be shared about these. Thanks to Viswa, now i know more about deviyin kanmani magazine (even my aunt couldn't remember those stories or the books in which they appeared).

Here is one more of such kind. this book was also in our shelves with lots of dust and there was an inland letter inside this book and hence this book was used as a latter bag for more than 27 years and last week only i dusted this off and found out that there was also a small comics story in this magazine. Now, again i do not know much about the artist or for that matter the author. even about the book itself. So, the usual request is also here: kindly share more info about the book and the creators behind this story.

As a story, this is very Senti type of question whereby the son longs to be rich and the reality is something else. Sacrificing mother and change of heart fro the son is the usual trend in those stories and the same is applicable here. Today being the new year, i thought of starting this year with a post on this. have a read.

Don’t laugh, now. Have a closer look at the title and you will understand that the font used is that of the old script and not the new one (என்றல் Vs என்றால்) and also the style of panelling (without any gaps between the panels in a page) – all old copybook style.

Have a blast for this year and will be back after watching tees mar khan, today.