Jayabalan stories

J.Vasanthan.Fat is Beautiful and other Jayabalan stories. Gokulam, The magazine for children. Bharathan Publications. Chennai. 2003.

Some stories are remembered long after they have been read and enjoyed...sometimes even after decades. Gokulam, a children's magazine was staple reading for children in the 1980s. I bought the magazine for my sons, hoping that they would imbibe a love for reading (the elder did).

I loved reading Gokulam too for the hilarious stories about a King Jayabalan. You smile, you chuckle, you grin and you laugh out loud...there is only one of these options when you read the Jayabalan stories.

The stories are short, don' t have moral endings, don't admonish, don't lecture and don't sermonise. That is the biggest secret of their popularity.

They tell the story of Jayabalan, the 'fat, foolish and very vain' king of Jayabalpore, whose capital has a river called Jayabalaaru and whose coastline is along the sea called Jayabalsaagar. His minister of Defence is Kavasam and in a similar fashion, we have Ayalan, Varisumai, Ganabadi, Arivili, Solmannan, Tholaipesi, Apothikari (what a play on word, this is!) , Boilslau and so on. Each has his own eccentricities and charactersitics. Does an adult reader get the feeling that one has seen or heard these characters somewhere, someplace?

Times when Jayabalan attempts to grow hair on a bald pate, to understand science, to silence a detractor, to learn English, to understand baby talk...all these are so intensely funny that one breezes through the pages without feeling the burdens of life.

The illustrations are by the author and so humourously crafted that they make one smile . I love the single hair sprouting from the kingly pate...

The stories are a joy to read...read them in silence to oneself or read them aloud to an audience of children, they are sheer fun.