The Chasing Iamb

So Gaya wants to go and see snow and I am wondering...

But in the meanwhile the house is full of books I have not read and movies I have not watched. I have today before I rejoin the adult world.

As my good deed for the day let me give you a tip. Go buy a book called What Shape is an Elephant?

"Long, long ago, to the land of Iran, came travellers from faraway India. They brought with them a strange creature called an elephant, to show at the fair..."  Thus begins a familiar and lovely Rumi story.

The illustrations by the Iranian artist and writer Feeroozeh Golmuhammadi are extraordinary. When I went to a strange place in Pune to study mass communication (shame-faced giggle) I was surrounded by a particular variety of wierd people. When they saw me with a book they would ask to see the book so they could flip through for famous names or even better, pictures. If I had had this book then what fun it would have been to watch them being slowly blinded with happiness. Feeroozeh Golmuhammadi's illustrations look like what would have happened if Klimt decided to arise and go paint Mughal miniatures. The illustrations behave like a wild carnival running across the book. They look like the meals Marie and Marie ate in Daisies. Sigh.

So go now. It's from Katha and is sitting in the children's section in Crossword, a dubious place for good books to be seen in but what the hell...Go...I will wait for you.