'COLOURING' BLYTON

British-Indian writer Sufiya Ahmed is modernising the Famous Five books

- ANJULY MATHAI

Thanks to Enid Blyton, I travelled to all sorts of imaginary places in my childhood enchanted forests with pixies and fairies; animal farms and bedrooms where toys came alive at night; Malory Towers, the castle-like boarding school of lacrosse games, cliff-top rescues and midnight feasts.... Each of Blyton's book series serenaded different phases of my life, from the adventures of Brer Rabbit, which my mother read to me when I was little more than a toddler, to the Noddy series, which helped lessen my loneliness when I first joined boarding school in the third standard.

And then there was the Famous Five how I envied Julian, George, Dick, Anne and Timmy their adventures. Here I lived my insipid life of math and science classes, while they traipsed off to Kirrin Island each summer-to a world of ruined castles, hidden treasures, circling jackdaws and tall glasses of ginger-beer. A world that was foreign to me-full of strange words like 'Golly' and 'Buck up'-and yet more familiar than my own world. After all, I spent much of my childhood in it, ribbing Dick for his prodigious appetite, kicking Anne under the table for her gaffes and feeding Timmy crumbs of scones.