As an eleven year school girl living in a nicely maintained Township at Baroda, guess what I did during Summer hols and Diwali hols ?
Collect a group of friends (all happened to boys then), go cycling, sit in a garden and have packed lunches and ride back home. so you might ask, whats so great about that ? everyone does all that as kids.
Well I and my friends did some more mad things all bitten by the famous five bug.
In a perfectly safe colony guarded by watchmen, we would look out for shady looking characters (in those days it would be the gardener maintaining the township lawn or the laborers doing repair work ) and follow them. When they would enter some office or get up to go home, our faces would fall.
We would come back home.
do the same thing next day, just look out for ugly, dirty men and keep following them just to pick some mystery on the way.
Did I mention we also did some digging (the ground for treasure) whenever we could and tried very hard to get excited at the silliest stone or paper that we found from there ?
Not to forget our weekly meetings taking place at my neighbour’s garage which had password restrictions. Only the kids yelling out the correct passwords could enter.
We also had my dog (Rambo) who always followed us everywhere. I thought we were really like the Five. The only excitement we missed out was on not having an Island and some real mysteries.
the famous five and the characters had so much impact in our lives that we literally breathed them.
We even decided who played what character from the book.
Often the sensible, calm, intelligent boy in our group had to be Julian. Of course he had to be about 13 years of age as well :)
I was almost always George. I didnt have any Kirrin Island to myself but I was defly every bit a tomboy, always picking fights with other boys, doing very badly in Maths (like the real George) and I had the trump card, ’’ Rambo the dog.’’
Anne often was the completely ignored girl next door who only liked to join us for verbal discussions. She always ran away( scared !!!) when we told her of our crazy plans to go cycling outside the colony, or go chasing the suspicious gardener.
our Anne would then come up with girlie excuses like she had to play with her other girlie friends or help mummy in the kitchen and often disappear from the scene of Action.
I thought she was worse than the real one ;)
But we didnt care. Julian, Dick, George and Timothy were always there.
Sigh ! Famous Five . It was one book that took us to a flight of fancy, to a new world of adventure, fun and excitement.
All we did was talk about who was who, where to go, whom to follow, when to have meetings and how to get all the latest books from the library.
We grew up as time passed, became 16-17, completely stopped playing together or even meeting. We were either giving our board exams or in the first year of college. At times some of us we met and laughed at how silly we had been as kids, trying to ape the Famous Five .
Today I look back at them as beautiful, innocent memories.
Famous Five offered a lot to me as a child.
And thank God , I was never watching the cable T.V then or surfing the net or playing video games trapped indoors.
I had the treasure of Famous Five books which added life to my fun filled school days, made me the adventurous, fun loving and outdoor person I am today.
truly, Its been one of my favorite books ever.