COIMBATORE: I got hold of Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals when I was about 11-12 years old. What first caught my attention was not the description of the landscape or of the animals and insects. I was fascinated by the family – the way Larry spoke to his mother, the mother’s casual acceptance of Gerry wandering around Corfu collecting animals by the dozen, Margo’s affairs of the heart... The descriptive passages had an insidious charm. You could actually visualise what he was talking about.
Take this one for instance: “Treading water and peering down, we could see below the shining narrow fronds of green and black weeds growing close and tangled, over which we hung like hawks suspended in air above a strange woodland.” Or this description of scorpions: “...a little black scorpion an inch long, looking as though he were made out of polished chocolate. They were weird-looking things, with their flattened, oval bodies, their neat crooked legs, the enormous crab-like claws, bulbous and neatly jointed as armour, and the tail like a string of brown beads ending in a sting like a rose-thorn.”
On a more personal front, I don’t think any other book has gotten me into more trouble than this one did. The first time was when I tried to talk to my mum like Larry did. I had treasured two of Larry’s pithy comments to his mother: “You’re looking more decrepit and hag-ridden every day ...and your children look like a series of illustrations from a medical encyclopaedia.” The other: “You’re a horrible old woman and I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before.” I thought it was cool, but my mum didn’t. I should have known it wouldn’t work. My parents, who had till then left me alone to read whatever I wanted, suddenly decided to conduct an inspection of my bookshelf. I lost quite a few treasures and also realised taught me that what works in one family may be considered quite off in another.
Luckily for me my local library had more than one copy of the book – and its sequels Birds, Beastsand Relatives and The Garden of Gods – and I spent many a happy hour with the Durrell family and their collection of eccentric friends. My brother, who had a yen for PJs, took Theodore Stephanides’ terrible puns to heart and came out with worse ones.
Slowly, with many re-readings, the magic of Durrell’s language began to draw me in further. One of my favourite passages was the chapter titled “The World in a Wall”. Imagine seeing multiple landscapes in a simple brick wall: he talks of “the roofs of a hundred tiny toadstools, red, yellow, and brown, showed in patches like villages on the damper portions” and “forests of small ferns sprouted from cracks in the shady places, drooping languidly like little green fountains”. His descriptions of food would lead to raids on the kitchen, which were not just frowned upon but actively discouraged.
But what was one to do when you’re reading about “cakes squatting on cushions of cream (and) toast in a melting shawl of butter”.
And his tutors! How many times have I rued the fact that none of my teachers did interesting things like shooting stray cats, or practising fencing or kept birds? Imagine a tutor like George who took the trouble to find out the names of all the elephants in Hannibal’s army? Or one like Kralefsky who could forget hours of lessons while taking care of his birds?
Of course, you could always say you were doing ornithology. As a kid, I had a naive faith in the written word. Imagine the disillusionment when I found out that the events were not wholly true. For example, Larry did not live with his family; he lived with his wife who is left out of the book completely. But I did feel a little better when I saw Lawrence Durrell’s comment – “This is a very wicked, very funny, and I’m afraid rather truthful book; the best argument I know for keeping thirteen-year- olds at boarding-schools and not letting them hang about the house listening in to conversations of their elders and betters” – in his brother’s authorised biography by Douglas Botting.
