The dilemma of reading the abridged versions

I grew up in a small town- Palampur- in Himachal Pradesh in the 80s and 90s. I was the only child in the house for quite sometime and was surrounded by adults- my maternal grandparents and uncles and aunts as well as doting neighbours of the now dead phenomenon called the mohalla. 

My grandfather who was fondly called Bauji by everyone, owned an electronics shop, the kind which sells you tube lights and fans and switches. Right next to him was a bookshop. Nothing big or glamorous by any means or standards but more like a rectangular box out of which came all sorts of stationery, chart papers and comics, some college course books  as well and ah how could I forget the copies and more copies of Rapidex English Speaking Course.

I was often sent over to my grandparents' house because my parents were both working. I can't recall my age at the time, but I must have been grown up enough to read very well because when Would begin to get on my grandmother's nerves, I would be banished to the shop to either give something to Bauji like a shopping list or to remind him of something. Not the one to hurry along on anything, I ambled to the shop which was just a little far away and after giving the requisite messages would go sit outside the shop to see the proceedings of the Palampur bazar. I have no recollection of how it might have started but I began to get the comics from the shop next door to Bauji's and Motu Patlu, Chacha Chowdhry and Sabu, Pinky, Bittu and Captain Nagraj entered my world. I was turning into a pretty avid reader who with a school library that stocked rows and rows of Enid Blytons, Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys.

I can't for the love of my life recall what else did the school library stock. I remember some fancy looking books on knitting and crocheting as well as some cookbooks but I don't remember seeing any classics there. I do though remember some small handy books which I later learnt were the abridged versions of the classics (this of course dawned on me once I was a grown up and had stepped out into the world). I remember reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,  The Wizard of Oz, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island and Kidnapped from there though I can't really say the stories left any impression on me except for maybe the sadness that I felt for Charles Dickens after I read an essay on him in the English syllabus.

A few years later, my father's friend gave me a few of Shakespeare's plays and as you might have guessed these were again the abridged versions. The beauty of these was that they were not simple books but were comics complete with lovely colourful illustrations and dialogue boxes. I loved them and read them over and over again. I empathised with Cordelia from King Lear, and was in awe of Rosalind from As You Like It as well as haunted by Lady Macbeth from Macbeth. I reached out for a Midsummer Night's Dream after a disastrous day at school and also aspired to be as level-headed as Portia from The Merchant of Venice.

When I began to study English literature for my graduation degree, I first sort of came in contact with what Shakespeare actually was. In the meantime, I had finished reading authors and authors from the modern era- the junk food variety as some would like to say. I had also got a taste of Arthur Conan Doyle's great creation Holmes and had also been wooed by the short stories of Chekov, O Henry and GuyDe Maupassant which I was introduced to by my father. I had access to Reader's Digests from early 70s that belonged to my father and were lying around the house bounded together in volumes neatly catalogued by him.

In college having opted for an Honours course in the English literature I was given a list of classics Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare!',  I gave up.

that were of course mandatory reading. As I grappled with ye olde souls of the Elizabethan, Victorian and Renaissance eras I discover the poetry of John Donne and the essays of Edmund Spenser. Marlowe, Ben Jonson also made an entry and Shakespeare's sonnets were swooned upon on in collective sighs. But the classics as they were, were never visited upon. I did try reading Homer and Illiad at the college library but gave up on them as soon as I set my eyes on A Suitable Boy. I thought Shakespeare was an old pal and would not be so demanding but after reading something like '

None of the teachers pressed me on and so giving up did not seem like an awful thing to do. At some point in life I realised that I had not read my classics and it was time I did so. I tried to follow Alice down the rabbit hole but came back huffing and puffing and vowed never to take that route again.

What bothered me was why I, an avid reader, a lover of the English language, could not finish reading a single classic in its original form!

I realised classics were not charming enough for me partly because of the language of the yore and partly because the authors were back then being paid on the word count and so I lost all interest as soon as the authors digressed from the plot and started to talk more about the weather, the nature around or the war conditions.

Now as a mother of two I am again faced with the huge debate whether or not to hand my kids the classics. My daughter, all of 11, has declared her love for the non-fiction and I have little hope of getting anywhere with her if I give her the classics to read. She is like me. She wants to get on with the story and finish it. My son, who is four, can still be moulded.

You might be wondering why this debate at all. You see, the only worthwhile difference in my opinion is that abridged versions at times miss out on how a character develops and plot lines. Because they need to be shorter you can be sure that a major chunk will be cut off.

I still think that children should be told these wonderful stories. Would you want them kept away from the magic of Oz or the adventurous Alice or invoke in them compassion via Oliver Twist or introduce them to the spirit of sharing through The night Before Christmas. They might not read the originals nor might we be able to do that during the bedtime story telling rituals but these stories need to be read and old over and over again because they are just wonderful