Stories from my childhood reality

The world created through my father's imagination always struck a chord in me. These were the stories that the mind of a child could reach out and touch without any element of disbelief cracking the glass of their little reality. These were the stories that I will always remember because they were utterly ridiculous but they were absolutely nothing compared to any childhood programme. These were the stories that could not be touched by a cartoonist because the imagination of such a young child could never be put onto paper. These were the stories of dreams. The type that you know in your head but find it so difficult to convey the true experience of such fantasies. But, still I will attempt to recall the wonders.

The first story I remember was the story of four kittens called Eenie, Meenie, Miney, and Mo - like the rhyme. These four kittens lived in a large house next to a forest where many grizzly bears lived, one of which was their ultimate enemy. I fail to remember the name of the bear but in my imagination I picture him looking like Baloo from the Jungle Book. In every story the bear would attempt to get into the house and every time he tried, the four kittens would set a booby trap for the bear, like filling a bucket of something ghastly and placing it on top of a door, setting it ajar so that on being opened the contents would spill out all over anyone who tried to come in.

The second was about an animal called 'Aga the Panthus'. I always imagined this character as looking like the pink panther. The unusual thing about 'Aga the Panthus' was that whatever he ate, he would turn the colour of what he was eating, which was of course, terribly inconvenient. Anyhow, every time he changed colour I would roll over in absolute hysterics at the thought of turning orange whenever I ate a carrot or yellow when I ate a banana.

And third, and the one I remember best, was a story about a creature called Coattle, who I imagined as a mix between a tortoise and a lizard, who lived with his friend Jaguar in 'Ooold Mexico'. Coattle was a calm and small creature, Jaguar was hypnotically hyper and spoke very very fast. Together the two friends would lie on a rock and bask in the heat of the sun with Sid the snake and they'd get up to lots of different adventures together. And every time my father would sit down to tell me the story, I would choose what the story would be about. I remember, there was once a story about jumping beans that lived in the sand underneath the rock and a story about a Llama. But, what hypnotized me was the story where Jaguar, Coattle and Sid were lying on the rock at night and then the stars started to go out, one by one. The three characters discovered that what they watched every night were not stars but fireflies. This was the closest I came to existential wonderment before I even knew what stars really were.