The Fantabulous Fens

by Gautam Sen

  “Yes, it will, son,” Father Fen said.

  He wanted to test out Panchu a little more, so he added, “You saw how some bad people tried to kidnap you and your brother. There are many bad people in the world. When the whole world knows about you, more bad people also will know about you. If, like the people who tried to kidnap you, they also get bad ideas in their heads, what then?”

  “They tried to kidnap us, but they couldn’t,” Panchu stated. “Don’t worry, Papa — no one will be able to kidnap us. You saw what happened to Daku uncle?”

  “And how many times have you thanked Mumbo for that?” Mother Fen asked.

  Panchu thought and thought, but he couldn’t remember. He had always felt thankful to Mumbo; he had always behaved as if he was thankful, but had he actually said the words, ‘Thank you’?

  “Thank you, Mumbo,” he now said. “If anyone tried to kidnap you, I’ll do the same by you.”

  Koala nodded in agreement. He had full faith in Panchu’s powers.

  “I won’t laugh — a meeting’s supposed to be a serious thing,” Mumbo chuckled, but it seemed doubtful if he would be able to hold himself back much longer.

  “I have an idea!” Koala exclaimed with a winning smile on his face.

  They all looked at him to continue, but he was in the mood to be naughty, and he wouldn’t continue till he was asked; so finally it was Mother Fen who said, “Hurry up, Koala — we can’t wait to hear what your idea is!”

  “You’re from TV,” Koala asked them to imagine. “You ask me questions.”

  “Okay, we’ll do that,” Father Fen broke in, “but first, weren’t we talking about something else?”

  “About kidnapping,” said Panchu.

  “Now, isn’t that serious?” Father Fen asked, but Pinchu had a very clever answer to that. “If we get famous, it will be more difficult to kidnap us because everyone will know us. And if we are kidnapped, it will be easier to catch the kidnappers because everyone will be worried and the police will be asked so many questions. They’ll have to act very fast.”

  Koala was biding his time. “Kidnapping is finished,” he declared like one who had used up all his stock of patience. “Now you can be TV and ask me questions.”

  “Why are you called Koala?” Panchu shot at him.

  Koala thought so hard that he creased his brows and put his little forefinger in his mouth. Finally he found his answer. “Because you’re called Panchu.” He pointed his finger at Pinchu and said, “Because he’s called Pinchu.” Then he pointed a finger at Mumbo and said, “Because he’s called Mumbo.” (By the way, Mumbo had succeeded not to laugh, and he felt it was a real achievement).

  Baby Panda, who was feeling like dozing off, found himself pointing a finger at himself and saying, “Because I’m called Baby Panda.”

  Panchu looked at Koala in some confusion. He couldn’t make up his mind whether Koala’s answer had been a very smart or a very stupid one. For that matter, he was not very certain whether his own question had been very smart or stupid. But before he could make up his mind Father Fen, after talking to Mother Fen on the matter, announced, “Okay, so we’re going to invite Flash TV to do a programme on you. That’s settled.”

  “And we hope it will make all of you very, very famous,” Mother Fen added.

  “You’ll also be in the programme, won’t you, Ma, Papa?” Mumbo asked.

  “The programme will be on you five brothers,” Father Fen said.

  Mumbo looked disappointed; so did his brothers. “No, No!” they protested together.

  “There has to be you,” said Mumbo, “because there cannot be a programme on us without the two of you. “

  The day the TV crew came, four of the Fen children were dressed spotlessly in kurta and baggy pajamas, though the colour each of them wore was different. Mumbo wore cream, Pinchu wore yellow, Panchu wore orange, and Koala wore light blue. Baby Panda could not take too many clothes on his body because it made him feel very hot and uncomfortable. He wore vest and shorts, both white, so as to absorb as little heat as possible. As soon as the crew of four arrived, they were led straight to the play-room, where the children were waiting for them. Mother Fen and Father Fen watched quietly from the sides, not wishing to intrude, but keeping an eye on things. When Koala saw the camera focused on them, he cartwheeled across the room in great style. He had never cartwheeled before in kurta and pajamas, but in his enthusiasm he forgot all about them, and it was as if he were cartwheeling in the shorts he normally wore.

  “In the next Olympics,” Panchu informed Bull the Cool with great pride, “he will be in our gymnastics team for sure.”

  Bull the Cool raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in appreciation and asked, “How about you? What are you going to represent the country in?”

  Panchu took a quick look at the camera, stuck out his little chest, and said, “I‘m a serious person — I’m going to be a Minister.”

  “Minister? Why, that’s great!” exclaimed Bull the Cool who, as you will have guessed, loved children. “But, you know, our Ministers act very, very big. If you go to them with your problems, they don’t even have time for you. You’re not going to turn me away, are you, when I go to you?”

  “I won’t turn you away,” Panchu promised. “I’ll listen to your problems. I’ll help you.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then let’s shake hands on that.”

  Bull the Cool passed on to Mumbo. “And you, Strong Man? What would you like to be when you grow up?”

  “I haven’t thought about it, uncle,” Mumbo said, smiling. “I’ll think about it when I grow up.”

  “But tell me,” insisted Bull the Cool, “what are the things you like to do?”

  “I like everything I do,” answered Mumbo. “I like to play football and cricket and table-tennis. I like reading comics. I like seeing cartoons. I like studying. I like to talk to my brothers. I like to talk to Ma and Papa …”

  “He likes to laugh, uncle,” Koala put in. “He laughs more than anyone else.”

  “I think that’s because he enjoys life so much,” Bull the Cool suggested.

  Mumbo did laugh at this, but it was a different kind of laugh from the one he generally gave; it was not a roaring laugh, but a gurgling laugh, like a swift mountain stream running over rocks.

  “And you’re Baby Panda, I know,” Bull the Cool said, turning towards him. “I bet you love to eat. What are your favourite dishes?”

  Baby Panda was wonder-struck. How did this uncle know that he loved to eat? Had someone told him? When he got over his amazement, he began to think of all the wonderful dishes he had eaten in his life. In fact, to him food itself was wonderful. He did not know of any food — vegetarian or non-vegetarian, sweet or salty or sweet-and-sour, that was not wonderful. Only if the cooking was too chilly-hot, it was not wonderful to him, otherwise every food under the sun seemed quite wonderful.

  “Everything,” he replied briefly.

  “How can everything be your favourite, Baby? You must be liking some dishes more than the others!”

  “Rice is as good as rotis, and rotis are as good as noodles,” Baby Panda said. “Lady-fingers are as good as potatoes, and potatoes are as good as squash. Beans are as good as carrots, and carrots are as good as cabbages. Cabbages …”

  “I get your point,” said Bull the Cool, “but say your mother asked you today, ‘Baby Panda, what would you like to have for lunch?’, what would you say?”

  “I’d say, ‘Ma, make me the dishes you most like to cook.’”

  Bull the Cool was impressed. It had never occurred to him that a person who was fond of cooking might well have favourite ‘cooking dishes’, just like people had favourite ‘eating dishes’. It was an interesting thought.

  Pinchu was the last Fen child to be interviewed, and he was absolutely sensational. Bull the Cool had done his homework well before coming. He asked Pinchu if what he liked to do the most was to conduct experiments in t
he laboratory.

  Everybody expected him to say ‘yes’, but instead Pinchu said, “Even more than that, I like to do sums.”

  And then it was he who began to ask questions. “Uncle, can you tell me what is 35 divided by 5 multiplied by 27 plus 40?”

  “I’ve got to work it out, son,” said Bull the Cool. “I’ll want pen and paper.”

  “229,” Pinchu said coolly. “Uncle, how much is 27 multiplied by 54 divided by 2 minus 6?”

  “Don’t say you did that in your head?”

  “723,” Panchu announced. “Uncle, you ask me any sum like this.”

  In one corner of the room Mother Fen and Father exchanged puzzled but proud glances.

  “Imagine — he kept it all to himself for this big day!” Father Fen observed.

  Pinchu heard him and explained, “Ma, Papa, day-before-yesterday I suddenly found I could do this. I kept it as a surprise for today.”

  “Now this is most interesting, son,” commented Bull the Cool. He turned to an assistant named Madan and said, “Madan, take out your calculator and do some sums for us.”

  Madan, who was helping out the sound recordist, came running to his superior’s side. No member of the TV crew except Bull the Cool seemed to walk. They flitted around like butterflies, always in a hurry. Bull the Cool started firing all kinds of numbers at Pinchu: this divided by that and multiplied by the other; so much minus so much divided by so much and multiplied by so much … the problems came fast and thick, but each time Pinchu was equal to the occasion. Not flinching once, he not only gave the answers straightaway, but he delivered them before Madan could work them out on his calculator.

  Once the calculator did not agree with Pinchu’s answer. Pinchu stuck to his guns. The calculator worked at it again and came up with the same answer as Pinchu! Starting with Father Fen and Mother Fen, everyone in the room started to clap. Even Madan replaced the calculator in his pocket and clapped to his heart’s content.

  The TV crew spent many hours at the Fens. They chatted with Mother Fen and Father Fen, they photographed them with the children, they photographed themselves with Mother Fen and Father Fen and all the children, they lunched at the Fens, they played carom and cricket and table-tennis. Bull the Cool challenged Mumbo to a hand-wrestling contest and lost. The sound recordist, who had grown up in a village and knew how to climb trees, climbed the tallest tree in the backyard with Koala, and surveyed the world from the uppermost branch. Everyone had a great time.

  The programme was aired three weeks later. It was called The Fantabulous Fens. Fantabulous is a combination of fantastic and fabulous, and it seemed to describe the Fens perfectly. Even before the programme finished, and afterwards as well, people in great numbers rang up the offices of the Flash TV channel. They wanted the programme to be repeated, they wanted the phone numbers and address of the Fens (which the channel kept a secret at the request of the Fen parents), they wanted another programme on the Fens, and so on and so forth. Managing Directors and CEOs of big companies and advertising agencies wished to get in touch with the Fen parents. They wanted the Fen children to model for some of the things they made, and they were willing to pay any amount of money for the purpose.

  Mother Fen and Father Fen didn’t at all like the idea of their children earning money at such a young age, or of so much money coming their way because of the children. It sounded cheap and distasteful, and they were certain that no good could come out of it. But Bull the Cool, through whom the offers were made, had quite a different take on the matter.

  “I can understand how you feel about it,” he told Father Fen over the phone, “but you’re such a closely-knit family that I don’t think doing some ads will have any bad effect on the children. You must be spending a fortune bringing up a team of children like that.”

  “However much I spend on them,” countered Father Fen, “it’s more than worth it. You can’t imagine how much joy those children bring to our lives. If those children start earning now, for whatever reason, it will hurt our self-respect, and what hurts our self-respect can’t be good for the children — we are their parents, after all.”

  “Of course the final choice is yours, Mr. Fen,” Bull the Cool commented. He thought Father Fen’s attitude was rather old-fashioned, but he remained as polite as ever. “I’m the last person who’ll want to interfere in your family matters, but as a friend and a well-wisher I’d like to request you to give it a second thought. No harm in that.”

  Father Fen knew perfectly well that Bull the Cool meant well, but somehow he could not go along with his view. It was true that he had to work hard to maintain his family, that he earned just about enough to keep the family going, and should — God forbid! — something go wrong tomorrow so that he suddenly needed some extra cash, he would be caught on the wrong foot. But that did not give him the right to make the children earn. Maybe it would not require much real effort on their part, maybe it would even be fun for them to pose and act for baby soaps and biscuits and jams and chocolates and health drinks and whatnot, maybe they would be treated affectionately, maybe it would be fun to watch them grow into household names, but somewhere it felt wrong. His instinct told him that it would spoil the sweet simplicity of their lives and bring in tension and unhappiness, though exactly what form these would take he could not say for sure. Sometimes you had to do what you thought was the right thing, and leave the rest to God.

  The following month the programme on the Fens was repeated four times, always in the week-ends. And then, one after the other, the surprises began to come. The Chief Ministers of three states in the country — Orissa, Maharashtra, and Gujarat — invited them to visit the tourist spots in their states as honoured guests. When this became widely known, more and more Chief Ministers joined in, so that by the end of two months, there was no state in the country whose Chief Minister had not invited them. These were offers Father Fen and Mother Fen were glad to say yes to. What fun it would be to travel in comfort around the whole country with one’s loved ones, and see all the wonderful places there were to see: hills and mountains and rivers and lakes and seas; temples and forts and monuments and palaces; boat races, elephant races, and horse races; markets, festivals, and fairs … the list was endless.

  The itinerary of the Fens was being fixed, the dates of the visits to the various places was being finalized, when — surprise of surprises — the King of Bhutan sent them an invitation! Hardly had they accepted this when there was an invitation from the Prime Minister of Pakistan. This was followed by invitations from the Prime Minister of Japan and the President of the United States. As if not to be left behind, the Personal Secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom rang up Father Fen one evening (when it was only noon in Britain) and said that the British people would be mighty pleased to have them as guests in their country.

  Father Fen was both very happy and a little irritated because, though it was a great privilege to get a call like this, it seemed to him that Bull the Cool hadn’t kept his word about not giving out their telephone number. But poor Bull the Cool! He was only human. When the Personal Secretary to the British Premier gave him a sudden call and asked him for the Fens’ phone number, for the first time in many years he actually lost his cool. That is to say, to some extent at least, he lost control of himself. He felt it would be rude on his part to refuse the request of such an important person; so he did what he had never done before and probably will never do again: he broke his word to the Fens, and gave out their phone number! When Father Fen received the call and learnt who was on the other side, the words that automatically sprang to his lips were, “Am I hearing correctly?”

  In a very polished British accent like he had heard over BBC, he was assured that the call was indeed from the office of the British Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had watched the programme on the Fens and had found it extremely fascinating. It would be a great pleasure to have the Fens in their midst the following spring, when the weather would be at its best. Father Fen p
ut in little remarks like, “Please convey our thanks to him,” and “It was so gracious of him to say that.” The Secretary informed him that a written invitation would be sent in due course, and they would appreciate a confirmation of acceptance from the Fens. The Fens could now look forward to not only a tour of the whole of India but also of many other parts of the world, and everyone in the family naturally felt very excited.

  Mother Fen and Father Fen had always been proud parents, and it would not be very right to say that the latest happenings made them prouder parents than before because, already, in this respect, they were as proud as proud could be. But there was a feeling in them that their lives were growing together as a family, and it brought with it a new sense of fulfillment. And do you know what? It was just at this time that they received a beautiful letter from Daku. He had gone far away to a small town, where he had become the manager of a grocery store. ‘This is a beautiful little town where I’ve found peace and happiness,’ the letter went on, ‘and often I remember all of you, who made all this possible.’

  “Well, gratitude is a rare virtue these days,” Father Fen said. “It’s nice to see that Daku has it.”

  “I have a feeling he has fallen in love,” Mother Fen said, but this is not something they could yet check out. “It’s not easy to change like he has.”

  “Not easy,” agreed Father Fen; or did he agree? For he added, “At least not until you’ve met Mumbo and Baby Panda and Koala and Panchu and Pinchu”.

  The End

  About The Author

  Gautam Sen is a prolific and award winning writer living and working as a teacher in Kalimpong, a small town in the Himalayas. Having previously worked for the Bhutan Government as both a lecturer and staff writer, he was also invited to write a speech for the Queen Mother of Bhutan.

  Gautam has written a non-fiction best-seller in India on the philosophy of the Indian saint, Swami Vivekananda, and is one of only two Indians who won prizes in a series of Asian short story contests run by the Hong Kong magazine ASIAWEEK. His stories and poems have appeared in various Indian publications and he has co-authored two books of essays for Macmillan India.