The Bookworm Poem by Anagha Kargutkar Shukla

It all began with the tales he told.
Gosh, how he bewitched our five year old!

A treasury of Roald Dahl tales we gifted.
Thinking reading’s good, it will keep her mind lifted.

But his tales so quirky, filled with chocolatey slime.
Had an opposite effect instead of sublime.

She feasted on the gooey, wonky bits
and savoured all the wicked twists.

She filled up her vocabulary with weird, made-up-words
and spelled spellings in school perfectly-backwards!

Oh, how he captivated little Mana’s mind.
and trapped her in his gumptious grime.

So enthralled was she with Dahl’s diddle-do,
she carried him even when she went to the loo!

As if Roald Dahl was not enough,
she moved on to some more dreadful stuff.

In the pages of a library book one day,
a boy named Henry came her way.

A redheaded boy with manners so crude,
he had earned the title ‘Horrid’ cos he loved being rude.

His rude exploits were admired with overwhelming awe.
Then there were things on tele we never did foresaw.

Burping out aloud and screaming like hounds,
the house was filled with onomatopoeic sounds.

We wondered how long this madness would prevail
and started doubting if as parents we would fail.

Out of the blue came to rescue a bespectacled boy,
who caught her fancy and filled her imagination with joy.

He wasn’t exactly what one called a knight on a steed
But on a broom he flew and took the magical lead.

I am sure Horrid Henry sulked, and said ‘That’s not fair! ’
But Harry Potter sure had an inimitable air.

Book after book voraciously she read day and night,
and I was glad there was no mischief anywhere in sight.

But soon the cat was out of the bag
when I found a tiny bottle with a tag.

Filled with tiny stars, shimmer and glow,
it even smelled of expensive toilette d’eau!

When I asked her fuming about her latest exploitation
Innocently came the reply, it’s just a magic potion!

I found my vanity kit ingeniously replaced,
with a ‘potions tray’, which was proudly displayed.

I didn’t know how to react to this impending doom,
at these innocent acts of imitation and creative bloom.

Is there a book, I wondered, which from madness it can spare?
And make my life easy and save me from despair?

But somewhere in my heart of hearts proud as hell I was.
Who knows these could be the seeds of some ever-growing cause.