Books For Beginners
Padma Baliga
THE BARBER’S DILEMMA AND OTHER STORIES FROM MANMARU STREET by Koki Oguma Tara Books, 2018, 44 pp., 450
November 2018, volume 42, No 11

Young children play in the most unstructured manner. A child holding a ladle may decide she is holding a mike and singing a song. Moments later, the ladle becomes an umbrella, or a bus, or a spoon to stir her mother’s coffee. A game of swordsmanship may transform into one playing with fallen flowers and seeds, or a classroom game. There is a marvellous sense of fluidity in the way children negotiate their way through a world that seems infinitely wondrous and ever-changing.

Koki Oguma’s stories and illustrations attempt this unstructured, even stream-of-consciousness method of negotiating with the world. Oguma writes about the people who live and work and play on Manmaru Street. There’s a Ms. Oda who made a giant candy which reminded her of a slide, and so she and her friend slide down the candy, licking it as they went along. And there’s Mr. Tuchida who wanted to build a house on his head. As the house takes shape. Mr. Tuchida’s neck begins to hurt with the weight of the bricks. A kind builder gently puts a cold compress on his neck. Mr. Isoda, a fisherman listens to the river and begins to speak its language, He becomes so good at it that a shoal of fish enters his mouth, mistaking it for a river. Oguma writes, ‘Mr. Isoda didn’t mind at all’.

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