Heh.

Some dumb authorities in the UK have decided to 'sanitise' Enid Blyton. When i first read about it in the TOI, i was seriously intrigued. Sanitise? Enid Blyton? What's that supposed to mean. Enid Blyton, as far as i know, never wrote porn, never indulged in erotica, and the closest her work gets to violence is the slaying of an ogre or something...

Then it was all explained to me. Apparently, she wrote terribly, umm, how do i put it, politically incorrectly, all unintentional, of course. How?

"He looked a bit queer."

Besides, she's also been found guilty of making the fairer sex do all the house work, while the brothers and the fathers are spared their 'rightful' share of chores.

How shocking, na?

Appaling, i say.

Of course, it doesn't matter that millions of children have grown up reading Enid Blyton, lapping up every escapade of the Famous Five, finding some vestige of perspective in life from the school stories, building entire imaginations having tea with Moonface in the Faraway Tree or going gallavanting around the world on the Wishing Chair. No, what does that hold a candle against her obvious allusions to homosexuality or her sexist outlook towards everyday life!

I have grown up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton. I must have read practically everything she's written, everything everything everything, from the short srories to the 7-book series, the red, green, blue, yellow story book, the 8 o'clock, 9 o' clock, 10 o' clock tales, everything except perhaps a few Secret Seven books that never did pique my interest too much, though i know people who swear by even those. I have spent copious amounts of my childhood drinking in the myriad worlds this one woman painted for me, whether through old, tattered, browning books belonging to my mum which invariably started from page 21, or through brand new, shiny, hardbound ones that i made it a point to buy and collect. I have done this to the point of seeming perilously psychologically dependent on Enid Blyton. I recall once throwing a tantrum because mum wouldn't send me to Malory Towers to study, and realising the fictitiousness of Malory Towers and St. Clares and Darell and Sally and Alicia and Pat and Isabel and the rest with it was easily more painful than realising the fictitiousness of Santa Claus. When i finally decided that enough is enough and i REALLY SHOULD look to other readers and consequently put away all my precious Enid Blytons at the back of the book case, i swear i suffered acute withdrawal symptoms.

And i can safely say that more than half my english vocabulary today is owing to this phase of my life, and to this single woman.

And now, all of a sudden, she's politically incorrect. Screw political incorrectness! It's such a bloody sad thing, that far from actually appreciating what she has done for generations of kids, these dumb morons are actually now shaking the cane at her. So what happens now? 'Queer' will be changed, nay, 'sanitised' to 'odd', just so you are clear that he was indeed NOT gay. And the boys will have to do their share of the housework, gender equality and all that. And of course, things that REALLY need to be sanitised, like the stuff on my brother's history folder, will go unnoticed. Enid Blyton is sooo much more read, right?