The Magic Store of Nu-Cham Vu

Shreekumar Varma

Description

Welcome to the Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu, located in Anchan Bay, a seaside village in an unknown corner of the world. Here you will find the most unusual things: chocolate cakes made of potatoes and cream, toffee rolled around sugar cane sticks and beetroot ice cream garnished with tomato-chilli jam. It also sells the most amazing magical toys—a flute that can sense seasons, a toy bird that always speaks the truth and a doll that can do translations! But the strangest creature of all is Nu-Cham-Vu, the monstrous owner of the store, who loves tormenting the parents and teasing the kids who come to buy his toys. One day the grown-ups decide to kick him out of Anchan Bay. But the children don’t want him to go!The battle is on . . . Will Nu-Cham-Vu be thrown out? Or will the children be able to save the Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu?The Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu is brought to life by Vinayak Varma’s stunning illustrations, and will enthrall readers of all ages.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
• Date de parution: 06 août 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184758306
• Langue: English

Extrait

Shreekumar Varma
The Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu
Illustrated by Vinayak Varma
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Okay, Just a Moment
1. The Magic Flute
2. The Secret
3. The Horse-Cab Man
4. The Punishment
A Final Word
WORD PUZZLE
Read More in Puffin
Read More in Puffin
Copyright Page
PUFFIN BOOKS
THE MAGIC STORE OF NU-CHAM-VU
Shreekumar Varma is a writer, teacher and columnist.
His novels, Lament of Mohini and Maria s Room , were long-listed for the Crossword Prize and the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize, respectively. He has written two books for children, The Royal Rebel and Devil s Garden , besides several stories and poems. His performed plays include Platform , Midnight Hotel , Five and the award-winning Dark Lord and Bow of Rama .
He is an adjunct professor in Creative English at the Chennai Mathematical Institute. He was also writer-in-residence at Stirling University, Scotland, on a Charles Wallace fellowship.
He lives in Chennai with his wife Geeta and two sons, Karthik and Vinayak, this book s illustrator. Shreekumar welcomes visitors at www.shreevarma.com .
For Vinayak and Karthik
Okay, Just a Moment
A long time ago, when the moon was still green and the sky had just recovered from a severe case of rainbow measles, there was a children s store on Ju-Juicy Street.
It had a glass window upfront, with a large pair of eyes painted on it that blinked heavily during the rains. A tiny little waterfall flowed down the windowpanes. It sold things you and I know nothing about.
That s how the book begins.
I found it a couple of months ago-a mouldy, tattered book stuffed inside an old and battered desk which had been rotting unnoticed for years in the cold and shattered basement of my house that Mr Anchanbey had lovingly left me last year in his last and final will. Mr Anchanbey was neither relative nor friend, but he was a man with a big heart. You must be wondering: still, why would a rich old stranger leave you, of all people, a house in his will?
So did I, until I found Mr Anchanbey s note among all the other papers that his lawyer sent me just a week ago. But more of that later
The writer of the book was none other than Mr Anchanbey s grandfather-the same old gentleman whose painting hangs in the corridor downstairs, between those velvet curtains, on the way to the dining hall. Yes, that giant of a gentleman with a thunderous frown, dressed in a golden gown and one tooth sticking out, who stands there eyeing me growlingly (and even a little hungrily) every time I walk past him on my way to lunch. I always thought he dressed rather funnily, this second Mr Anchanbey, wearing something that looked like a cross between an Indian saree, a Japanese kimono and a large floppy tortoise shell.
The surprising thing is that the book is neither a fairy tale nor a fantasy written in a weak moment, but a real and true narration of events. In fact, a very important person in this story is Mr Anchanbey s grandfather s grandfather, who was yet another Mr Anchanbey. For the sake of convenience, I must start calling my Anchanbey, Anchanbey 3, and his grandfather who wrote the book, Anchanbey 2, and his grandfather, who s the man mentioned in the book, Anchanbey 1. (I hope that will solve your confusion, as it did mine.)
Do you know what all this means? It means that the story of Nu-Cham-Vu is a true story!
The book is old and discoloured, with about four hundred thick pages unevenly bound, and many illustrations and maps of people and places. I looked through the whole book and found an address on the last page. It is followed by detailed instructions on how to reach the village of Anchan Bay, which has a sea as its closest neighbour and mountains on the far side. There is also a small map with a cross placed right in the middle of Ju-Juicy Street. The cross shows us where the Magic Store was located.

But my problem is this: in spite of the real people mentioned in the book, there is a freaky aura of magic and fantasy in it that makes me really wonder. Green moon? Sky with rainbow measles ? What s that, for god s sake? And the toys that were sold in that store!
The place in the book is strange, too. I ve never heard of it. And then, of course, the creature! That s the weirdest of all. Was this some far-off place ignored by the rest of the world and forgotten by time, where even Nature behaved differently? Does it still exist?
Personally, I won t go along with those funny descriptions of Nature. How come the sky had measles only over that particular village, and not anywhere else? This is what I think: the village was normal enough, but this creature Nu-Cham-Vu was certainly different. He and his Magic Store must have been an island of strangeness amidst the normal people of the village!
I think it s certainly worth a visit to try and find the place shown on the map. But first things first, and you must read the book to know what I m talking about.
The Magic Flute
Only children were allowed inside the store.
If their parents accompanied them, they had to wait outside on the street until the kids finished their business and came out.
I ve heard that the store had shelves filled with chocolate cakes made of potatoes and cream, toffee rolled around sugar cane sticks and beetroot ice cream garnished with tomato-chilli jam. The tables were stacked with stocky little policemen who looked like toys but gave you a tight little whack on the head when you were least expecting it. In a corner of the shop were fat green bushes, which rolled around like hedgehogs. If you reached out your hand to examine them, they called out your name and yelled: Kindly do NOT touch!
There was no master, owner or assistants in the store. When you walked in, you only found shelves and tables and hundreds of things waiting to be sold. So the things in the store had to sell themselves to the children!
The children said, I want to buy you. How much do you cost? And the blue cat with the orange tail and red whiskers would close its eyes and make a rough calculation. Three dances, it would tell them, with one song. The blue cat would go on to specify the kind of song it had in mind. And the children would have to do three quick dances and sing a song right there and then. They had to be very careful that the song they sang was the same kind of song the cat wanted to hear. They could then take away the cat.
Or the bicycle with the elephant s trunk and coughing bell would say in a business-like way, You can have me if you do three long jumps, one quick leap and one smart push-up. But no hops at all, please! And if the children, in their excitement, did do a friendly little hop as well, the bicycle would turn away with a polite but firm cough and refuse to be sold.
It was a very strict shop, as you must have guessed, where you had to follow the rules and do exactly as you were told.
There was no signboard outside the store because it didn t have a name, but people generally called it the Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu.

What s that-Nu-Cham-Vu? you could ask.
Well, that s another story.
It was an even longer time ago, when rain was the colour of pineapple juice, and children wore shoes that could make them walk on air six inches above the road, and squirrels could stand up straight in a single row and sing the national anthem.
The children s store on Ju-Juicy Street was then owned by a creature that looked like nobody you or I ever saw. Some people said he was a monster. They said he d emerged when the volcano of the Amorobo (literally, dark mountain) erupted. They said that along with all the fire and lava, Nu-Cham-Vu also flowed out.
Nu-Cham-Vu was a very short and fat creature. He gave you an idea of how an oil barrel would look if it was square and all dressed up, and had a head. Greenish whiskers rushed out of his ears. He had the most atrocious dress sense. He sometimes wore bright green shorts with a flowery red pattern made of crinkly jinja material that reached down to his knobbly knees. His short muscular legs looked like a small pair of roadrollers, with eight toes each. And he wore something silky that couldn t be called a shirt or coat or vest, but looked like all three, or none of them perhaps. Its colour was usually bright purple, or a sea-blue that changed into silver-red even as you were looking.

One of Nu-Cham-Vu s ears was bigger than the other, about twice as big actually. His nose didn t come out of his face, but seemed to want to. It had a flattened knob with two large holes like the nose of a koala bear, if you ve seen one of those. His hands were powerful and strange, and completely clumsy. The right one had seven fingers with big nails, and three thumbs with no nails at all, but his left hand had seven fingers and only two thumbs. His moustache was a little brown circle, joined under the chin.
At times his lips flapped open, showing sharp uneven teeth, and his expression reminded you of a mule s grin. It was an all-purpose expression- whether Nu-Cham-Vu was angry, amused, happy or distressed.
And you never saw him without a cuddly cap, perched on top of his head, that had a green feather stuck into it to match his whiskers. When he spoke, his voice sounded like the screech of a squirrel as it is captured by a crow, and he used more numbers than words and more gestures than sound. His stomach bloated so big when he got hungry that he used it for a table and ate all his meals on it. He got hungry several times a day.
Nu-Cham-Vu was rude and even cruel to his customers. And the things in his shop were far too expensive.

As Mr Anchanbey, my grandfather, used to say during the winding-up meeting at the Annual Feast and Get-Together of Anchan Bay: Our village is perfect in every respect, except one. Then he d look around at the gathering with an air of suspense. And we all know who that is!
Mr Anchanbey was the chief of Anchan Bay village. In fact, the village ch