Students’
Special Issue
English World
A Must Read International English Magazine For English Learners College Road, Bongaon, North 24 Parganas, W.B., India • Issue 2 • Month : August, 2013 •
Tota and the Blue School Bus
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DID YOU KNOW?
(A Short Story for Children )
Dr.(Lieutenant) Ratan Bhattacharjee The chairperson of Post Graduate English Dept of Dum Dum Motijheel College, and Guest Faculty of Rabindra Bharati University.
Tota was playing with her cooking utensils on the verandah. This is the third phase of her playing games and getting funs. She woke up in the early morning and started playing. She did not wash her mouth, brush her teeth. She started making the Jungle Playhouse. She got it on her last birthday. Her Kaku gave it to her. Kaku in Bengali is uncle. But here Kaku is a name and not Tota’s uncle.Tota’s parents also call him Kaku. In Kaku’s house she is not Tota , but as Kaku affectionately calls her ‘Bhuvo’. Kaku , Kaku, and Kaku , all day she shouts. Kaku bring this, bring that as if Kaku is Aladin’s monster fulfilling all her dreams and making them true. Kaku is her friend. Since
her babyhood ,she used to lisp ‘taku’ and then comes to calling him‘Kaku. Kaku’s gift was unique. It was a jungle house with all the pictures of animals and birds on the sheet of coloured canvas which wrapped the fibre sticks. Making of the playhouse was not that easy. It had a total 13 such sticks which were to be placed and fitted in the right point. Kaku was sweating every day to calculate the fittings in the appropriate joints and make the playhouse. Now Tota can make it on her own. She plays nearly two hours in it. She imagines she has gone to a deep forest. There like the prince of the fairy tales she bears a sword and fights the demons and monsters.Tota forgets that she is a girl and she can be a princess and not a prince. Her mother laughs to see all these childish fancies of Tota. Sometimes she joins herself in
the games when she feels that Booni is hungry. She comes as an old woman and tells/Tota , ‘I am an old woman(buri). The monster is now far away from here. I have taken this milk and Kellog chocos for you from the kitchen of the monster. You have your food now before that cruel monster comes.’ .Tota enjoys her mother being an old woman saving food for a child from the kitchen of a cruel monster . It does not give any food to children and makes them starve. Tota curses the monster and before its coming gobbles up milk and chocos. Tota then plays with her dolls . On her birthday she has
B E S T W I S H E S
got this year nearly 16 dolls and teddy bears, five of them are very large . She imagines them to be real. One pussy cat is there. Tota shouts ‘Pussy Pussy cat where have you been,/ I have been to London to visit the queen’. Her Kaku made a recording of the recitation and sometimes she enjoys seeing that on the computer. Cont. Page-7
1. The word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bçta. 2. The only word in English that ends with the letters “-mt” is “dreamt” (which is a variant spelling of “dreamed”) - as well of course as “undreamt” :) 3. The longest word with only one vowel is ‘strengths’ (9 letters long). 4. The longest one-syllable word is ‘screeched’. 5. The longest word with all the letters in alphabetical order is ‘almost’. 6. The most commonly-used word in conversation is ‘I’. 7. The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language. 8. “Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.” Cont...
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