That Tuft Of Hair

y mother and I discovered Tintin together, via the agency of my buddy in class 3B, Rakesh Mahajan, who lent me Tintin in Tibet. Ma, a professor of literature with sternly classical tastes, never stopped me reading anything. But until I was 10 or so, she read it first. Ma started giggling when a Delhi coolie admonished Captain Haddock in chaste Devnagari. Then she delightedly called in my dad, a professor of history, who confessed to being astounded by the fidelity of detail in the dragon kites, the lamaseries and the street scenes of Delhi and Kathmandu.

The boy reporter from Labrador Road and his friends and foes soon became the unifying factor in a household with otherwise diverse reading tastes. Unfortunately, as the youngest member of the clan, I came last in the pecking order. The Dattas were hardly the only Indians to fall for Tintin. He became a Bengali icon after one of the weeklies started serialising his exploits. My neighbours named their Spitz ‘Kuttush’, in honour of the Bengali transcreation of ‘Snowy’ (aka Milou, a wire-haired fox-terrier). In the 1970s, playgrounds in English-medium schools rang with billions of invocations of blue, blistering barnacles. We had never seen a barnacle. Who knew what pithecanthropes were, apart from an insult gleaned from the statutory scenes of the Captain going ballistic?

Of course, we glided over the multi-layers of detail and we were oblivious to the culturally and morally ambiguous attitudes Herge sometimes displayed. We read for the breathtaking pace, for the broad-ranging humour and for the sheer undefinable magic that great literature brings to the table. Then we re-read each comic, as we waited for the next translation to arrive. Hell, we did not even know they were translations. I learnt the correct pronunciation of Tintin much later, when watching the Blue Oranges screened (without sub-titles) at the Alliance Francaise. I have often genuflected since at the altar of Derek Hockridge and Anthea Bell, who so smoothly transferred Belgium to Britain in their translations.

But that is deconstructing magic and as a kid, all one knew was that Tintin was magical. Quite apart from waltzing past cultural barriers, Tintin certainly passed another key test that defines great literature. You can return to the comics again and again. Each time, you will find new cause for delight. Layers of new meanings, new hidden contexts will leap to the eye from panels you skimmed over earlier. At least part of the charm lies in a universe of familiar characters. They became old friends as we learnt their back-stories. Apart from the enigmatic Tintin himself, there is always Snowy with his devil-angel impulses. There’s usually Haddock, the irascible alcoholic sea-dog, there is the eccentric genius of Calculus, the bumbling doltishness of Thomson and Thompson. There are well-fleshed out side roles for General Alcazar, Jolyon Wagg, Senhor Oliveira, Omar Ben Salad and Bianca Castafiore. And there are the recurring villains like Alan, Colonel Sponz, Professor Muller and, above all, Rastapopoulos. The plots go everywhere. The elements range from grim realpolitik (Blue Lotus, Broken Ear) to the fanciful (Crab with the Golden Claws, Cigars of the Pharaoh, Land of Black Gold), supernatural (Prisoners of the Sun, Tintin in Tibet), science fiction (Explorers on the Moon, Flight 714, Shooting Star), to parodies of Ruritania (King Ottokar’s Sceptre).

Herge grew into his calling. The first couple he wrote (Soviets, Congo) were luckily among the last translated. There the biases of the Catholic-funded cartoonist with his unthinking condemnation of godlessness and glorification of the Belgian slave-driving colony, make one uncomfortable. The drawings were also cruder. By the mid-1930s, the politics were more correct, the drawing was better and the details just exquisite. You can design catalogues of furniture from Tintin interiors. The planes, guns and cars are never anachronistic. The Inca artefacts and Arab djellabahs are camera-ready. The opium dens have the right feng shui. The llamas spit accurately. Even the notes are scored right when la diva Bianca renders Gounod’s Jewel Song (Yes it’s loud!).

I learnt so much from Tintin. It was only later that I realised how close the comics came to perfection. Steve Jobs once said that a good carpenter will make sure he uses a beautiful piece of wood even for the hidden interior of a cabinet. Long before him, Herge internalised that principle.