At a time of my life when most of my contemporaries are busy dusting off the rigours of their hectic work lives and sinking back into armchairs with armloads of literature and lectures on things Advaita to Zen, I find I am getting my spiritual nirvana from ‘The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes’ conceived, illustrated & written by the consummate cartoonist, Bill Watterson.

“What!” I can almost hear you screech. “You must be joking, or you must be a jerk. Reading comic books and calling them serious...that too akin to philosophy and religion!!”

Well, my friends, such is the truth. With every page of this beautifully illustrated, hard-cover, coffee-table size collection of cartoon-strips (some episodes running into pages), I plumbed my past and discovered new truths. Let me put it simply. If you have had a childhood spent almost entirely with your imagination, been inquisitive yet were not content with the answers dished out by adult folk; and was keen to discover new things on your own terms, then this is the book for you. And if you haven’t been any of these, but just plain horribly naughty – in a precocious sort of way – then too, you will savour this book.

Our hero, Calvin, is all of six, out of which as he keeps telling Hobbes, he can remember things only from when he was three. So what sinister thing might have been done to his mind to make him forget the first three years and WHY... and by WHOM? One can only contemplate and sympathise!

Hobbes, to any outsider, is Calvin’s stuffed toy tiger. But to Calvin, Hobbes is HIS tiger, his bosom pal. They indulge in clever repartee; ride the bobsled dangerously, play, muse, snack, watch endless hours of ‘boring’ TV, engage in ferocious fights and sleep together. “Now I’m in bed, / The sheets pulled to my head. /The tiger is here making Zs. / He’s furry and hot. / He takes up a lot / Of the bed and he’s hogging the breeze.” The only time Calvin is away from Hobbes is when he goes to school (he’s been going 3 months!). It’s probably the reason he hates going there. “I say it’s a fallacy that kids need 12 years of school! Three months is plenty!” He’s overheard telling Hobbes. “Look at me. I’m smart! I don’t need 11 ½ more years of school!” Obviously his parents think otherwise.

Mom is the person Calvin can scream and wake up at 2am simply to enquire whether people grow from spores. “My mother has eyes on the back of her head!” He says. “I don’t quite believe it, but that’s what she said. She explained that she’d been so uniquely endowed / To catch me when I did Things Not Allowed...”, but that still can’t stop Calvin messing around. Apart from passing the blame on to his raging tiger, Hobbes, there’s a regular stream of ‘little Venusians who materialise in the kitchen’, the Fearless Spaceman Spiff (himself) and his spaceship a ‘zillion miles from any planet’, monstrous dragons spewing raging fireballs, disgusting denizens of the deep, the Giant Pteranodon (himself) and other terrifying dinosaurs the likes you’ve never heard of...The list of offenders is endless!

Dad is reserved for torturing... reading bedtime stories like ‘Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie’ or ‘An Ode to Tigers’ a thousand times. Calvin insists he takes this bedside responsibility dutifully to avoid washing the dishes! Futile effort though it may seem, he is regularly reminded that his ratings as a good dad are falling on some very specific issues (like cruelty to children etc.) in the eyes of 6 year olds (basically, Calvin) so he better shuck up some more pocket money or let him bunk school... “Mom and Dad can make the rules / And certain things forbid, / But I can make them wish that they / Had never had a kid.”

Far from being revolting, Calvin’s near total irreverence – for Mom, Dad and the adult world – is delectable. As is his disdain for little girls. He says what we always wanted to say as kids, but could never muster up the guts. And the precociousness really grows on you, like popsicles. To top it all, is Bill Watterson’s masterful economy of strokes that can draw tears of any kind – fright, wit, tenderness or joy – from our eyes.

By all accounts and make no mistake, this book of cartoons is no child’s play. It is much too subtle and sage. So, if you are equipped with your wits, a map, and a snack, searching for fun and the child in us...go ahead read the book.