The Reading Column II

-Akhila Seshadri
To begin with, book lovers, identify this drawing.

That’s right book lovers, this is the loving, absolutely moving and amazing
character created by the French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
This is also the book that this column is about: The Little Prince or Le Petit
Prince as it is called in its original French version.
This remains an eternal favourite of mine. I picked up this book in New Delhi,
during my wanderings around Connaught Place, on the corner of the footpath
opposite Regal Theatre. It is a slim and much cherished volume. This is a book
that one can revisit again and again.
Part biographical, part philosophical, this is a story of a pilot who meets a
Little Prince in the desert and he learns about matters of consequence from this
young yet old prince.
Saint-Exupery
Born in Lyons, France, Saint-Exupery became a pilot and did a lot of pioneer
work in flying, particularly when aircraft were rudimentary in their equipment and
machinery. He flew during the Second World War and was probably shot down
by a German Luftwaffe during a reconnaissance.
His life was a troubled one, particularly in his love for his women (in plural).
His engagement broke off, he married and lived in a rather stormy relationship
with his wife, Consulo Sunchin, a writer herself and was deeply enamoured with
another woman, Helene de Vogue, perhaps the Rose in Little Prince.
There is just one piece of information about his life that is relevant to the
book: his crash in the Saharan desert, after attempting to fly from Paris to Saigon
faster than previous aviators. He and his co-pilot survived the landing, but with
few rations and fast running out water, they were faced with the prospect of rapid
dehydration. Four days later a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and saved
their lives.
The Little Prince begins with the narrator, a pilot who crash lands in the
desert. Beyond this reference, the rest of the book is a lovely fable that questions
the adult notions of what is important and what is not and is about love, care,
trust and friendship.
The Little Prince
This slim book is wonderful because it describes moments of vulnerability, of
both the Prince and the adult pilot. It constructs images of the Prince gently and
gradually. It caricatures and makes presentable human nature and lets us see
ourselves like we see our images in a mirror.
 No matter what I write here, ultimately the magic can be experienced only in
the reading.
The book weaves its magic right from the dedication that the author makes:
TO LEON WERTH
I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this book for dedicating it to a grown-
up. I have a serious reason: he is the best friend I have in the world. I have another
reason: this grown-up understands everything, even books about children. I have a third
reason: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs cheering up. If all
these reasons are not enough, I will dedicate the book to the child from whom this
grown-up grew. All grown-ups were once children--although few of them remember it.
And so I correct my dedication:
TO LEON WERTH
WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY
If this doesn’t hook you, then the next few pages will. The narrator speaks
about his childhood and his first attempts to draw a boa-constrictor eating an
elephant from its outside and from its inside. The adults around him are unable to
guess his drawing of the boa-constrictor swallowing an elephant and ask him not
to waste time drawing hats or boas, but to study. So, he gave up drawing and
became a pilot instead (see the pictures given below).

Living a lonely life, he flew planes and one day crash-landed in the Sahara,
with little prospect of survival. More isolated than a ‘shipwrecked sailor on a raft
in the middle of the ocean’, he is stunned to find a young boy who asks him
without a preamble to: draw me a sheep!
It is so delightful that I quote what happens next and if that doesn’t tickle your
interest what else will, I wonder?
But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I
had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was
astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with,
“No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa
constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome.
Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a
sheep.”
The story moves on to the Prince’s adventures from his planet to this and the
people he meets. Each time he fails to find what he is looking for and that is a
friend, a true friend, someone not too self-centred or greedy.
His travails began when one day, on his asteroid blew in a strange seed that
grew into a plant that could become a Boabab tree. His planet was so small that
whenever he wanted to see a sunset, he just needed to move his chair a little.
Boabab trees are too huge and he needed to be careful that not a single Boabab
grew to become a tree. He had a few volcanoes too. One was good enough to
become his stove. The others were dormant, but as the Prince often loved to say:
One never knows! Now this plant took its time and soon brought out a bud.
To quote:
The little prince, who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt
at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it. But the
flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the shelter
of her green chamber. She chose her colours with the greatest care. She
adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to go out into the world all
rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that
she wished to appear. Oh, yes! She was a coquettish creature! And her
mysterious adornment lasted for days and days.
Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed herself.
The Prince was unable to fulfil her demands and he saw that she was a
selfish, vain and untruthful creature. He was hurt by her continuous reference to
herself and decided to leave the planet and go away. From his asteroid (B-612),
he travelled to neighbouring ones, meeting a vain king, a rich man who believed
he owned the stars because he thought of it first; a drunk who drank because he
was ashamed of drinking, a geographer who wanted other people to do the
exploration and a poor lamplighter who lit and snuffed out lamps every minute
because his asteroid had sped up its rotation… till he reached Earth. Here he
met the roses and realised that his Flower was not unique but just another rose.
Then he meets a fox who wants to become ‘tame’. Through each of his
encounters, he understands life, his needs and his pain. Finally, he meets the
narrator and realises that his rose needs him. In a passionate speech he says:
"If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the
millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the
stars. He can say to himself, 'Somewhere, my flower is there . . .' But if the sheep
eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened . . . And you think
that is not important!"
So, finally he decides to leave and go back to his asteroid. Here, the author
deliberately lets the reader decide how the Prince finally left this earth. And
leaves us with the same deep sense of loss and poignancy that the narrator
expresses and leaves in the same ‘secret land of tears’.
Now my sorrow is comforted a little. That is to say--not entirely. But I know
that he did go back to his planet, because I did not find his body at daybreak. It
was not such a heavy body . . . and at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like
five hundred million little bells . . .
Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for
me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know
where, a sheep that we never saw has--yes or no?--eaten a rose . . .
Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the
flower? And you will see how everything changes . . .
And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much
importance!
The charm of the book is also in the little snippets that the narrator adds. For
instance, when he speaks of the Prince’s planet, he calls it Asteroid B-612. He
then digresses and speaks about a Turkish astronomer who discovers it, but is
not allowed to the Conference as he is in Turkish costume. Luckily a dictator
decrees that all Turks must wear European clothes and lo and behold he is
applauded and his discovery is honoured!
Some of the most beautiful lines of the book also come from desert fox. Here
too, the author’s desert experience comes into play, for when marooned in the
desert, a small desert fox kept coming again and again. Why? One can only
wonder.
 The fox tells a few things to the Prince before sending him on his way. And I
too will end my little piece with those beautiful lines…
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It
is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the
eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he
would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so
important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he
would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You
become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for
your rose . . ."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be
sure to remember.

Good bye… and remember what is essential is invisible – in this piece too.

A Post Script:
Our Club library must stock several copies of this too! Young readers to
adults must have access to it.