Chrissie Robin Pooh Pooh !

The 100 Acre Wood is under attack. Home to Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh since 1926. Here’s where Pooh pursues his honey and goes visiting, Eeyore has a birthday and Piglet meets a Heffalump. Areas marked on the map drawn by Christopher Robin invoke their make belief world - Where the Woozle Wasn’t, Eeyore’s Gloomy Place Rather Boggy and Sad, Nice for Piknicks and the top right corner marked To North Pole. But all that is set to change soon. The original creator of these characters A.A Milne is long since dead. And now the Monstrous Mouse franchisee, that makes the mega moolah off merchandising these characters, finds that little six year old Christopher Robin doesn’t sell. Certainly not well enough as his animal friends who bring in upto US $ 1 billion . What better reason then, for the Disney Corporation to write him off their stories and videos, replacing him with a trendier (and presumably more saleable) female counterpart? Never mind that the original stories were actually written around the character of Christopher Robin, named after Milne’s own son. And that the original Winnie-the-Pooh was named after Christopher Robin’s toy bear.

The as-yet-nameless new girl (referred to as ‘tomboyish’) will be launched in 2007 as part of a package of celebrations around Pooh’s 80th anniversary. But for generations of readers who have grown up on these stories, Disney’s crass commercialism is adding insult to injury. Remixed Disney versions of the Pooh books, with their uniformly bright colors and dumbed down stories, have slowly pushed the amusingly written, thoughts from a child’s world originals into oblivion.

Look for the originals and (if you find them) it’s like a journey into Lewis Carroll –like heaven. From the delightful make belief of ‘Nursery Chairs’ to the child like reality of ‘Solitude’ to the serious business of ‘Lines and Squares’, Christopher Robin tells us -“ Whenever I walk in a London Street,/I’m ever so careful to watch my feet;/ And I keep in the squares, /And the masses of bears/Who wait at the corners all ready to eat, /The sillies who tread on the lines of the street, /Go back to their lairs”

And then there’s the ‘100 Aker Wood’, with all it’s idiosyncratic adventures – Here’s where an ’Expotition’ began to ‘discover’ the North Pole ( ”What is the North Pole” he (Pooh) asked. “It’s just a thing you discover,” said Christopher Robin carelessly, not being quite sure himself.’ ) Here’s also where Eeyore loses a tail, Pooh and Christopher Robin rescue Piglet from the Flood in an upturned umbrella and Christopher Robin hosts a party for Pooh and gives him a present –‘It was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked “B” for Bear, and pencils marked “HB” for Helping Bear, and pencils marked “BB” for Brave Bear.’

Yet even then (in Disney–less days) it was not all fun and happiness – the real Christopher Robin was growing up and beginning to be affected by the huge popularity of his print persona. So Milne concluded his popular series in ‘The House at Pooh Corner’ where ‘Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There’ with Christopher Robin saying
‘”Pooh, promise you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred.”
Pooh thought for a little. “How old shall I be then?”
“Ninety nine “
Pooh nodded.
“I promise”, he said. ‘

So conclude the Pooh books declaring that ‘in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing’. Little did Milne dream that eighty years later his magical world would be modified so, all by a mercenary Mouse.

This appeared in the Times of India sunday BookMark dated 25th December 2005