Tiger Companion

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/197016/

Date: 17-Feb-2024

Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip that I have been reading for the past ten years. Yes, Daily. It is being sent to me via e-mail by Pinterest. The company is urging me to search and read this series daily. Like a coffee, it makes me start my day with enthusiasm.

I didn't find Calvin and Hobbes by chance. It was a comic book presented to me by Suchitra. It started from there.  Such comic books follow a framework. They would occur like lines drawn with disdain. But as you watch them closely, you would understand that they were drawn by expert artists capturing even the expressions and the thoughts in the eyes of the characters. After a stage, the characters would become like people well acquainted to and living amongst us.

Another constant in these comic strips is that they are made up of  the same recurring themes and the characters with unchanging characteristics, which is what makes them humorous. Unless you know their characteristics, you wouldn't understand the humor. Some times, there will be a continuity within these comic strips.

The protagonist of Calvin and Hobbes is Calvin. Truly a prodigy. Someone with excellent imagination and amazing language skills. A budding litterateur. One who had created a separate world through imagination and is living there. Since he is in his imaginary world, he doesn't usually have friends in real life, except for Susie.  

Susie too doesn't know the kind of person that Calvin is. She views him as an unintelligent neighbor boy. His acts confuses her. She cannot understand anything that he speaks. It feels absurd a lot of times. She is not able to get into his imaginary world.

He goes to school with her, so he is her companion mostly. He doesn't let her study or eat properly. Just as she opens her lunch box, he starts talking on ugly and disgusting things. For all the mischief that he does, he blames her to his teacher. She goes to the end of her patience every single day. Often she explodes, sometimes she hits him on head.

But Susie can never leave Calvin. Being with him is akin to a roller coaster ride. He is to her an external gigantic planet that is attracting her. Therefore she isn't close to anyone else. His friendship keeps taking her to abyss and peaks. As soon as she leaves him, she comes back fiercely. 

Calvin's dad enters his imaginary world easily, having understood him. If he asks as to how the rain falls, his dad would tell a credible answer that it is due to the waves in the seas. There are several give and takes between him and his dad.

Calvin's issues are his spectacular imagination, his intuition in language, his internal quests. He isn't able to participate in any activity that doesn't provide avenues for any of these. For him, those seem foolish. Why would he care if Alexander-I ruled Macedonia? If Alexander-I could've ruled aliens, then that's to be learnt. Can there be another absurd study like Mathematics, where 1+1 is always 2?

There is always a tendency of playful malice and playful ugliness with Calvin. Whether scolding Susie saying "Drop Dead" or taking joy saying "That is gross", his countenance presents a grin of fantastic self joy. At the same time, when the school bully "Bully Moe" entraps and hits him on head, he stands pitiful with a downcast head, completely forsaken. 

His mom knows him well. But she also knows how to handle a challenging lad like him. She is someone who drags him into the school van. Once she says "No You don't!", Calvin knows that there is no more room for maneuvering. In reality, she is another form of Susie. There isn't a single day where she doesn't yell having run out of patience. She is her life's terrible nightmare. Yet, he is her joy. There is no other person in her life. 

Calvin's teacher Wormwood is a mature elderly person. She is quite adept having handled several kids like him. Therefore, she doesn't enter his world. She keeps trying to bring him into the practical world. Almost on a daily basis, Calvin will be taken to the headmaster. Or, he would've to sit outside with a paper hat.

School is the worst nightmare for Calvin. Everyday, he tries to escape from the school van and gets caught. He comes back from school giving lame excuses. (One time, it is destruction of the school by Martians). He couldn't get a grip on the mystery of 1+1 becoming 2. Why couldn't it become 3? Perhaps, its that way in this planet. Why shouldn't it be like that in other planets? Is it just a tradition that's preached by Maths teachers and followed by others? In that case, it's a religion. Calvin is a Mathematics atheist.

Calvin's friend is Hobbes. In reality, it is a stuffed tiger toy. The tiger friend shares all mentalities of Calvin and accompanies him in every imagination. He understands Calvin's words and converses with him always. Calvin can understand the most challenging philosophies - just that those shouldn't be in school text books. 

The comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes was first published by Bill Watterson, a cartoonist, in Novermber 1985. It is being translated in 2400 magazines in 100 languages around the world. The world over, there are devoted fans for Calvin.

Those fans are not Calvins. They are parents of Calvins. They too would be knowing the delight and the ordeal of raising a kid like Calvin. Because all mischievous kids are in some parts Calvins.

One needs to follow him intimately soulful in order to understand his world. The world Calvin lives is in the future. One needs to leave the present to go there. Then, present will become absurd. Our job and our society will all become absurd. Therefore Calvin's mom is careful. She is the anchor of Calvin's real world, whereas Calvin's dad is sometimes uprooted from the ground in that tornado.

When somehow Calvin grows and leaves them after really creating his own world, his parents would rest on an armchair heaving a sigh of relief. But before long, thinking about the thrilling experience of riding a spiral maze every single moment and about the fact that every single day was radiant, they would look at each other and drop a smile with teary eyes.

 

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_characters_in_Calvin_and_Hobbes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson