More than that: I remember that when the possibility of my going to school in England was mentioned it felt as exciting as any voyage beyond the rainbow. I remember that “The Wizard of Oz”-the film, not the book, which I didn’t read as a child-was my very first literary influence. My bad memory-what my mother would call a “forgettery”-is probably just as well. I have forgotten almost everything about his adventures, except for an encounter with a talking pianola, whose personality is an improbable hybrid of Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, and the “playback singers” of Hindi movies, many of which made “The Wizard of Oz” look like kitchen-sink realism. The rainbow is broad, as wide as the sidewalk, and is constructed like a grand staircase. It was about a ten-year-old Bombay boy who one day happens upon a rainbow’s beginning, a place as elusive as any pot-of-gold end zone, and as rich in promises.

Maybe he didn’t really find the story, in which case he had succumbed to the lure of fantasy, and this was the last of the many fairy tales he told me or else he did find it, and hugged it to himself as a talisman and a reminder of simpler times, thinking of it as his treasure, not mine-his pot of nostalgic parental gold. Shortly before my father’s death, in 1987, he claimed to have found a copy moldering in an old file, but, despite my pleadings, he never produced it, and nobody else ever laid eyes on the thing. The boys reminded me that we still hadn’t read the book nor watched the movie.I wrote my first story in Bombay at the age of ten its title was “Over the Rainbow.” It amounted to a dozen or so pages, dutifully typed up by my father’s secretary on flimsy paper, and eventually it was lost somewhere on my family’s mazy journeyings between India, England, and Pakistan. Naturally, I brought up The Wizard of Oz. Well, like most things on my absent-minded professor-like desk and bookcases, it got buried under papers, “treasures”, and other books.Ī few months later, my boys and I were chatting one day about favorite books that were turned into movies. I placed this book on one of our bookshelves with the thought of using it for a read-aloud very soon. One day while browsing our local library’s resale shop, I was lucky to discover a double book ( The Wizard of Oz on one end and The Jungle Book on the flip side) for only ten cents! Two classics for a dime! That book (along with three other similar styles) was quickly deposited into my bag.

I knew that I’d enjoy sharing this gem with my children. Those ruby slippers were so glittery!Īs I grew older, I read the book and continued to revisit this movie and the magical land of Oz.

My first love of this tale came at an early age when I happened to catch the replay of the movie on T.V.

The wizard of oz play script to print