The Jungle Book claws back my childhood

For the nineties kids in India, who are probably of my age now, this video is enough to take them back to their colourful childhood with cartoons telecast on Doordarshan.

The Jungle Book is a collection of stories of an innocent, yet mischievous human child - Mowgli - raised by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle, with the help of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther. The Jungle Book was written by English author Rudyard Kipling for his daughter Josephine, who died at the young age of six.

The cartoon programme on Doordarshan which had Mowgli and all other animals talking in Hindi never seemed odd to any kid. I remember being engrossed in the programme while munching on my meals. Never did I understand all the conversations, for Hindi wasn't, and isn't one of my strongest languages, but each episode made perfect sense.

The trailer of Disney's ambitious film The Jungle Book was released on September 15, and it has blown me away. The trailer certainly didn't seem similar to the cute, harmless cartoons I used to watch, but it was more like an action flick.

Now, come to think of it, The Jungle Book cartoon series was nothing short of a commercial Bollywood masala flick, yet not lacking quality. For me, it was similar to an Ayan Mukherjee movie, or an Imtiaz Ali one.

From the new trailer, The Jungle Book seems to have lost its core: morals for kids on how to live life, rules for safeguarding one's loved ones, family and community, but nothing will stop me from catching the first show of the movie the day it releases.

Neel Sethi, a ten-year-old, of Indian-origin plays the only human in the movie, the title character - Mowgli. With stalwarts dubbing for the characters, as for instance, Bill Murray for Baloo, Ben Kingsley for Bagheera, Idris Elba for the villain - Shere Khan - and Christopher Walken for King Louie, and with the film being directed by Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man, I do not doubt that the movie will be a hit. But what I'm looking forward the most is for a chance to watch Kaa, the wise python, dubbed by Scarlett Johansson.

The movie releases next April, and I'm sure to watch the trailer at least a zillion times before I finally relish each minute of this childhood fantasy.