A Fable Revisited

Invigorating our lives with their depth and infiltering our thoughts and feelings with their encoded, allusive messages, some fables become legendary. “The Little Red Riding Hood” is one such fable. The strong fabric of this story is its interminable moral message of inner strength, which underlies layers of mesh-like innocence and naivety.

Sometimes age is no bar to courage, and within the simple are intertwined strands of wisdom. Several versions of this fable have been created and persist in riveting our attention to it.  Here is my version.  

Little Green Riding Hood  

Once upon a time, in a deep forest, lived a girl named Green Riding Hood. Her mother and her twin sister Red lived in a parallel world, far away. One evening, on the way through the forest to visit her grandmother, a big bad wolf accosted Green. The wolf told her to eat the box of chocolates she was carrying and litter the forest with wrappers, saw-down trees, and then go deer-hunting with him!  The wolf promised to take Green to her mother if she agreed. Flustered but brave, Green Riding Hood told him that she would not destroy the forests she loved, and she would not kill animals either! She believed strongly that she would one day meet her mother and sister without resorting to such tactics.  

So, Green Riding Hood turned away from the wolf and sprinted to her grandmother’s house. Fortunately, on the way she met a wolf-hunter. Green told him about the terrible nature-hating wolf. The wolf-hunter was no ordinary man; he was the keeper of the forest and a sorcerer too. He quickly caught the wolf and turned him into a fern. The wolf-hunter was so pleased with Green Riding Hood’s courage that he teleported Green and her grandmother to her mother and Red in the parallel world.

Today, Green and Red are much older and have a forest of their own.

Text:Trisha Bhattacharya

                                                                  
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LittRed.shtml 

http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-red-riding-hood-popup.htm