I saw the toy shop out of the corner of my eye as I walked along a drab stretch of Sydney's Pitt Street. I kept walking and glazed over rows of plastic toys behind the window display. Among the merchandise, I recognised figurines of comic characters, some matched with their extravagant modes of transport. They looked cheap, mass-produced and sad, seemingly anticipating a more vibrant future than gathering dust.
One item practically screamed at me and stopped me in my tracks. A red and white checked rocket standing upright on three legs — a rocket I had read about and drawn countless times during my childhood in Mauritius in the 1960s: Tintin's rocket from the Explorers on the Moon and Destination Moon books. At around 20 cm high, this resin replica was glistening and of high quality. The memories came hurtling back.
My mother instilled in me the pleasures of reading and drawing. From an early age, I learnt how to keep myself entertained since my two older sisters had grown-up occupations of their own.
While art supplies were readily affordable, books, most imported from France and the UK, were prohibitive and a luxury. I was given comic books for my birthday and Christmas, and given my speed at devouring them and my family's short-lived calm, my joining a library soon became an imperative.
Saturday morning. On the way to the bazaar for the weekly groceries, my parents dropped me off at our parish library, the Bibliothèque Saint Joseph, at the back of Notre Dame de Lourdes, our church in Rose-Hill.
I was entrusted to two elderly single sisters who ran the library on Saturdays as volunteers. Known deferentially as the Demoiselles Chauvin, they arrived in great style, chauffeur-driven, in a vintage black car with tomato-red leather seats. That car belonged to their friend, Countess Julie de Carné who later died at 102, a discrete figure in Mauritius if not for her imposing colonial residence.
I, of course, could not care less. What mattered was my selecting my weekly allocation of books before my parents picked me up again.
Tintin was the first of my super heroes and my favourite. From my isolated dot on the world map, he took me travelling to distant lands, and opened my eyes to foreign cultures, their history and rituals. He personified courage, a thirst for investigating and learning, and a dogged determination against injustice no matter the perils involved. He