Little Meena’s Big Adventure

Book Review

 

Title: A Big Mystery for Little Meena

Author: Anamika Kundu

Publisher: Sabre & Quill, New Delhi, 2026

Pages: 128

 

When little children are thrown into the vicious world of arms smugglers, there’s a lot in store for the readers of their story. When the children belong to two different worlds altogether, there’s more excitement added. Anamika Kundu brings together a few children from army personnel’s families that live in a little cantonment and a few others from a nomadic tribe in Rajasthan in this little novel that can keep young readers fully engaged from page one to the last.

“The stranger was big. He was like a giant, Meena thought.” That’s how the novella begins. Eight-year-old feisty Meena’s adventure begins in those very opening sentences and we follow her to the end of the story which brings Major Bose of Indian army into the plot. The birthday celebration of the twin children of Major Bose, Veer and Lucky, brings Meena’s nomadic family into the life of the Major and his family.

The story unfolds in a “quaint” cantonment “at the edge of the great Indian desert” where the trees are “dry, and thorny – more like a bush gone crazy in the heat.”

One day, Veer, Lucky, and three other children are on their usual adventure into the desolate spaces that stretch beyond the edge of the Cantt, leading to sand dunes, when they are shocked into terror by the cry of a little girl: “Bachao! Mujhe bachao in goondo se!”- Help! Save me from these goons!

Anamika Kundu weaves a thrilling story of adventure and mystery with these children whose lives get entangled with the villainous world of a few adults, one of whom is from Meena’s own tribal world while the “giant” who has taken her captive is from across the national border. There is ample reason for Major Bose to enter the plot.

The author is from a military family. Both her father and her husband were army officers. She is familiar with their world, the cantonments and life in the border regions. Hence she is able to make the story credible and utterly realistic. In this novella too, she blends everyday life with imagination and weaves a thriller that appeals to young and crossover readers.

Look at a paragraph from the book for a sample of the realism that marks the narrative:

For the small crowd residing in the Cantt, schooling was a key requirement. The only English medium school was in a small town, quite far away and did not have enough capacity to accommodate all the Army kids, so it was decided by the Station Commander to start a school in the Cantonment itself, that would be run by their own ladies and families. Most of the wives of the Army Officers posted there, who were trained teachers took up the challenge and volunteered to run the school.

In that little world of some army personnel, their families, and a few nomadic tribal folks, move a group of children between the innocent milieu of their usual domestic affairs and the treacherous realms that some adults bring with them. The author’s spectacular skill is that she never lets the adult-world viciousness darken the children’s world of curiosity and adventure.

In magnifying a child’s little adventure into a grand plot that touches upon the nation’s security, Anamika Kundu reminds us that childhood is not trivial; rather, it is a world where curiosity is courage and imagination is power.

PS. I was gifted a copy of the book by the author herself as part of a prize I won in a blog hop organized by ECM.