|
As I
look back to what I read as a pre-teen, with not much to choose by way of
Indian books apart from some CBT and NBT books among which I fondly remember
Shankar’s Stories about Grandfather, I marvel at the scene today.
Indian
writers from across the world are bringing to children’s writing a new
sensibility, a comfort with being who they are – indigenous or from the diaspora. The books are shaking off the colonial hangover, shedding
homogeneity and uniformity, beginning to reflect the child’s need for an
identifiable context and trying to explore the vibrant tradition of many
voices telling their stories.
Content, handled responsibly, maturely and innovatively
reflects the child’s
concerns. Violence, which has always been graphic but distant, considering
the battles of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata belonged to another realm,
is now compelling and real in the bloody Hindu-Sikh riots in New Delhi in
The Battle for No. 19 (Puffin), Just A Train Ride Away
by Mini Shrinivasan (Tulika) explores
the dilemma of a child distanced from his father, facing the bittersweet
reality of estrangement and belonging, The Smile of Vanuvati by
Harini Gopalaswami Srinivasan (Tulika) is a dialogue with history and
mythology through adventure, Witch Snare by Ashok Rajagopalan
(Puffin), an interactive book replicates a video game with a constant feel
of movement and engagingly counters the passivity of television. It is
gender sensitive too! Bringing Back Grandfather by Anjali Banerjee
(Puffin) addresses the issue of death
poignantly, using humour to defuse difficult moments. And the characters are
not Tom, Harry or George but Malavika, Santosh and Aditi.
Apart from Sukumar Ray’s brilliant nonsense verse, available in translation,
there isn’t much original work in a genre that gives children access to the
theme of ‘defiant individuality’, the fun of language, the world of logic
gone haywire and rebel figures they respond to – like Tala, the determined
heroine of Today is My Day, by Anushka Ravishankar. (Tara). Whether it is
strong-willed Matilda or Pippi Longstrump, or, Alise in Anita Nair’s Living
Next Door to Alise (Puffin), children need to question the strictures and
contradictory signals of the adult world. This literature of protest becomes
necessary reading for adults as well! Well-known Dutch writer Imme Dros says
“I’m not sure whether I write specifically for children. I write about the
things that I find enjoyable and interesting. Why my books happen to turn
into children’s books I really do not know.”
Books are, after all, about understanding oneself and the outside world and
only a few speak to all ages, across time –
like Swami and Friends does
about the travails of childhood, or Samit Basu and others do when they
create characters and contexts that are culturally unique yet universal
in Superhero – The Fabulous Adventures of Rocket Kumar and other
Indian Superheroes (Scholastic). The ordinary man is hero in a world of false idols and
powerful people running roughshod, a theme that has caught the imagination
of children in books and cinema as well.
Shashi Deshpande’s Three Novels (Puffin) set in small town India might be meaningful
to those who still enjoy grandparents, climbing trees, listening to ghost
stories…a world from which, unfortunately, most urban kids in wired,
concrete jungles are distanced. This estrangement of writer from audience
has happened surreptitiously. Blame it on globalisation?
But can children’s publishing sustain the need for stories that bridge these
divides and make them inclusive? It can, through new perspectives and fresh
interpretations. Many mainstream publishers thanks to a growing market for
Indian culture at home and abroad, continue to churn out folk tales and
myths that unthinkingly perpetuate prejudices and stereotypes. And
publishers aren’t doing enough to get sensitive writers to revisit and purge
them of these, keeping in mind the times, issues of race, religion and
gender.
Though Soma Guha’s retelling of the Mahabharata (Scholastic) retains moral dilemmas and
complexities and Adithi Rao’s Shakuntala and Other Classics (Puffin) is lucid, they
are the same old stories when it comes to treatment, with no new insights
that Samhita Arni’s Mahabaharata (Tara)offers through a ‘bold and
critical look at war.’
Most of these writers use English in exciting ways – as it lives and
breathes in the Indian milieu. But ‘beautiful’ writing is not enough.
These
writers should claim the space that these genres provide for vibrant
alternative narratives of the unheard and the unseen. But publishers tread
cautiously. Is it the times we live in? The need to be politically correct?
Aware of these many strands in our society and not dealing with them is
being complicit. To not bring them into the mainstream through words
(theirs) or their art, is to marginalise them, feels novelist John Wideman,
an African American Rhodes scholar. “Framed in foreign, inimical contexts,
minority stories appear at best as exotic slices of life and local colour,
at worst as ghettoized irrelevancies,” he says. It is important to give life
to these heroes and heroines for large groups of children who now have
access to many kinds of books even in rural India – in English and in
translations, through libraries and literacy programmes.
Non-fiction thrives, spurred on by the ‘information’ age. Despite the
pressures of competition from foreign books, there are books on archaeology,
history or ecology that defy the run of the mill. Leaf
Life by Sirish Rao (Tara), Tulika’s The Shining Stones by Shanti
Pappu, The Riddle of the Ridley by Shekar Dattatri (Tulika) and
103 Scientific Principles by Shobhit Mahajan (Scholastic) are well conceived,
imaginatively produced. Versatile text lends itself for use in a
multi-disciplinary approach. Biography thus far has been more hagiography,
less unbiased portraiture.
A Flag, A Song and a Pinch of Salt (Penguin) with
thumbnail sketches of leaders – men and women from across India, offers a
representative range with sensibly balanced profiles. Kabir by Jaya
Madhavan (Tulika)
unites biography and imagination to bring alive the persona of a complex man
in the troubled time and place in which he lived.
So there is something to cheer about. But there shouldn’t be complacency.
Homogeneity threatens again through branding, labeling and packaging. The
goal should be to fight labels, tell varied stories in English, in many
Indian languages and in translations and see that they reach all kinds of
children, across India and the world. The idea is to give them not only what
they want but also what most don’t have – the means to look at themselves,
the world and its many oddities and surprises with humour, curiosity,
empathy and optimism and to find their place in it.
|
