Reading myself into and through books

I have been reading a lot of picture books lately for the course I am doing on children's libraries. Some of them are absolutely stunning in terms of artwork, innovative fonts, thought-provoking layout, economy of text and multilayered narratives. And yes, I will blog about them soon. 

In the meantime, here is a piece I wrote inspired by a picture book titled A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. Enjoy!

I am a child of books.

I sail across a sea of words, as I read myself into books and read myself through books. Leaning back against the sturdy branches of the bimbli tree in my childhood home, or the warm sunkissed tiled roof of the house where I spent my teenage years, I spend hours making friends with people who live in the pages of books, and come to life in the squiggles that work like magic spells. 

I read books to get through school and college. I read books at parties, too shy and awkward to converse and make friends. When my father books tickets for long bus journeys to visit relatives during the school holidays, I pack my bag with a tome or two and prepare to journey through forests of fairytales.

I come from a world of stories, a place where giraffes browse in my backyard, Goethe’s Faust sinks into despair, and Irving Stone’s Van Gogh paints his madness onto canvas. “Thigele gandi peshi kadetha”, my grandmother laments worrying that my absorption with the book in my hands will prevent me from noticing my surroundings (read housework that I will be expected to do). My mother smiles as she places a third and then a fourth dosa on my plate and, finicky eater that I am, I eat them without noticing, for I am busy savouring Hemingway’s tale of the old man and his battle with the fish rather than the coconut chutney on my plate.

In college, I discover Kafka and the Russian writers and am drawn to the abyss of despair that their writings open up. “Come away with me” they seem to call out, and I shake my head, knowing that like Theseus, I will find my way through the maze.

I get married and move to Bangalore and my books travel along with me. (“No, ma, I don’t have space for my trousseau saris, I have to pack my Jane Austen collection”) When returning from our honeymoon, we stop over at Calcutta and rush to College Street, where I buy Johanna Spyri’s Heidi for three rupees, and Rabindranath Tagore’s Chitrangada for two rupees fifty paisa! My husband and I set up house, linger over our book collections, and hurriedly arrange the other stuff in some semblance of order. Dusting takes a backseat, as I pick up a copy of Melville’s Moby Dick and upon my imagination, I float.

When my son turns one, a circulating library in my neighbourhood shuts shop, and vulture-like, I swoop on them to buy up their stock at throw-away prices.  Dog-eared copies of Enid Blyton, Bertrand Russel, Robin Cook and A.J. Cronin form a contiguous chain of book joy as they perch spine-to-spine, next to each other in the rough-hewn shelves we have fixed to the walls in place of the floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall mahogany book cabinets of my dreams. I plonk my son into his pram and walk through the Jayanagar fourth block complex, travelling over mountains of make-believe. I notice with a start that the only people I can recognize and who know me back are the people at Nagasri Book House. 

In the school and college classrooms where I pretend to teach, I share my love of books with the students. We discuss Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Amitava Kumar’s Bombay London New York, and talk about how books have shaped us. I write plays for the children to perform on Annual Day, and the stories are drawn from Greek myths, Indian folk tales, science fiction and other tales of yore. My reading shapes me and the ways in which I shape the world around me. When I visit Germany, I spend some quiet moments at Bebelplatz, beside Micha Ullman’s installation of an underground library with empty shelves, to remember the horrific night when the Nazis burnt twenty thousand books.  I think back on Bertolt Brecht’s poem "A Worker Reads History" and understand there are treasures to discover, even in the darkness.

I dream of opening a library, a bookstore, a publishing house. I dream of crafting stories that speak, of writing books that will call out to readers, of creating narratives that will resonate with others’ lives, of spinning yarns that will help them escape the banality of reality. I dream. Ah well, imagination is free.

With apologies to Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston - the phrases in bold are taken from their picture book, A Child of Books.

*****

Caravan to Tibet

Caravan to Tibet

Deepa Agarwal’s Caravan to Tibet is set in the 19th century in the mountainous regions of India and Tibet. 14-year old Debu becomes the youngest member of a caravan of traders to undertake the dangerous journey to Tibet, for he is in search of his father who went missing almost a year ago in a blinding snowstorm. Debu has many adventures along the way, including being kidnapped by a band of robbers and participating in a horse race. He is also pitted against the obnoxious and malevolent Trilok Singh, the man who might be his future stepfather, according to the custom of levirate marriage followed by the Shauka community. The book is both a work of historical fiction as well as a coming-of-age narrative. It was nominated for the IBBY Award.

        Much of the book is about the process of the boy becoming a man, a long, testing and tough process that highlights the conventional notion of manhood. Debu ceases being a ‘mere’ child and becomes a man when he develops and displays courage, self-control and daring. Being a man is not determined by one’s age, education or intellectual achievements but by physical strength, ability to fight, handle a weapon and survive a crisis. His strength and generosity of spirit are foregrounded via an obnoxious character like Trilok; his self-control and marksmanship are highlighted against the temperamental and moody robber chief; and his skill at negotiating is pitted against the imperious and haughty Garphan whose word cannot be countermanded.

        Caravan is written in the style of a traditional hero story – a young boy goes out on a quest or journey generally looking for something of great value which could prove to be life-changing and encounters a number of adventures en route, and finally emerges victorious.

        A problem I have with this otherwise beautifully written book is that it is unable to subvert the conditions of historical fiction. History has traditionally been about the male and within Caravan continues to be so. The narration tells us that in the harsh environs of the mountains, only the strong, brave, shrewd and enterprising individual will survive. But by locating these qualities in a male hero and not giving any space in the narrative to a female hero, Caravan implies that to survive and prosper, one must be either a male or identify oneself as male. To be female is to be at a disadvantage as with Debu’s mother who is not even named in the narrative, and is completely ignorant of her husband’s financial affairs; she fears having to marry Trilok according to the customs of her community but lacks the ability to protest against it. The book reiterates the male perspective that the world is for the man, that boys should grow up into men and that women are secondary and lack agency. 

Sita’s Ramayana - Using old stories and traditional art to render new perspectives

This graphic novel is a collaborative effort between Samhita Arni, a writer, and Moyna Chitrakar, a patua artiste. Samhita’s first book, titled The Mahabharatha: A Child’s View, was published when she was twelve. Moyna Chitrakar is from a Bengali community of Muslim and Hindu patua folk artistes who are painters, lyricists, singers and performers rolled into one.  Traditionally, men undertake the patua art assisted by the women but Moyna is an independent patua artiste. Many barriers are thus broken here. Women take on the traditional patriarchal epic Ramayana and present their perspective not only on the story of Rama and Sita but also on war and governance.

        In this book, the narrative does not begin, as is usual, with the birth of Rama or the marriage of Sita and Rama, two focal events that reveal Rama’s divinity and his strength and skill in archery. Instead, in a feminist manner, Arni and Chitrakar begin by asking questions about the woman who faces the predicament of loss of identity and home. What happens to a woman who is far away from her father’s house and is abandoned by her husband when she is pregnant with their child?  Sita rescues herself not by finding a man to depend on but by finding her voice, and identifying herself by her mother’s name. She says, “I am Sita, daughter of the Earth, sprung from the same womb that nurtures this forest. . . . The world of men has banished me” (8-9). Sita reminds us of a tradition of strong women who do not let themselves feel overpowered by male oppression but retain the power to think, feel and take their own decisions.

       

In her telling of the story of Ramayana, Sita does not hesitate to speak from her perspective nor does she mince words. She blames Lakshmana for much of what happened, but reiterates that it is not Lakshmana per se who is the culprit, but all men who think that being male gives them the birthright of domination over women.

               

           Sita’s Ramayana is a reminder that war is perpetrated and fought by men but its primary victims are women. War makes heroes of men, says Sita, “if they are the victors. … But if you are a woman – you must live through defeat . . .  You become the mother of dead sons, a widow, or an orphan, or worse, a prisoner”. Apart from the emotional turmoil women go through, they also have to face an obliteration of their selves and their identities.

    The book both begins and ends with the focus firmly on Sita. Although rejected and abandoned in the forest, “[a]t her touch, the flower creepers and trees of Dandaka forest awoke from their long sleep” (8). Sita has the power of regeneration, the life-giving and life-enhancing ‘feminine’ ability rather than the destructive and warring ‘masculine’ ability. And finally, she turns the tables – it is she who abandons Rama; it is she who has a secure place of refuge in the home of her mother. Unlike Rama who, while building the bridge, could enlist the co-operation of the ocean only by threatening to destroy the sea-creatures (61-3), Sita does not need to threaten to receive help.

       

The artwork of the graphic novel also subtly contributes to defying certain hegemonic notions of good and bad, male and female. Rama and Sita are represented with dark brown complexions, while the rakshasas, Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Indrajit are blue. In mainstream ACK comics, the asuras, demons and rakshasas are of a dark brown complexion while the gods Krishna, Rama and Shiva are coloured blue. Chitrakar thus reminds the reader of the constructedness of even the most well-entrenched stereotypes.  She also makes the point that when Sita walked out of the circle drawn by Lakshmana, it was not an act of foolishness or wilfulness but a reaction to the patriarchal confinement of women. The two panels that depict the drawing of the circle and Sita waiting alone for news of Rama and Lakshmana show her behind bars (20-1), a prisoner of the rules laid down by men. The windows in the earlier panels had no bars. 

Newspapers and Journals – Children’s literature in Colonial India

The newspaper and the periodical played a significant role in developing children’s literature in pre-independence India.  Many newspapers kept aside a column or page every week for publishing children’s literature. Some journals and periodicals also followed this practice while some were dedicated to children’s literature. Both children and adults wrote for them. Songs, riddles, puzzles, short stories, serialization of novels and illustrations formed the content of these publications. Not only did these journals serve as a display for older talented writers but also helped discover many new writers. Well known journals exclusively for children include V.G. Apte’s pioneering effort, Ānand, from 1906, Sandesh published in Bengali from 1913, Shewak Bhojraj’s magazine, Gulistān, in Sindhi, and an Oriya magazine, Panchāmratha, launched in 1928.

        The best known and most influential of all children’s magazines during this time was Sandesh, primarily the work of one family, Upendrakishore Roychowdhury and his descendents. It was in Sandesh that Roychowdhury, his son Sukumar Ray and grandson Satyajit Ray, first published most of their works for children. Some of their writing which appeared here first are now classics of children’s literature - such as Roychowdhury’s Goopy Gyne Bāgha Byne, Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol and Satyajit Ray’s Feluda Series.  

Sandesh was not only instrumental in developing children’s taste for quality literature but also found, encouraged, and developed a number of talented authors and artists. Mahasweta Devi wrote delightful stories for children in Sandesh which have now been published in an English translation, Our Non-Veg Cow and Other Stories by Seagull Books.

The Reading Child - and Mothers!

In all our talk on children’s literature, its various genres, its attractions, its future, and so on, we often forget the person who mediates the child’s introduction to literature. Almost everywhere, children learn language from their mothers. They hear the mother’s voice, watch her lips change shape as she speaks, they repeat words after her – in short, their immersion in language begins with the mother. And mothers don’t stop with introducing the child to language. They also transport the child into the fascinating world of literature in various ways. They croon lullabies, play games, narrate stories, and sing songs. When the child is a little older, they introduce the alphabet to the child and teach her, to decode those abstract symbols, ie., to read. It is mothers therefore who deserve the credit for making the child love the act of reading.

         There is a Kannada saying that sometimes gets lost in the cacophony of commercialized education – “Maneye modala paathashaale, Tayeeye modala guru” – meaning the home is the place where learning begins, and the mother is the first teacher. I was reminded of this when I read about the Jane Johnson Nursery Archive consisting of 438 pieces including manuscripts, alphabet cards, story cards, lesson cards, and word chips.

Jane Johnson (1708-1759) developed these between 1740-59 for her children’s use. The cards and other materials not only served as aids to reading but also to teach the children the arts of conversation, good manners, intonation, reading aloud and enactment of texts. By making magnificent use of the visual element, Jane Johnson also ensured that her children developed aesthetic awareness and creativity.

   

The Jane Johnson collection is housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, the Lilly Library, Indiana University, and a part of it is privately held. 

Trash – from Tara Books

It’s International Labour Day today, a celebration of labour and the working classes. In India, child labour is officially banned, but it prevails in spite of government injunctions. In Bangalore, where I live, one often encounters children begging at traffic signals, children selling flowers, stationery, tiny little toys, tissue paper ... It is ironical and heartwrenching that these children are selling stuff that they should be enjoying (flowers, toys) or using (stationery, tissue paper).  In an increasingly materialistic society, should we not realise that investing in the children will lead to healthier, better-informed, and more productive adults tomorrow?

        

In this context, I want to write about a very different kind of book, called Trash by Gita Wolf and Anushka Ravishankar, and illustrated by Orijit Sen. It’s published by Tara Books, famous for the unique slant they bring to children's books and to the art of book making (more about that later).

Trash is about twelve year old Velu who runs away from home and a drunk abusive stepfather, and arrives at Chennai. An older girl, Jaya, takes him under her wing, and they live on the streets and work as ragpickers. Velu learns all about garbage (what sells, what doesn’t), how to get his dues, how the rich are wasteful and often throw away almost as much as they consume, and very importantly, Velu learns to enjoy himself (Fridays are for Rajnikanth movies and, sometimes, a sweet bun) even as he undergoes a rather painful lesson on how to manage his income.  

Tara Books

Tara Books is unique in several ways. It is one of India’s first publishing houses set up with the desire to give children a more nuanced literature and one that incorporates elements of visual storytelling; it is also famous for their handmade books – books that are made entirely by hand - from the paper to the artwork, the printing and the binding. They have popularized several forms of tribal art – and have not only revived some of these dying art forms, but have also offered the child reader a completely different world view in the process. They publish fiction and non-fiction books on a range of subjects and themes, and all their books are informed by a deep-rooted concern for human rights, gender equality, tribal cultures and children’s rights. The book, Trash received a SPECIAL MENTION in the White Ravens Catalogue for World’s Best Children’s Book 2000. 

Children's literature in India in ancient times

Written children’s literature in India has been called “perhaps the greatest paradox of all,” for India is simultaneously home to “thousands of children . . . doomed to illiteracy” as well as “the greatest living oral narrative tradition in the world” that can fulfill the need of every Indian child for a story (Kamal Sheoran). However, written literature for children in India is far older than what is normally acknowledged.

   The Sangam literature which flourished in Tamil Nadu from 3rd century BCE to 3rd century CE contains references to literature produced for children. Manorama Jafa calls the Panchatantra, written in 1st century CE, “the oldest collection of stories for children in the world”. It was translated into Kannada by Durga Simha in 1035 CE and constitutes the first book in Kannada for children. In Telugu literature, the Śataka Sāhitya, a collection of a hundred poems by an individual writer based on a particular theme, has always been popular with children. Two Śatakas  ̶  Krishna Śataka and Sumathi Śataka  ̶  which are seven to eight centuries old are still studied by school children.

        In Assam, in the pre-Vaishnavite period stretching from 1300 to 1490 CE, Sreedhar Kandal wrote a secular work for children titled Kankhowa and Ramasaraswati wrote Bhimacharit for the child reader. Indira Goswami writes of this book that it “is narrated in an atmosphere of overflowing rustic humour. The book is so popular among the children that it has been reprinted several times”.

      Amir Khusro, who lived from 1253 to 1325 CE, wrote riddles and a dictionary in verse called Khaliq Bari for children in Urdu. Another seventeenth-century Urdu didactic poem for children, Maa Baap Nāma, was composed by Shah Hussain Zauqui. The Shree Krishnacharitam Manipravalam and Pancatantram Kilippattu were written in Malayalam in the eighteenth century for women and child readers (!).

        However, only a few such instances of pre-colonial written literature for children exist in India. Prior to the establishment and growth of print culture, Indians were noted for their oral literacy. Oral narrations enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the community. The joint family system also ensured that there was always an adult to be found to narrate a tale.