The Hindu: Bombay Show… – Bijal Vachharajani

Good Fellas

Posted on January 3, 2017October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/books/Goodfellas/article16966377.ece
A wolf, a shark, a snake, and a piranha don suits and begin The Good Guys Club. No, that’s not the start of a joke, but the premise of Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys series published by Scholastic. The books are about a quartet who really really look like Bad Guys, in fact, everyone thinks they are terribly Bad Guys, scary and dangerous. But what they really really want is to be heroes, especially Mr. Wolf. Unfortunately, everyone keeps judging the Samaritans on how frightening they look, even the dapper suits don’t seem to help their image.

“I wanted to make something that my overly-sophisticated eight and 10-year-olds would think was cool,” said Blabey over email. “It was also a reaction to seeing a lot of deeply boring Early Reader books being brought home from school. Some books seem to have been designed to discourage children from ever wanting to read again. It was my hope to provide an antidote to that.”

Written and illustrated by Blabey, the comic chapter books are fully fun. Each page elicits a few chuckles, and some are simply laugh out loud. No surprise then that The Bad Guys has been extremely successful in Australia and is now available in India as well. “Kids really seem to love it,” said Blabey. “And kids who don’t like to read books are loving it too. THAT is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I’m immensely proud of that: kids who consider books to be Kryptonite are queuing up for the next instalment.”

But they are more than just funny stories. In Episode 1, The Good Guys Club sets off to rescue 200 puppies locked up in a maximum security city dog pound (their hopes and dreams are trapped behind walls of stone and bars of steel) and in Episode 2 – Mission Unpluckable, their daring plan is to rescue 10,000 chickens from a high-security cage farm (never mind that one of their members is a notorious chicken swallower). These are narratives that will be loved by animal advocacy champions. “It’s more about characters who’ve simply been judged their whole lives because of the way they look,” said the Australia-based Blabey. “The fact that they’re animals is inconsequential. One of them — Wolf — wants to transcend his situation. His counterpart — Snake — is resigned to it. Their polar approaches to handling this dilemma is the engine of the series.”

The Bad Guys explores attitudes and discrimination at the same time, using humour deftly to present the issues. “I find Wolf heart breaking,” said the bestselling author. “He can’t understand why no one can see how nice he is. The world’s preconceived notions of what the boys are is a rich and satisfying seam of material to mine and for the record, I love making this series more than I can say.”

Blabey effortlessly switches between writing and illustrating comic chapter books and picture books, including the adorable Pig the Pug series and Piranhas Don’t Eat Bananas. Blabey said that his approach to the books is completely different. “I walk when I write picture books. The rhythm of walking helps me write in verse. I walk until I have a book,” he said. “The Bad Guys, on the other hand, is written like a screenplay, sitting at a desk, on a Mac. The process of switching between them is like crop rotation (Joni Mitchell famously referred to moving between song writing and painting in the same way. I’ve stolen that from her.)”

As he walks about the Blue Mountains thinking up his stories, Blabey pens them down on phones and other such entities. “I like mediums of impermanence, like phones, white-boards and napkins, because they encourage naughtiness,” he said. “Handsome notebooks demand reverence. Every mark seems to diminish their beauty. My notes app, on the other hand, feels utterly transient, so I tend to be more relaxed and playful when I write on it. I love white-board too. Nothing is at stake, so I feel free to play.”

Spinning a different yarn

Posted on December 23, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

14bm-kids-column-payal-dhar-nadia-budde-ben-dammers-and-devika-rangachari.jpeg

http://www.thehindu.com/books/Spinning-a-different-yarn/article16806907.ece
In an interview, Maurice Sendak said, “I don’t write for children. I write, and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’” Ask most writers, and they will say that as a child, they pretty much read whatever they could lay their hands on, as long as it held their interest. Children enjoy reading all sorts of books. Yes, they read the ones about schools and diaries in school, adventures and misadventures, but they also savour those that traverse the darker side of life that adults often shield them from. It’s a subject that has been the focus of my multifarious conversations over ten days at Children Understand More…!, a workshop-cum-residency organised by The Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan and Zubaan in Santiniketan.

Seventeen writers and illustrators from different parts of the country have been intensely talking, writing, drawing, debating, discussing, and listening everything kid-lit at the workshop. Mentors — writers Payal Dhar and Devika Rangachari from India, and illustrators Ben Dammers and Nadia Budde from Germany — have been sculpting away at the ideas and stories along with the participants, helping shape them into works that engage with the many difficulties of reality. “We have learned a lot as well,” said Budde. “About how people think differently, how they develop ideas.” All these interactions have been bolstered with superlative meals and mishti at the Mitali Home Stay, where we are staying.

Death, climate change, single parenting, religion, family structures, individuality and gender, body image, growing up in a conflict zone, social stigmas and identity are just some of the subjects that are being written about and illustrated at this workshop. “It’s nice to have the chance to move out of thinking about what can I write, will it be published,” said Dhar, the author of Slightly Burnt, a young adult book that explores queerness. “And to be able to give free rein to what you really want to write or illustrate. The constraints have been removed; the participants have carte blanche with a theme, without bothering how adults will react. It’s liberating. It’s almost like taking off your clothes and running down the beach, removing every covering that is there.” Rangachari agreed, adding, “Maybe we will don the covering when we return, but this has been a breather.”

Instead of using images, Bengaluru-based book designer Nia Thandapani is experimenting with typography and lettering to explore identity and how people are given labels by others. “It’s made me question and refresh my practice, and I can see myself taking forward the many conversations and work that’s been going on,” said Thandapani.

Novelist C.G. Salamander and illustrator Sahitya Rani are questioning the academic system through a graphic novel, while Meenal Singh is exploring grief and loss in her story. “It’s been great to see how visual and verbal language works together,” said Dammers. “Writers have seen how text can be represented visually and illustrators are working with the text in an involved manner.”

Samidha Gunjal, an assistant professor at the Symbiosis Institute of Design in Pune, said she had previously attended a similar workshop conducted by Max Mueller and Zubaan, which culminated in the graphic anthology Drawing the Line. “Such workshops provide a platform to share our stories and tell the truth about the current situations to children,” said Gunjal, who is working on two stories, one on manual scavenging with Salamander, and the other on domestic violence.

Karthika Gopalakrishnan, a writer who works for MsMoochie Books in Chennai, has teamed up with Kolkata-based illustrator Shreya Sen to develop a picture book. “Ministry of No is about an eight-year-old girl who is very good at saying no,” said Gopalakrishnan. “The picture book really deals with resilience and family dynamics.”

But what’s truly rare is being able to spend an uninterrupted amount of time in the company of those who care about writing and illustrating for children. “We all work in isolation in this field and as it is, children’s publishing is under-recognised and under-developed here,” said Rangachari, who wrote the historical fiction Queen of Ice. “So it’s a real luxury to have this time and space.”

Shals Mahajan, a Mumbai-based writer-activist, has teamed up with illustrator Tanvi Bhat for a story about Kittu, a child with a peculiarity around his food, and how his family is trying to figure it out. “It’s been a fantastic experience of being in a very peaceful, gorgeous place with a bunch of committed and creative writers and illustrators,” said Mahajan, who wrote the award-winning book, Timmi in Tangles. “It has also been surprisingly very comfortable, and the interaction has been full of camaraderie, which I did not expect. I am really enjoying working with so many people and seeing how they work. I am doing small creative projects with some, with the knowledge that there will be long-term interactions with many.”

Often, in the frenzy of lit-fests, kid-lit is relegated to an inconspicuous corner in the form of workshops or book sales. But now, festivals such as Kahani Karnival, Bookaroo, Peek-a-Book, the Chandigarh Children’s Literature Festival have been offering more curated spaces of storytelling for younger audiences. Then there’s Jumpstart by the German Book Office, which brings together creators of children’s contents in Delhi and Bengaluru for discussions and master classes.

In India, a number of books that explore difficult themes, including sexuality, class, same-sex love, body image, disabilities, and grief, are published, but they are few and far between. The majority continue to be stories about mythology, folk tales, and urban adventure stories. With dwindling brick-and-mortar bookstores, it’s often hard for parents, educators and children to find books with more slice-of-life narratives. But then again, it’s not always easy to find publishers who are willing to back the more difficult themes. Which is why as writers and illustrators of children’s books, it’s sheer joy to be able to step back for a few days, unhindered and uninhibited, to just follow what Dr. Seuss said, “Oh, the thinks you can think!”

Why should grown-ups have all the fun?

Posted on November 28, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/why-should-grownups-have-all-the-fun/article9242787.ece
As the Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival kicks off this week, children and young adults can look forward to seeing a range of acclaimed films especially curated for them as part of the section, Half Ticket. Monica Wahi, who is the founder and director of the Southasian Children’s Cinema Forum has curated the section and says that the section is an attempt to introduce cinema to young children, and encourage them to become cineastes.

This year, Half Ticket will commence with the screening of The Little Prince, an animated adaptation of the 1943 classic by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Directed by Mark Osborne of Kung Fu Panda fame , The Little Prince uses stop-motion and CGI to bring to life the beloved story of an aviator who meets a young prince who lives on an asteroid. Wahi says that they are very proud to be screening this internationally-acclaimed film, also because it has had a limited theatrical release across the world, before it premiered on Netflix in U.S.

Half Ticket will present a slate of 28 films from across the world, including 13 features and 15 shorts. “When you put together a programme, the films must be diverse and yet speak to each other to create a larger story,” says Wahi. “From handmade shorts and indie features like The World of Us or The Blue Bicycle to celebrated big studio productions like Heidi and Fanny’s Journey there is a wide range of films.” Apart from the film screenings, nine budding writers will attend a screen writing workshop by Dibarkar Banerjee, Diya Mirza, and Varun Grover.

Half Ticket was introduced last year with schools being its primary audience, and Wahi said that both children and teachers enjoyed the festival immensely. This year, in its second edition, the section is not limited to schools — it is also open to festival delegates accompanied by children and young adults, aged five to 17, for weekend shows. What’s fabulous about the selection is that there’s something for all age groups. Younger children can experience two interactive sessions of animated shorts led by Gillo Theatre Repertory.

Schools too are excited about Half Ticket, and many teachers have expressed an interest on engaging with world cinema across the school year. “This is the kind of impact we hope for,” says Wahi, adding, “When films are no longer looked at as just entertainment content for consumption, but are valued as art, education and culture.”

A lot of the programming is for tweenagers, often the most responsive age group when it comes to new experiences. “At this age, children hunger for something new,” says Wahi. “They are much more open to experimentation, to introspection, and to connect what they have watched inside the theatre to the real world they encounter outside. Introduce them to a new kind of cinema, and they lap it up.” Apart from The Little Prince, Half Ticket will screen films such as Heidi and At Eye Level from Germany, Hang in there, kids! from Taiwan, and Window Horses from Canada. Closer home, children can see Hardik Mehta’s documentrary Ahmedabad ma Famous, Nina Sabnani’s animated short We Make Images and Manas Mukul Pal’s Feature Colours of Innocence among others . Many of these films are difficult to access outside of festivals and Half Ticket offers parents, teachers, and children a space to watch cinema from across the world.

Young adults can look forward to engaging with the films through a series of meaningful conversations and discussions. In fact, for Wahi, one of the highlights of Half Ticket is the discussions that are held with the children, post screening. “We hold discussions with the children, where we deconstruct the films for its artistic and social relevance” she shares. “Every time, I find myself overwhelmed with the kind of responses the children give. Cinema after all is itself a conversation.”

One of the most exciting part of Half Ticket is the children’s jury, which will be comprised of seven children between ages of nine to 17. Last year, the jury unanimously gave the Golden Gateway Award for Children’s Feature to Ottal, a Malayalam film directed by Jayaraj. “ Ottal is a film that’s lyrical and languid. It has a gentle sort of humour and is essentially steeped in sadness. And yet children love it,” said Wahi. The jury choice only underscores the fact that children engage with meaningful cinema, which contrary to popular perception, doesn’t always have to be slapstick or humorous alone.

Wahi adds that the one thing that brings the section together is that the films reflect empathy and openness. “They are about being open and fearless. These films encourage you to empathise with people who are different from you. At the same time, they ask you to be self-critical – compel you to look inside yourself and challenge your own positions. This is very important particularly these days when the world is becoming more and more divisive,” she emphasises.

Money, Money, Money

Posted on November 28, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

In this capitalist world, it’s imperative that children learn about financial literacy early on.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/Money-Money-Money/article16667863.ece

What do you do when you have to sit down with your child and explain the facts of life? Do you squirm and pass the buck on to your partner or another handy grown-up around you? Or do you sit down and tell it like it is – all the things about bulls and bears, currency exchange, and government regulations? With all the economical chaos that has erupted in the last week, now’s a good time to chat with your children about money and get them financially literate.

Explaining demonetisation

Mala Kumar, Editor at Pratham Books, is the author of the Rupaiya Paisa series, a set of four books that attempts to decode information around money – There’s The World of Money, that takes a look at its history; How Money Travels is about the way transactions happen and the value of currency; Money Managers talks about the people who handle money in our lives; and, Be Wise With Money is about spending, budgeting and government-related plans and insurance. “The ideas for the content for the books were generated during a workshop that included participants from Pratham Books, microfinance company BASIX and other NGOs,” says Kumar. “As a journalist, I was able to collate all the information with valuable inputs from my colleagues. And as an editor and author of children’s books, I was able to sift the mounds of information and present it in byte-sized portions.”

Pratham Books’ aim is to promote reading, and Kumar said that they decided to make financial literacy simple and clear so that young children could enjoy reading and at the same time, imbibe money sense. “Understanding money makes so many things clearer for children – why their parents work, why families do things the way they do, why prudence and thrift are values that families pass on and so on,” explains Kumar. Illustrated by Deepa Balsavar, the four books are a fabulous edition to the library.

When it comes to talking to children about the demonetisation of the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes, Kumar offers an easy explanation that parents can use. “Demonetisation involves retiring the existing currency and replacing it with new ones,” she says. “The money is safe, and honestly earned in the form of the old currency that can be exchanged for new notes. Sometimes, this is done when the notes become tattered with use. Sometimes, demonetisation allows governments to ensure that people do not hoard money.”

Encouraging individual opinions

Author Roopa Pai — whose children’s book So You Want to Know About Economicswill be published early next year – says that she wouldn’t get into the debate of right and wrong with children, when it comes to demonetisation. “I would explain why the government thinks it is a good idea and why others think it isn’t, and let them process it in their heads,” she says. “I would talk about the difficulty of executing something as drastic as this in a large country like ours, in which such a large percentage of people still use only cash for all transactions. I would talk about how this kind of thing is easier in other countries because of either political – they are not democracies; or social – they don’t have such large populations, they have more literate populations; or economic – they are almost entirely cash-free and have been for a while – reasons.”

So You Want to Know About Economics , which will be published by Red Turtle, looks at topics such as macroeconomics, microeconomics, trade, taxes and budgets. As a parent, Pai elaborates that she would take her children to the bank to stand in line for an hour or two. This would help them understand the inconvenience felt by people around them and place it in the larger context of the government policy. Pai would encourage them to think how they can help people, such as their household help, who maybe facing a cash crunch. “I would ask them to think about how privileged they are, that they can actually carry on for a long time without using cash at all, and how good it would be for the country if everyone eventually got there,” says Pai, who has also edited a set of math volumes for Pratham Books’ digital platform, StoryWeaver.

Government initiatives

Another way to introduce children to the concept of money is to take them to the Reserve Bank of India Monetary Museum in Fort. It’s a wonderful space for children to understand where their money comes from and its history, currency management in India, and the RBI’s function. The RBI even has a basic microsite, Financial Education, where children can put together jigsaw puzzles of currency notes to understand its design and read short stories. Not the best of designs or concept, but it’s a start, perhaps, especially as it’s available in multiple languages.

Apart from that, the National Council of Educational Research and Training has Personal Finance Reading Materials available online, about the basics of financial planning, investment, and taxes. The website vikaspedia.in has several such examples, including a link to Pocket Money, a financial literacy initiative for students developed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India and National Institute of Securities Markets.

Starting early

Both Pai and Kumar stress the importance of enabling children to take an interest in financial matters. “Financial literacy has to be part of the skills that children learn at home along with other life skills,” says Kumar. “The transfer of knowledge has to be organic. Rather than give them lessons, take children with you when you go to the post office or bank. Help them start a bank account when they turn ten. Allow them to keep and manage their own gift money however small or big the amount is. Maintain a democratic process of discussion and debate around regular family budgets.” Pai recommends talking to children about compounding, the importance of money and how it is earned through hard work, why the government imposes taxes and why it’s vital to pay them, and encouraging them to be entrepreneurs, to earn their own money off school time.

In a capitalistic world, it is increasingly becoming important for parents to ensure their children also grasp the social complexities and the idea of privilege. “I think it’s even more important to weave life lessons into it,” says Pai. “You should save for a rainy day, but how much? There’s nothing wrong in spending the money you’ve worked hard for, but should there perhaps be another column in your Spend-Save account-keeping book, titled ‘Share’? Is it always okay to have premium services for people who can afford it so that you get to stand in shorter lines? Should people have access to the best doctors only because they are able to pay more, or should it be based on the criticality of their illness or whether they stood first in line? Communism has been trashed as a failed system, but is it really that impossible to create a more equitable world in more formal ways? Is money really everything?” It’s imperative the discourse starts early, for children to gain important knowledge as well as formulate their own ideas and thoughts about money.

Food on the go

Posted on November 28, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/Food-on-the-go/article16087522.ece?ref=tpnews
Over the last few weeks I have been on a whirlwind series of travel for work and vacation — and I have taken all sorts of transport — flight, rail, bus, car, hikes, the works. For me, food and travel are inherently connected, like so many of us. And so, I found myself abandoning my Kindle to observe just how the nature of food we eat as we travel has changed.

A toddler ambled across our coach’s corridor, his beaming face crumpling when he saw his brother tucking into a packet of Kurkure. “Kudkude,” he yelled, his hand outstretched, trying to grab at that packet. His brother sulked as he was forced to share his precious stash, while the toddler settled into someone’s lap, happily nibbling at his Kudkude. He couldn’t say “Delhi” — his uncle was trying to get him to say that, but he could say “Kurkure”. Priorities!

On another train journey, a pair of tweens switched on their MacBook, attached a dongle, and promptly ordered themselves Domino’s Pizza, after a fairly intense discussion about the toppings. The pizza, it seemed, was scheduled to reach home about the same time that we would all get home. Not to mention, it would be washed down by the accompanying bottles of cola. At the hotel we stayed in Binsar in Uttarakhand, a mother proudly told the wait staff that her son just loves Uncle Chipps, and no meal is complete without it. On another flight, the cup-o-noodles were what most families were ordering for their children.

Our cities and villages are now dotted with little kiosks, where traditional local food such as podi idlis or banana chips are shoved aside by shiny packages of processed foods of all sorts. Our trekking guide at Binsar in Uttarakhand kept stopping to pick up remnants of such packaging that were littering his beloved forests, even though there were dustbins inside the sanctuary. Our walk in beautiful Andretta in Himachal Pradesh was strewn with packets of Uncle Chipps, Lays, and Kurkure, wrapped around plants and trees. All of this only underscores the many studies and research floating about — that Indians, including children, are taking to packaged and hyper-processed food with gusto. This, at great cost to our collective well being, including our children’s health.

Many of us un-millennials (is that a word?) have fond food travel memories. Our family summer vacations would almost always commence with us lugging Milton flasks filled with ice and water onto the train. As the train trundled on, mum would produce crisp aloo nu shaak, potatoes cooked in their jackets Gujarati style, along with methi theplas, a dab of mango pickle, and of course dahi. In intervals, sev mambra would be produced, carefully stored in ziplock bags ordered from the USA aunt, as well as sliced fruits, and godpapdi. Yet now that we’ve grown up and have our own families, we don’t always do that.

Of course, as I grew older, I would often be embarrassed by this stash of food we carried along with us — whether it was to Baroda or to Cape Town. It’s only now that I have come to appreciate the hard work that my mum put in, in the form of hours in the kitchen, to ensure that we would be well-fed through the trip.

But then let’s face it — all of this eating well takes effort and the burden almost always falls on the women of the household, unfairly so. I cook almost every day, but even the thought of producing that quantum of food is daunting for me. And it’s getting harder to trust street food — you don’t know what oil or water it was cooked in, cut fruits and vegetables are a strict no-no, and it is often deep fried starchy food such as samosas, kachoris, or vada paos.

It’s not surprising that hard-pressed for time and with fewer healthier choices on sale, we are choosing to pick up ready-to-eats, convenience foods, outsourcing our food decisions to corporates. The difference is evident in the way we travel. We can’t even be bothered to carry our own water bottles, preferring to buy plastic mineral water bottles instead. Who wants to lug about a steel water bottle when you can use and throw a plastic one. Never mind the environmental impact.

Yet does it have to be all packaged, salty, additive-laden food that we need to pack into our travel schedule? Many of these food labels read like a sci-fi movie, undecipherable, straight out of a lab, rather than a farm. Now when I travel, I pack myself a sandwich or get my cook to make me a stack of theplas. Add some fruits and you’re sorted for the journey. A friend carries homemade granola with her, another carries packets of puliyogare to mix into rice. On a trip to Madhya Pradesh, we looked at the unappetising train fare (no it wasn’t the Shatabdi) and cheered up when a friend produced luchis and aloo sabji for dinner from her bags. Really, who needed chips?

Staying true to Valmiki’s spirit

Posted on November 28, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/Staying-true-to-Valmiki%E2%80%99s-spirit/article15475307.ece

Arshia Sattar’s vivid prose retells an epic for the kids staying firmly focused on fascinating characters, human foibles and the wonder that is nature

Reading Arshia Sattar’s Ramayana for Children (Juggernaut) , is like sitting alongside a masterful storyteller, and listening raptly, as she narrates the familiar story. With her words, she deftly conjures up images of kings and princes, battles and victories, pettiness and bravery, jealousy and fast friendships.

Strong credentials

Sattar has a PhD in classical Indian literatures from the University of Chicago and has previously translated The Ramayana of Valmiki (Penguin Classics) for grown-ups, and has written The Adventures of Hanuman (Red Turtle) for children, among other books . Like The Ramayana of Valmiki, the children’s edition has also been translated from Valmiki’s original Sanskrit text. In her author’s note, Sattar writes, “It was composed in Sanskrit about two-and-a-half thousand years ago, perhaps put together from many other versions of the same story that people were telling.”

For many children, Ramayana is not a new tale, but Sattar’s book will invite young readers to explore the story in detail, discovering different nuances and facets of the narrative. “I guess the Ramayana has been sitting inside me for so long, it was dying to jump out into the world,” says Sattar, over email. “What I needed to be most aware of was language and vocabulary,” she says. “I worked with fewer words than I normally would; in a translation, you look for as many words as you can to express the original language text as accurately as possible. Here, it was the opposite. I had to use fewer words and still be true to Valmiki’s spirit,” says Sattar. The book is stunningly crafted. Sonali Zohra’s illustrations are evocative and compelling, recreating the forest and the characters in gorgeous Earth colours.

Retelling an epic

Like many other Indians, Sattar heard the Ramayana when she was about four or five years old. “A little later, I got familiar with myths and legends and folk tales from other countries. My parents were always buying me books like that and I was an early reader,” she says. The scholar shares that since then, different parts of the Ramayana have engaged her at different times in her life. “I guess that’s really what it is,” she says, adding, “The Ramayana can stay with you your whole life, it’s that rich.”

And that richness comes across in her storytelling. Most of us are well-acquainted with Ramayana ’s characters. But unlike a lot of the texts which cast the characters in a rather distant and other-worldly way, Sattar keeps them real. Dashratha, for instance, puffs and gasps when rushing to Kaikeyi’s Anger Room, something you don’t usually find kings doing in stories. Another time, when Sita faints, Rama and Lakshmana massage her feet to revive her. There’s also an inherent playfulness to the text. When sage Vishwamitra says that he’d like to take Rama to Mithila where King Janaka has set a task for suitors who want to marry his daughter Sita. “Lakshmana understood what the sage was hinting, and winked at Rama, who looked away with a smile,” writes Sattar.

The author says that she wanted to humanise the characters. “I wanted children to identify with them rather than see them as distant ideals who live in an entirely different universe and with an entirely different set of values and possibilities,” says Sattar. “Also, I enjoyed building character for these well-known and well-loved figures who can so easily be placed on pedestals and become all about morality. I think children will learn far more about ethical behaviour and good actions from characters that they see as human, facing the same questions and dilemmas that they do, experiencing the same confusions and finding solutions to them on their own.”

Not a morality tale

One such character is Hanuman. As Sattar says, “Hanuman is THE magic in the story. Who can resist a monkey that flies and speaks Sanskrit, or Hindi or Tamil or Bangla, depending on which language the story is told in. He’s an amazing character, simultaneously wise and silly, playful and serious, loyal and brave. He can do anything he wants, and he’s always trying to help other people, make their lives easier. For children, he’s the obvious entry into the story because he is familiar and magical at the same time. Adults get more involved with Hanuman as a symbol or an allegory. Either way, he’s the hook.”

The literary landscape for children is often dominated by Hindu mythology, but Ramayana for Children attempts to offer it as a story, rather than a moral or divine text. Sattar says this version is focused on the main narrative; the characters and events are in the foreground rather than the ideology and politics of the text. “Like any writer in any genre, you decide what it is that you want to say and then you try and say in the best way that you can,” says the writer.

For Sattar, it’s most important that young readers get to know and love the story of the Ramayana . “They can come to questions of sacred texts and complex understandings of god when they are older. It’s not that we should excise the idea of god from the narratives we create, but we should think about the fact that children are drawn to stories more than they are to lectures about morality and divinity. You can tell the Ramayana in such a way that children understand its central question: how can we be good, how can we do the right things even when it is the hardest thing to do,” she says.

Focus on nature

Another way that Sattar stays true to the original text is in the lyrical way that nature is an integral part of the story. As Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita go deeper into the forest, Sattar writes, “At night, they slept, warm in their beds of leaves and dried moss in the shelter of trees with wide canopies, watching the stars and listening to the night birds.” “Nature and its descriptions are central to Sanskrit poetry and Valmiki’s Ramayana is a poem,” says Sattar.

Of course, Sita was born of the Earth, and when she insists on accompanying Rama to the forest, he remembers that she “was more familiar with plants and trees and animals than he would ever be”. “Many contemporary interpretations of Ramayana see her as representing feminine nature. In this book, I thought it was important to distinguish between the masculine and the feminine, between the city and the forest,” Sattar says.

At a time when much of kid-lit engages with the urban, Ramayana for Childrenresonates with the story of co-existence with nature. Sattar explains that she also wanted to “engage children with the idea that nature is so close to us, it’s everywhere — trees, flowers, the sun and the moon, the rain — even in the city. We should know nature better than we do and think about it more than we do.”

Growing up with 400

Posted on October 8, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/growing-up-with-400/article9186570.ece

That’s it then; scientists have confirmed that the carbon dioxide level in the Earth’s atmosphere has crossed 400 parts per million. And the way it looks, it’s probably the point of no return. According to the Scientific American, the last time the world saw carbon dioxide levels above 400ppm was some 3.6 million years ago, a period that was known as the middle Pliocene.

So how do we understand the crossing of this threshold exactly?

Imagine the planet is a car. All of us — you, your friends and family, colleagues, and strangers — have been driving about for a while. Some, more than others, have heated up the car by driving it recklessly (pumping fossil fuels and greenhouse gases deliriously into the atmosphere). The temperature is soaring, and it’s getting hotter inside the car. It doesn’t matter that we know, like climatologist Dr. James Hansen has said, that 350ppm is the optimum amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But now that we’ve crossed over to the dark side of CO2, we realise that turning the ignition off isn’t going to change anything. We’ve got to keep driving in that hot car full of seven billion people.

What’s growing up in a world with 400ppm of CO2 going to be like? It’s not going to be pretty.

Already, 2016 is slated to be the hottest year on record. We have all, in some form or the other, been witness to the impacts of climate change. Unpredictable weather has wreaked havoc in different parts of the country and the world, threatening livelihood and food security. Droughts, famines, air and water-borne diseases are proliferating.

Worse, when it comes to climate change, children are the most vulnerable. The UNICEF report ‘ Unless We Act Now: The Impact of Climate Change on Children’ puts it succinctly: “There may be no greater, growing threat facing the world’s children — and their children — than climate change.”

Another UNICEF report, ‘ Children and Climate Change: Children’s Vulnerability to Climate Change and Disaster Impacts in East Asia and the Pacific’, explains further: “The types of climate risks confronting children are diverse, ranging from direct physical impacts, such as cyclones, storm surges and extreme temperatures, to impacts on their education, psychological stress and nutritional challenges.” The report mentions that soaring temperatures are linked to “increased rates of malnutrition, cholera, diarrhoeal disease and vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria”.

“For me, growing up in a warmer world means that each month is likely to be warmer than the next, and the weather is going to be extremely uncertain (erratic monsoons, increase in typhoons),” says Payal Parekh, the programme director of climate group 350.org. “When these storms hit, children have the least resources and abilities to survive them, especially children in the poor villages along the coast; they suffer when there is drought in the form of malnutrition and we know that often means girls are the first to get less to eat,” adds Parekh. The organisation 350.org is named after the optimum amount of CO2 level in the atmosphere.

The good news, of course, is that on Gandhi Jayanti, India ratified the Paris agreement, right on the heels of the USA and China. India became the 62nd country to ratify the agreement, which looks to keep global temperature increase between 1.5 to 2°C. These may seem like small degrees of temperature change, but the repercussions are far-reaching. A World Bank Report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 °C Warmer World Must be Avoided, warns that a “4°C world is so different from the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs”. This includes higher malnutrition rates, unprecedented heat waves, and loss of biodiversity.

As Anthony Lake, UNICEF’s executive director writes in the foreword to the Unless We Act Now report, “No human responsibility runs deeper than the charge of every generation to care for the generation that follows it. For current and future generations of children, and for us all, the stakes could not be higher.”

Farm-fresh for your table

Posted on September 25, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/farmfresh-for-your-table/article9146189.ece

Bijal Vachharajani spends a Sunday morning shopping at theFarmer’s Market and is mighty pleased with the expedition’s results.

The promise of fresh vegetables and fruits is one of the few things that I will wake up early on a Sunday morning for. Even as I grumbled to my friend who had suggested the morning expedition, I found myself heading to Nariman Point two Sundays ago for the Sant Shiromani Shri Savta Mali Athavda Bazar, Vidhan Bhavan’s farmer-direct market. The weekly market that has been set up across the State by the Maharashtra State Agriculture Produce Marketing Board.

Of course, I was armed with cloth bags and plenty of change. Since mid-August this year, every week, the lot between the Vidhan Bhavan and Inox theatre is transformed into a bustling bazaar of more than 30 stalls with farmers selling a staggering range of local and seasonal produce.

We joined the throng of people shopping for their weekly veggies, and marveled at the glistening tomatoes, fat sitaphals, fresh cluster beans, and pumpkins the size of Ravana’s head, that jostled for space with mounds of lettuce, stacks of asparagus, and luscious-looking purple cabbage.

Apart from the usual suspects, there was some wonderful indigenous produce. We found some early green mogri (as the Gujaratis call it), which I had last eaten in Delhi. Winter vegetables, these radish pods are spicy: the purple ones add a nice bite to raitas while the green ones are cooked into a vegetable, usually with brinjals. Though, these are just as delicious when eaten alone.

The market also sold fresh kidney beans in their pods, khatta sorrel leaves, and colocasia leaves for patras and stir-fries. We also found wild chikoos and guavas that when sliced open revealed a soft pink flesh. Flowers such as marigolds and asters were also available.

I went back to the Sahyadri Farmers Producer Co. Ltd. stall multiple times for their glorious pesticide-free black raisins, plump and sweet. My friends kept texting me that they also wanted a packet, and so I would return to the stall to buy yet another kilo, while sampling more of the raisins. The same stall promises chemical-free bananas as well, and are considering home delivery in the future. Another farmer who stocked garlic showed us how to plant the pod to grow it.

The haul from the market was a reassuring one, given that just the other day, my friends and I were bemoaning the lack of good produce available in our bazaars. The prices at the Sant Shiromani Shri Savta Mali Athavda Bazar are more than reasonable, and for those tired of the usual apples and bananas, there’s much diversity in the produce available. This is a definitely affirmative step by the government in enabling fair trade, by cutting out the middle men, and letting people buy directly from the farmers.

Don’t forget to carry your own cloth bag though.

The Farmer’s Market is held every Sunday in the parking lot of the Vidhan Bhavan, Nariman Point, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The market enables fair trade by cutting out middle men and letting people buy directly from farmers

A is for Art

Posted on September 25, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/a-is-for-art/article9134413.ece
A pair of eyes peer out from the cover of Eye Spy Indian Art by Khoda & Pai. The book, which recently bagged the runner-up award for the best printed children’s book at the Publishing Next Awards, is a window to India’s modern art movement.

Beautifully produced, Eye Spy looks at the evolution of modern art history and introduces young readers to prominent artists of that time. “In this book, we highlight elements of art, perspective, size and proportion, and symbolism, through featured works,” says Vanita Pai, who co-authored the book with Ritu Khoda, founder of the Art1st Foundation. “We bring in conceptual thinking. It is interdisciplinary. It is written for middle school kids who already study Indian history and are old enough for offline and online research,” she says.

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What makes the book unique is not just the amount of research that’s gone in, but also the way it has been interpreted through design. Each chapter is crafted thoughtfully; you have to find different keys and guess what art movement you’d be reading about. Pages need to be opened carefully as they reveal hidden information, reproductions of artwork are produced vibrantly, and questions are posed in a manner that encouragesc hildren to think, explore, and marvel at the works before them. “Children enjoy tactile activity,” says Pai. “So, we build in a great number of flaps, foldouts, stickers, and die cuts, besides drawing and painting exercises.”

For instance, to get children to appreciate the quality of line work by Nandlal Bose, right atop the painting Untitled (Esraj Players) is a tracing paper where budding artists can trace the figure of the musician.

In Untitled (The Village Cow), readers have to flip the transparency sheet on top of the painting to understand how adding or removing strokes can alter an artwork.

And Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Alphabet Stories II is cut into layers, and as you turn each flap, the writers pose questions about your perception of the painting. Each caption also reveals the material used, the size of the work, and the year in which it was created.

Play is the central idea in both their books, Eye Spy and Raza’s Bindu: Art Explorations. “We want our books to be fun,” says Pai. “We pushed our designer to go with the final cover of Eye Spy Indian Art, which does not carry a title , only die-cut sockets with a pair of eyes peering through. We were convinced kids would love that.” Pai says that the minimalist cover became a talking point; one parent wrote to them saying that his child was pretending the cover was a mask.

Designed by Ishan Khosla Design, Eye Spy Indian Art has been edited by Meera Kurian. Psychology professor Tanu Shree Singh, the founder of Reading Raccoons on Facebook, helped analyse design elements from a child’s perspective. Deconstructing artists isn’t an easy task, but Pai and Khoda are very much up to the challenge, collaborating with experts, wading through tonnes of research, and organising workshops with children. “We begin work keeping in mind our objectives: generate awareness about Indian art and artists, enhance visual literacy, help develop a language of art in our audience, and this process of discovery should be fun and not a chore,” says Pai.

The authors said that their books, so far, have focused on modern Indian art. For the Art Explorations series, which focuses on artists, they plan to feature abstract artists Ram Kumar and Ambadas Khobragade in the future. “We have had the privilege to meet [S.H.] Raza saab and Ramkumar ji ,” says Pai. “India’s modern artists witnessed the struggle for Independence and the turbulent aftermath. Their art reflects a search for identity, a return to roots, and evolved accordingly. Their life stories are very inspiring. Raza, as you know, passed recently and this has been our foremost concern. Very few modernists remain and it would be a pity if their art goes unappreciated by later generations. We started with Raza because his vibrant art greatly appeals to children, and also because when you bring pen to paper, what emerges first is a bindu,” says Pai.

The series stemmed from a mutual concern shared by the authors that despite learning art in school, most children don’t know the names of Indian artists or enough about Indian art. “We decided to make books that would instil a sense of pride and heighten awareness about our rich visual art heritage,” says Pai. “So all our work is interlinked. Through our art education programme, we are trying to change the way art is taught in schools, and through our books, we aim to increase art awareness among Indians.”

The Loneliest Animals in the World

Posted on September 13, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/the-loneliest-animals-in-the-world/article9079043.ece

More than a decade ago, I got into an argument with a cousin-in-law because she was incredulous that I had issues with Rani Bagh (the old name for our city zoo now known as Jijamata Udyaan). I argued back, talking about the dingy cages, the lack of stimulation for the animals, and the general despair I felt every time I went there. All that’s fine, she said, brushing my complaints aside by asking how she would show her children what animals look like without the zoo.

That was a statement I was completely gobsmacked by. And it’s one that I have been returning to over the last few weeks as the Jijamata Udyan gears up to display eight Humboldt penguins by November. While these penguins have been bred in captivity and come from South Korea, that doesn’t take away from the fact that these birds have a rich natural history.

According to the Centre for Biological Diversity, Humboldt penguins in the wild live along the coasts of Chile and Peru and are “known to travel long distances at sea to find food”. Their “habitat is highly influenced by the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt Current flowing northward from Antarctica, which is vital to the productivity of plankton and krill and fosters fish abundance”. And they live for almost 20 years.

Twenty years! That is a long time to stay in a glass air-controlled enclosure. With people knocking at your enclosure, pulling faces at you, and the barrier, a final difference between freedom and captivity.

As John Berger wrote in About Looking , “The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. They have been immunised to encounter, because nothing can any more occupy a central place in their attention. Therein lies the ultimate consequence of their marginalisation… This historic loss, to which zoos are a monument, is now irredeemable for the culture of capitalism.” We, as a species, have always been fascinated by our fellow animals, constantly attempting to observe, tame, cage in a bid to understand our sameness and our difference. And reducing animals to a commodity.

British naturalist Gerald Durrell once said that “Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things”. Zoos, when managed well, could potentially have a role to play in species conservation. But Mumbai’s zoo doesn’t serve that purpose. It has a history rife with problems, but that hasn’t stopped it from drawing up plans of grandeur, of being a “world class” zoo with polar bears and penguins.

A petition on the Sanctuary Asia website expands, “While Jijamata Udyan (Rani Bagh) has immense architectural and botanical heritage value, the zoo serves no meaningful conservation or scientific purpose. The death and unspeakable suffering of scores of incarcerated animals has brought great ill-repute to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Yet it is considering spending over Rs. 20 crore on yet another misadventure while the city claims to have no funds to properly maintain the existing animal facilities in their current situation.” You can log on to their website to support their Unhappy Feet campaign.

One of the things that children take away from zoos is that it’s okay to confine animals for purported educational and entertainment reasons. It also tells them that it’s perfectly reasonable to spend a colossal amount of money on imprisoning animals that are not even suited to this climate. All this, when we should be looking at fortifying Mumbai with some serious climate adaptation methods.

I don’t know why anyone has to see animals in captivity to understand what they “look” like. In the forest, you are not likely to see an elephant swaying its trunk incessantly or a fox pacing its cage up and down because of zoochosis, a form of abnormal and stereotypical behaviour displayed by animals in captivity. Nor are you going to understand animal behaviour if they are languishing in constricted spaces with little environmental enrichment, when in the wild they are accustomed to realms of land or water.

Mumbai, for instance, has no excuse with Sanjay Gandhi National Park in its backyard. The city forest is teeming with a glorious abundance of trees and plants, expansive moths, elusive leopards, spiders spinning silken webs, shrieking parakeets. They are all there, we just need to look. Rani Bagh itself is a botanical garden, with some truly spectacular trees which are home to birds and bats. Why then import misery into its grounds? Definitely not in the name of children, who are way more sensitive to cruelty and have a natural affinity towards animals.

The excruciating misery and tedium of captivity is not hard to understand. And children get it. Take a look at The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. In the book, a silverback gorilla, Ivan, lives in a glass cage in a mall. He describes his life in an unforgettable manner: “Not long ago, a little boy stood before my glass, tears streaming down his smooth red cheeks. ‘He must be the loneliest gorilla in the world,’ he said, clutching his mother’s hand. At times like that, I wish humans could understand me the way I can understand them. It’s not so bad, I wanted to tell the little boy. With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”