The Hindu: Bombay Show… – Page 3

Read the movie!

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

Nagesh Kukunoor’s new film Dhanak has been novelised by children’s writer Anushka Ravishankar

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/read-the-movie/article8623588.ece?ref=tpnews

Dhanak

All eyes are on Nagesh Kukunoor as the much-awaited film Dhanak is set to release next month. This time around, before they watch the film, children can now read the movie. Duckbill Books is publishing Dhanak ’s novelisation on June 10, a week before the film releases. The book is written by one of India’s beloved children’s books writers, Anushka Ravishankar, one of the founders of Duckbill.

“We’ve been seeing some really good children’s films in Indian languages,” said Ravishankar, over email. “and it has often struck us that the kind of stories being told in films are very different from the kind of stories that are written for children’s books: more experimental, more unusual. Some of those films would make wonderful books.” A friend told Sayoni Basu, Duckbill co-founder, about Dhanak . She then floated the idea to Elahe Hiptoola, one of the producers. “They were cautiously enthusiastic, and sent us a preview of the film,” Ravishankar says. “We saw it and thought it would make a great book.”

Dhanak ’s trailer already looks promising, and it has been garnering attention internationally. The story is about a pair of siblings who live in Rajasthan with their uncle and aunt. Pari is determined that Chotu will get his eyesight back before his ninth birthday, but that’s barely a couple of months away. Things look up when Pari sees a poster with Shah Rukh Khan urging people to donate their eyes. She starts writing letters to the actor, asking him to help Chotu. When Shah Rukh Khan comes to Rajasthan for a shoot, Pari and Chotu set off on a road trip, determined to meet the actor and get Chotu’s eyesight back. En route they encounter all sorts of people: some helpful, others kind, some horrid, and others mysterious. The book also includes eight pages of colour photographs and interviews with Hetal Gada and Krrish Chabria, the actors who play the siblings.

Ravishankar described the process of turning the film into a book for children as exhilarating and frightening. “It’s a very visual film, and Nagesh has captured both, the spectacular landscape of Rajasthan, and the joyous optimism of childhood. To translate all of that into words seemed like a daunting task. But since I’d never done it before, it was quite an exciting journey of discovery for me. I had to think about practical things like POV [point of view], because it works very differently in a novel as compared to a film. I also had to convert expressions and observations into interior monologue and description. I’ve never been very enthusiastic about describing things in my books, so that was quite a change for me!”

To write the book, Ravishankar spoke to Kukunoor a couple of times. “It was quite lovely. I spoke to him only a couple of times, but they were longish chats, about character, about specific plot points and timelines, what he felt the essence of the film was. He was helpful and forthcoming and I felt comfortable talking to him, even when I didn’t entirely agree with him! If I hadn’t felt that degree of comfort, I suspect it would have been harder to write the book.”

The story is all about moments: the banter between the siblings over Salman and Shah Rukh Khan, Chotu’s incessant demand for food, and the warmth and solidity of their relationship. Rajasthan is an intense, vibrant backdrop, its characters flitting in and out in all shades of grey and myriad colours. Unlikely friendships, the kindness of strangers, and preserving against all odds are themes woven into the plot.

Of course since Dhanak is a Bollywood film, there have to be songs. But Ravishankar manages to integrate them into the story quite seamlessly. “There’s the wedding party which the children join, and there’s the American man with whom Chotu sings and the Kalbeliya singers/dancers whom they sing with around the campfire. None of the situations are implausible. I ignored the songs that were part of the background score, of course!”

At some point, you forget that this is a novelisation of a movie; it’s easy to get lost in the story.

But then Ravishankar has written memorable children’s books such as Tiger on a Tree , Catch that Crocodile! , To Market! To Market! , and Moin and the Monster . Her mathematics degree has been put to good use in Captain Coconut & The Case of the Missing Bananas .

According to the Duckbill founders, Dhanak is the first Indian novelisation of a children’s film. In the past, K.A. Abbas has novelised Bobby and Mera Naam Joker , but there aren’t that many examples. And none for children’s films.

“Children’s films in India seem to be doing interesting things,” said Basu. “but it is really hard to track them down to watch! We still need many more diverse kinds of stories and voices in children’s books, and I do hope we can find them.”

Ravishankar says that one of the problems is that there are few spaces to exhibit children’s films. “Many of them don’t even see theatre releases, and if they do, they probably have one morning show on one screen! I think that is a crying shame. I wish schools would make the time and space for children to see good cinema. There are so many talented filmmakers making powerful children’s films. They need to be seen.”

The author writes about education for sustainable development, conservation, and food security. She’s the former editor of Time Out Bengaluru

Dialling the right number

Posted on May 7, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/dialling-the-right-number/article8554028.ece

Missed calls, especially in India, are a useful tool. You pass on your number to an acquaintance through a missed call, you “miss call” to let someone know you’ve reached a particular destination, or you get a missed call because the other person wants you to call them back. But last week, these calls got a new twist with Pratham Books’ “ Missed Call Do, Kahaani Suno ” campaign. For two days, emails, WhatsApp messages, and social media posts flew across cyberspace, urging people to give a missed call to a Bangalore number. Pratham Books would then call back and children and adults could listen to a story in five languages: English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, or Telugu. The not-for-profit children’s books publisher partnered with Radio Mirchi and Exotel, a cloud telephony company, for the campaign.

“Most of us were fortunate to grow up in world full of stories,” said Purvi Shah, Head Digital Projects, Pratham Books. “But for millions of children the culture of books and reading for joy in their home environment does not exist. From our varied experiences on the field we constantly heard the need for audio stories. To us, this was a great insight to reach where a culture of reading at home was missing for the child. We felt we could address this need gap because we already had lovely stories in many Indian languages.”

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India has over a billion mobile phone users, of which 42.39 per cent are rural subscribers. Businesses have long wised-up to this statistic, as have political parties. We have been bombarded with marketing calls and SMSes, electoral campaign texts, and sales alerts and urged to send text messages or call toll free numbers on television shows. The Pratham Books campaign puts phones to better use: getting stories to remote parts of the country.

“The mobile phone as we know already exists in most Indian households today,” said Shah, “and that became an easy, scalable distribution medium, What we needed to ensure was that the parent did not have to pay for hearing the story. This was crucial considering the focus of Pratham Books’ target audience: the underserved child. That’s how we thought of exploring the ‘missed call’ route, which already existed as an idea.”

As part of their CSR initiative, Mirchi Cares, Radio Mirchi recorded the Pratham Books’ stories and then Exotel created the framework to deliver the audio stories. The Delhi pilot saw over 35,000 missed calls from 3,500 phones. For Exotel’s CEO, Shivakumar Ganesan, the campaign’s phenomenal response was “yet another testimony to the power of a simple phone call.”

“When the campaign went live, we received a great response online,” said Maya Hemant Krishna, Community Manager, Pratham Books. “Over the years, we’ve built a community of reading evangelists who are passionate about helping us in our mission of getting ‘a book in every child’s hand’. Many of them pitched in to spread the word about the campaign, actively tell people about how it works and more, ask for an extension because their children didn’t get to hear it, spread it through WhatsApp.”

As a campaign, “ Missed Call Do, Kahaani Suno ” dialled a lot of right numbers: a zero-cost operation that spreads the wonder of stories to children with little or no access to stories, or with limited literacy; and in multiple languages. “Listening to stories is a joyful way to create an interest in reading among children,” said Himanshu Giri, CEO, Pratham Books. “Our aim was to take the magic of storytelling into the homes of children by empowering parents to bring the joy of stories to their children.” Shah further said, “Many studies on language development have documented that children from low income families hear as many as 30 million fewer words than their affluent peers before the age of four. A simple technique like reading aloud can bridge this gap. The idea of ‘ Missed call do, Kahaani suno ’ is to create a culture of listening to stories within the home environment. This will eventually lead to an interest in reading as well.”

To encourage reading, for instance, after you heard the narrator growling away in Pehelwaan ji in Hindi on the phone, you also got a SMS with a link to the e-book on StoryWeaver, an open source repository of multilingual stories for children. Maya Krishna said that the content is available for now on StoryWeaver and on Pratham Books’ SoundCloud account for free download.

Chennai-based Kuppulakshmi Krishnamoorthy was one of the callers. “I have this special connection with this girl whose parents do a bunch of chores in our apartment,” she told Pratham. “I couldn’t wait to sit next to her and make her hear the story. When she and my daughter heard the Mouse in the House story, their eyes gleamed in delight. We learned a bunch of words from the story. Later, I enacted the story for them, playing the grandma, the pa, ma, the baby, and the mouse. They all giggled and clapped. The best part of the campaign was your insisting on sharing this with those kids who didn’t have access to stories.”

Gaming apps for Earth Day

Posted on April 20, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/gaming-apps-for-earth-day/article8497301.ece

Angry Birds is back, and the birds are angrier than ever. Their wrath, this time around, is being put to good use for the planet. It’s Earth Day on April 22, and for ten days, Apple has an entire section on the App Store called Apps for Earth. It will be a shot in the arm for the environment movement in the form of 27 apps, where children and adults can safeguard wildlife, conserve forests, support sustainable food, preserve oceans, protect fresh water, and combat climate change.

But back to the irate avians: in Angry Birds 2, there are messages about protecting our oceans where players have to stop those annoying piggies from overfishing. Another gaming app, Cooking Dash, offers a menu with sustainable ingredients, a change from its usual steak-and-fries combination, while there are energy-generating turbines in Jurassic World: The Game. And SimCity BuildIt has three new features on forest, energy, and water. Even Candy Crush Soda Saga has joined the fray with a live in-game event called Bamboo Hill. Basically, as they put it, “have fun helping the planet.”

It’s a savvy fundraising drive: proceeds from in-app purchases will go to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Considering that many children are growing up surrounded by screens, it is a smart idea to get them to think about conservation while playing games. Of course, how many games will translate into real action, if any, remains to be seen. That said, after the ten days are up, these apps will most probably return to business as usual. It would be interesting to see how many of these companies will continue to incorporate green messages beyond the token Earth Day promotion.

However, there are plenty of other green games online. PBS Kids has a website called Meet the Greens, where children can watch animated videos and calculate their carbon footprint based on their travel, food, consumption, and waste behaviour. There are games where young players can think about upcycling clothes, efficient lighting, learn trivia and get quizzed on green know-how.

If your children love The Magic School Bus series, then head to their microsite on Scholastic’s webpage for match the animal to its habitat puzzles, science experiments, and trivia. Then there’s British Council’s LearnEnglishKids website, which has an environment section packed with songs about Lisa the Lemur, flashcards, games, and stories.

For older children, there’s Don’t Flood the Fidgits!, which I must confess isn’t as easy as it looks. Players can choose to build flood-safe cities on an island, river, or peninsula, where you work with a budget and a population goal. As you build one city, it gets flooded and you realise you need to add trees, storm walls, and drainage for better cities. The simulation game gets young adults to explore environmental design, understanding engineering, green housing, and ecological landscapes. If they love cooking and gardening, get them to play 3rd World Farmer, an online simulation game about farming in developing countries. Players need to farm sustainably in the midst of droughts, market fluctuations and diseases. Hint: permaculture comes to the rescue.

After all, children are going to spend time online, it’s not a bad idea to nudge them towards gaming that encourages to think about conservation, try their hand at eco-design challenges, and have fun while doing it.

Bijal Vachharajani writes about education for sustainable development, conservation, and food security. She’s the former editor of Time Out Bengaluru.

Negotiating the in-betweens

Posted on April 6, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/article8439992.ece
Alex Gino’s book George starts with its eponymous protagonist poring over fashion magazines. The fourth grader reads about make-up, even though she’s never worn it but tries to imagine herself with a slash of lipstick. George, we find out, doesn’t like her name much, preferring to think of herself as Melissa. She also wants to play Charlotte in the school play, but it’s looking impossible. Her brother teases her, saying she’s got girls on her mind. She does, only not in the way her brother thinks. That’s because George is a boy who actually identifies himself as a girl.

George is one of the slew of international books that gently explain the confusion and discrimination transgender people face. These books reinforce the fact that gender is something children learn from social conditioning – their parents, peers, schools define what it means to be a boy or a girl. And when a child like George strongly feels he is a girl, he finds himself alienated, bullied viciously at school. George is nothing but a mere reflection of real life.

Recently, I came across India’s Youth Speak Out About Higher Education, a report prepared by UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) to Support Ministry of Human Resources Development’s 2015 Revision of the National Education Policy. The report included 44 transgender respondents and the findings were telling. The data suggested that “bias about gender and sexuality is, unfortunately, common in Indian higher education, and must be addressed”. As many as 85 per cent of the transgender respondents had never been enrolled in an institution of higher education. The reasons were multifarious, ranging from family constraints, and social unrest at their native places, to lack of financial support. Some dropped out after they felt they weren’t accepted by their peers.

In 2014, the HRD Ministry advised all States and Union Territories (except J&K) to include “third gender” children as part of the socially and educationally backward classes for admission under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan. Yet, apart from reservation, there’s a lot that needs to be addressed to makes schools and colleges more inclusive for transgender students.

In the focus group discussions conducted by the UNESCO MGIEP, students of all genders agreed that on campus, those who were transgender and/or sexual minorities were bullied. One transgender student from the east mentioned in the report that he dropped out because the campus climate was too hostile. He said, “I had to face harassment in college because of my gender identity… Whenever they would see me, they identified themselves as ‘straight’. They would completely ignore me. In the three years of college, I went for the first one-and-a-half years because of attendance. After that, I didn’t go. I didn’t have friends. I didn’t have anyone to share things with.”

The fictional George’s best friend, Kelly, on the other hand, is more accepting. And that makes a world of a difference for George. It’s the same for David Piper, the protagonist of Lisa Williamson’s book, The Art of Being Normal . His two best friends couldn’t care less, unlike most of his school mates. Both books are written with sensitivity and a keen perception about young adults and children struggling to understand gender identity.

Then there’s How to be a Girl , a podcast where a single mum documents life with her six-year-old transgender daughter. The audio-series is heart-wrenching as it attempts “to sort out just what it means to be a girl”. At the age of three, we hear the toddler beg his mum to fix the mistake and put him back to being a girl. The mother is confused and distraught but supportive. That kind of family support is rare. In Presentation of Gender Dysphoria: A perspective from Eastern India , Debmalya Sanyal and Anirban Majumder studied “the clinical, biochemical profile, personality characteristics and family support of GID subjects”. Their findings revealed that it is difficult for transgender people “to express their sexual identity in family or in society” – only 10.96 per cent had their family’s support. Their conclusion states that “social taboo and lack of informative, family support [led] to delayed medical consultation and have accounted for complexities in presentation indicating a huge need for awareness programmes.”

The UNESCO MGIEP report outlines recommendations on making higher education campuses more inclusive. Suggestions included orientation sessions and mandatory course modules to sensitise students, faculty and administration about gender and sexuality from the primary school level, faculty training, privacy protection, counselling, and infrastructure such as gender-neutral toilets. In George , one of the things George hates is the boys’ bathroom. “It was the worst room in the school… the whole room was about being a boy…”

Books like George and The Art of Being Normal are few and far between. They are powerful stories with well-etched characters. These stories help children feel it’s okay to be different, and as Gino puts it, it’s okay to “be who you are”.

Let’s get serious about being curious

Posted on March 30, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/lets-get-serious-about-being-curious/article8387689.ece

Over the last few months, every time I have logged on to social media, I have stumbled upon a conversation about podcasts — whether it was the last episode of Serial or its latest season, the newest science on Invisibilia , or closer home, food talk and more by the people behind Audiomatic. A Google search revealed a range of podcasts for children: from science shows to plays to dramatised storytelling, there’s a whole aural world out there.

I couldn’t help but wonder if podcasts would appeal to children who are constantly surrounded by screens, enveloped in a dense fog of audio-visual clutter. Getting a child to listen to a podcast would be as impossible a task as winning a round of Candy Crush Saga in the first go. But after tuning into some of the podcasts, I changed my mind. Okay, kind of.

When it comes to podcasts for children, science seems to rule the roost. There’s Brain On! , which claims to be “serious about being curious”. Produced by MPR News and Southern California Public Radio, the science show for kids is hosted by Molly Bloom along with two children co-hosts. Topics bounce from what makes a spider a spider and the science of baking to the language of cats and dogs. There are songs, skits, and interviews with some really cool people. What’s really fun is the Mystery Sound section: try guessing the sound, it’s really hard.

Then there’s The Intersection , a show produced by Audiomatic, which is all about science, history, and culture. Journalists Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian set out to explain the complex gravitational waves, inform about ISRO’s indigenous navigation systems and trace mysteries such as the case of the stolen data and bird samples by the famous ornithologist Richard Meinertzhagen. While the show is for adults, the science and history is something that young adults will enjoy listening to. It helps that both Subramanian and Ghosh talk in an easy, casual manner, blending facts with stories and interviews. “As it is, science has a bad rep for being dry and boring,” said Ghosh. “But at the end of the day, everything is a story and the trick is in how you tell it: turning an invention into one person’s quest or explaining deep space through sounds.”

Ghosh points out that children first come across stories when parents read it to them. “Voice is a very intimate medium, especially if it is a voice you get to trust and even fall asleep to,” she said. “It is disembodied, yes, but friendly and warm. It can take us places. Voice leaves space for imagination, which I feel is very important for kids. It lets you travel to places and through time.” Ghosh recommends a few podcasts as well: Stuff You Should Know, StarTalk Radio Show by Neil deGrasse Tyson and NPR Science Friday .

If your child is obsessed with all things culinary, then Vikram Doctor’s The Real Food Podcast will whet their appetite about Indian food history, culture, and agriculture. For older children, The Secret Ingredient by Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy chooses one food per episode to talk about its history, production, and impact on our lives. The topics are often serious and dense, and the format of the podcast is usually one-on-one interviews, so it’s definitely for much older children who are interested in agronomy and food history.

While there are plenty of audio books to choose from, Story Pirates stands out for taking children’s stories and turning them into “awesome radio plays”. Story Pirates “celebrate[s] the words, ideas and stories of young people”. The group is comprises actors, comedians, improvisers and musicians who first narrate the original story written by the child, and then adapt it with music, dialogue, and lots of jokes. Story Pirates gives free rein to a child’s imagination, bringing it to life with their words and music. One such story by a third grader is about two dino bank robbers who decide to well, rob a bank. The Coposauras’ give chase only to find out that the robbers stole the money for charity. Robin Hood dinos!

For fans of TEDTalks, there’s TEDTalks Kids + Family podcast, an audio version of the videos. There’s a lovely one by McKenna Pope, who at the age of 13, started an online petition for a gender-neutral toy oven. Why? Because her younger brother loved to cook but all of Hasbro’s Easy-Bake Ovens were “for girls”. She ended up meeting the American toy company who started a new, inclusive oven line. Her talk, “Want to be an activist? Start with your Toys” is powerful and evocative.

One of my favourites is BBC 4’s Natural Histories , a set of 25 beautifully narrated stories about 25 groups of animals and plants, which has been produced in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, London. Literature, movies, and legends come together with interviews and anecdotes to explore how nature had influenced human culture. Host Brett Westwood is introduced by saying that he has fewer chromosomes than a gorilla or a potato. In one episode, they dramatise an extract from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World to introduce dinosaurs. In another, Westwood talks about Billy, a stranded Northern bottlenose whale in central London who was actually a girl! The episode includes the history of whaling, the book Moby Dick and what it reveals about human relationship with these sea creatures, and the need for conserving the species. There’s an entire episode on fleas, about these parasites that can leap stupendously, along with archival interviews with naturalist Miriam Rothschild, and discussions on the fleas’ reputation of being disease-carriers.

Most podcasts have a lot of engagement with their audience, making sure that young minds don’t tune out. “In India we are used to radio only as a source of entertainment — songs — and not news or information,” said Ghosh. “Listening for stories is not something we are habituated to. On the other hand, radio is a great medium. It is passive, so you can easily multi-task while someone is reading you a story unlike, say, reading or watching a documentary. It can be creative and challenging too.”

Adventures in tween land

Posted on March 16, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/adventures-in-tweenland/article8329824.ece

Tweenager Stoob has a plan: it’s to grow up and “be a celebrity when not inventing things and saving the world.” When I read that in the latest instalment of The Adventures of Stoob: Mismatch Mayhem , I couldn’t stop chuckling. After all, how many times had my friends’ children voiced the exact same plan of becoming adventurers, inventors, or superheroes (preferably all at the same time), opting for exciting career options over the ones their parents had chosen? Samit Basu’s book series is a running commentary on the everyday life of Subroto Bandhopadhyay, otherwise known as Stoob, where the protagonist is contemporary, very Indian, and very real.

Stoob and his friends Rehan and Ishani don’t have to embark on perilous quests to save a gem that will in turn save all of humankind nor do they have to battle a crowd of meat-chomping zombies. Instead, the series celebrates the ordinary and special moments that childhood is made of. In many ways, Stoob can be (and has been) compared to the Enid Blyton’s school books, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole, or Lincoln Pierce’s Big Nate series. Yet, it manages to stand out on its own. Mainly because Basu creates characters and narratives that are entirely believable. So, Stoob and his friends worry about exams in Testing Times ; in A Difficult Stage , play rehearsals take precedence over everything else in life; and in the latest instalment Mismatch Mayhem , a classic love triangle threatens a deep friendship.

Sudeshna Shome Ghosh, the editorial director of Red Turtle, Rupa Books’ children imprint, said, “When Red Turtle started, we wanted to publish a funny, contemporary fiction series that would capture the voice and feelings of the modern Indian tween. Their thoughts and feelings, both profound and banal. There are lots like this in the West, but few Indian ones that work as a series.” And that’s what sets Stoob apart from his Western counterparts, the little details which make him real to the upper/middle class, urban reader. Basu writes convincingly, portraying the awkwardness of being a tween poised at the brink of adolescence. “Writing in different voices is a simple question of seeing the world through what you imagine are another person’s eyes: much like acting, I presume,” said Basu, over email. “So if you can get in character, it hopefully flows quite smoothly. And it’s easier to get in character as Stoob, which is mostly a matter of memory and identification, than it is to the protagonists of any of my previous books, who are mostly able to defy physics but not turn into sociopaths.”

This time around in Mismatch Mayhem , Stoob is “A Man Who Has Seen Life, Its Sorrows and Joys… A Man Whom James Bond and Alex Rider would have Known and Respected.” That’s because he’s dated a girl from another school who seems to prefer earrings over Calvin and Hobbes (like seriously). Things get complicated when best friend Rehan also likes the same girl. What follows is a rollicking adventure, pretty much laugh-out-loud all the way.

Basu said that he has many friends whose kids are the same age as Stoob and their stories were reminiscent of his childhood. “Not that much has changed, except the technology around the kids,” said Basu. To write the series, Basu spoke to many children, learning about their concerns, and hearing anecdotes from their schools.

Basu said, “My favourite reactions are when parents or children come and tell me their own school stories that Stoob reminded them of, because this also doubles up nicely as research. I’ve also been trying out a writing experiment, which is reading out first drafts of Stoob chapters to key readers as I write them. It’s something I would never do with books for adults, because adults would feel compelled to have thoughts: kids just listen and respond without overthinking it, which I enjoy hugely.”

What also makes the books fun are the illustrations by Sunaina Coelho. They have a life of their own, with the characters doing their own thing in the illustrations, almost like doodles in a school notebook. “I write the illustration requests out the way I write out comic scripts: a visual description, text captions. Really good artists are able to take that and then take wing, making illustrations richer and deeper than the text they start out from. They’re on their own trip very deliberately; the idea is to step into Stoob’s imagination and hopefully recreate the kind of effect that a Terry Pratchett footnote does, which also fits in nicely with the kind of hyperlinked thinking that kids do very naturally nowadays. There isn’t much of a process after that because I always just really like Sunaina’s work, so I send a list of illustration-base text, she sends the artwork, and I send a mail telling my editor how much I love them.”

Although irreverent in tone, the series manages to underscore contemporary markers and issues, such as the poor quality of children’s television programming, the stress of exams, the struggle to be perceived as cool and fashionable, and the constant presence of technology in their lives. All of this makes Stoob relevant to a contemporary, urban audience who will easily relate to him and his gang.

If humour was a pre-requisite super hero power, then Stoob would join the legion of fictional caped men, women and beasts. But since it’s not, he will have to settle for the title of one of the funniest and endearing school children in fictional history in children’s literature.

What’s in your tiffin?

Posted on February 24, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/whats-in-your-tiffin/article8274278.ece?ref=tpnews
Recently, a friend texted about a piece of homemade fudge that had come back uneaten in the lunch box of her 13-year-old son. “I asked him why he didn’t eat it,” my friend Sudeshna Shome Ghosh wrote. “His response was, ‘How could I? I didn’t know what it was.’” My friend rolled her eyes (you can now do that thanks to an updated emoticon app), I LOL’d and that was the end of it.

The conversation brought back dabba memories, of going to school and opening my stainless steel lunch box in the afternoon, hours after it was packed, wondering about its contents. With the mother being a fabulous cook, the dabba was usually crammed with theplas folded in half with a dibbi of mango pickle, jeera rice with caramelized onion and curd, or rotis that miraculously stayed soft so that they could be torn with two fingers and eaten with sabji . There was lunchbox envy, where I coveted my classmates’ tiffins because they brought food that wasn’t familiar to me. I yearned for cucumber sandwiches, after re-reading Enid Blyton books, even though the white bread would be curling up at the edges by afternoon. I even wanted the dabba that held cold, clammy Maggi noodles, something that I now wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. But at that time, it was as exciting as moringa leaves are now to chefs.

Now there are plenty of cookery books, blogs and Instagram accounts with innovative lunch box ideas, all just a Google search away. Blogger and nutritionist Nandita Iyer, better known as Saffron Trail online, has simple, healthy ideas, which include vegetable peanut noodles, pita pocket pizza sandwiches, and puliyogare or tamarind rice. Lulu Loves Bombay blogs about travel, her children, and food. Her sweet potato discs sound like a lovely addition to the dabba , as do her methi thepla and mango chunda. Sanjeeta KK’s blog, Lite Bite, has a Lunchbox Bites section with some handy tips and recipes such as for muthiyas and wholegrain chillas.

On Instagram, Lunch Box Dad, Beau Coffran’s mealtime hacks include rocket ships from bread and cheese, and Spider-Man lunches with berries; while bleary-eyed parents may not be keen to wake up and make food art, it’s a fun account to follow. Grace Hall’s Eats Amazing blog focuses on Bento-style lunches for her son and follows themes such as Halloween, rainbows, and gardens. Her #PackedLunchLove Project has creative boxes that, she promises, take just a few minutes to prepare and are a visual feast. A few years ago, graphic designer and illustrator David Laferriere’s innovative sandwich bag art went viral. He’s made over 1,800 sandwich bag drawings with monsters and kites.

And when in doubt, return to the library.

Apart from the usual cluster of recipe books, check out Karen Le Billon’s French Kids Eat Everything , a charming account of a family, with two picky-eater children, that moves from the USA to France and discovers how the French government and the school system strengthen food education. Then there’s Chris Butterworth’s Lunchbox: The Story of Your Food , illustrated by Lucia Gaggiotti. A picture book, it takes young readers on a journey from farm to fork, getting them to think: where did the food in my lunchbox come from? It’s a lovely way of engaging children with farmers who grow our food and get them curious about what they are eating.

Mommy Go Lightly, a.k.a. journalist and author Lalita Iyer, writes lovingly about dabbas on her blog, “Food is intuitive,” she writes about packing her son Re’s lunch box. “At least that’s how it should be. Try different things and figure out what works for your child. My tip is, make it visually exciting. Make it look good. All you need is colours.” Pretty much all my mommy and daddy friends gave me tips like that when I talked to them about the art of dabba packing: fruits and dry fruits in small Tupperware boxes to snack on in the bus; use leftovers innovatively.

Shinibali Mitra Saigal, who packs food for her nine-year-old daughter said, “Mine doesn’t like anything soggy, squidgy or leaky. My daughter claims that thanks to me, she had to eat pickled strawberries, which taste vile.” When I asked her what she meant, she added, “According to her, the pickle in an airtight container leaked and ran into the strawberry in a different compartment. So that makes it pickled strawberry and an excuse not to finish her lunch box.”

Ghosh wakes up ten minutes earlier in the morning to make extra sandwiches for her son’s friends. “According to my son, none of them want to share the fruits I pack,” she said, with a sigh. “But he’s telling me that, and well, he hates fruits. So…”

Looking back, we can appreciate that one person who woke up at the crack of dawn to toil away in the kitchen to prepare fresh lunchboxes for the family. I regret the dabbas that I brought back home uneaten, even the alu methi, which really doesn’t do itself any favours when cold. Okay, maybe not the alu methi.

The author writes about education for sustainable development, conservation, and food security. She’s the former editor of Time Out Bengaluru.

Out of line but in your mind

Posted on February 11, 2016October 27, 2023 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/out-of-line-but-in-your-mind/article8216855.ece

What does a Chuppertyhoover look like? We know it makes a good pet once it’s been fished out of a chamber pot, because Jerry Pinto says so in Monster Garden : A Draw-It-Yourself Picture Book . And that means it can look like whatever our idea of a good animal companion is. The Chuppertyhoover could have eyes like a dog, ears like a rabbit, a face like an elephant, a body like a giraffe, and legs like an alien. Or it could look like a chapati that’s just been hoovered off the carpet. Or it could be a hoov that’s gone chup and ’ert. Basically, no one’s been told what it looks like. Then, there’s another conundrum. The Chuppertyhoover only eats Asumptivet. And that too, only if it’s fresh. No stale Asumptivet for our Chuppertyhoover. But again, what does an Asumptivet look like?

The answer is not in Pinto’s latest book published by Duckbill. Rather, it’s in your child’s imagination. Because that’s what Monster Garden is about: being imaginative and creative to draw and colour your own picture book. Pinto’s prose frolics delightfully across the pages with the help of Priya Kuriyan’s illustrations. There’s a tree looking slightly nervous and the child has to draw a Scrumpeelious under it, while a Sharmistickle has to be drawn to hover in the air. Hairy feet poke out in an Asumptivets field, as Pinto offers a hilarious, but complicated way to get to an Asumptivet. And in all of that, the child creates his or her very own monsters, plucking them straight out of his or her fancy.

Pinto said he wanted Monster Garden to be free of preconceived adult notions about what children like to draw and paint. “Do they really like to paint ducks who wear shirts and caps but no trousers,” he asks. “Do they like to paint lady mice in frilly knickers? Wouldn’t they like to imagine what a Chuppertyhoover is? And how it looks when it eats a Floover? I thought I would, so that’s the book I gave them.” That’s why there aren’t any kinda-obvious ‘Join the Dots’ or ‘Copy and Colour this Picture’ pages in this whimsical and quirky book. “I was given a series of dot-to-dot books when I was a child, by a peculiar aunt who kept giving them to me when I was way into my teens,” said Pinto, via email. “But even as a child, I could see what the dots were joining up to make and I couldn’t see the point of joining them. And then I could never decide whether to use straight lines or curvy lines — and if the latter, then should they be convex or concave or just plain wriggly.”

Monster Garden is a mischievous book, sparkling with humour and ingenuity. Children are fascinated and spooked by monsters, most anyway lurk in their imagination. Monster Garden brings that to the forefront. Priced at Rs 150, the book will make for a super goody bag filler as well. There’s a pull-out colour poster where Kurian has created a fabulous gallery of monsters including the Bubbleganoosh and Pinkiporous.

But what makes Monster Garden an important addition to the library is its spunkiness — it is a clarion call to get children to think outside the colouring lines, rummage through their own thoughts and create what they want. For a change, no one is telling them what to draw and how to draw it. Pinto and Kurian offer hints and nudges, but that’s about it. And that is a rarity in a world that’s full of staid, run-of-the-mill colouring and activity books, which are extremely popular with parents, who want their children to “be constructive” in their play or reading time as well.

Pinto hopes that parents will encourage children to get this book and draw all over it. “I hope they won’t tell their kids that you must draw a better monster than that, come on beta, I know you have it in you, because what is a better monster?” said Pinto. “I hope they will buy two copies and save one for themselves and draw the monsters themselves because Pama-Muppy also have inner children, starving inner children who must be fed.” Given the popularity of colouring books for adults across the world, and the universal appeal of Monster Garden , this might actually happen. As a child, Pinto said that he had poor hand-eye coordination, mostly because his bad eyesight went undiagnosed until eighth standard. “So I would get failing grades at drawing in school because I did not stay within the lines,” said Pinto. “So this book was designed for all those kids out there who like their colours to break out of the lines, who find that their washes wash everything else out, who have no sense of proportion. It’s for genius kids and we know from Picasso that every child starts out as a grandmaster and then they grow up and lose all sense of great art. This is for those children who did not grow up but who are chronologically called adults too.”

The author writes about education for sustainable development, conservation, and food security. She’s the former editor of Time Out Bengaluru .

Harry Potter’s message of inclusion

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

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/harry-potters-message-of-inclusion/article8161488.ece

On February 4, Potterheads will celebrate JK Rowling’s book series by hosting Harry Potter Book Night parties in different parts of the world. Once again, I will sit with my co-host to cut out paper dementors, draw owls on white balloons with a marker, and make fudge flies with chocolates. But more importantly, apart from being a celebration of these fabulous books and fudge, our February gatherings always remind me of a key Patronus message tucked inside the Harry Potter stories: of inclusion and empathy.

In 2014, a study titled The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice showed the books go a long way in teaching young readers tolerance and compassion. Rowling’s seven-book series constantly shines a light on systems of social hierarchies, like class and caste: there are the privileged magical people, and then there are the others. Muggles are non-magical people and some refer to them as mud-bloods, a filthy word for Muggle-born wizards who have often been ridiculed, tortured, and even killed. Only Pureblood wizards are considered worthy of magic.

Discrimination and prejudice, privilege and merit, inequality and diversity, tolerance and inclusion are an inherent part of our social structure. Yet, we don’t always talk to our children about these issues, and if we do, it’s often framed as something that’s alien to our social fabric. Instances are not contexualised, instead they are viewed as external, far-away phenomena. Children have nascent opinions about what’s right and what’s wrong, and it’s something that has to be nurtured. Especially in our society, with all its complexities. As children grow older, these perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes are shaped and solidified by parents, educators, peer groups, and the media they consume (among other things). These become the frameworks within which they’ll go on to interpret people, events, and issues as adults.

Look around us — children’s literature, artefacts, and the visual media are dominated by Hindu mythology and narratives. In comparison, fewer books are published about other folk tales or oral histories of minority communities. Nor do we see that many games, apps or films on these traditions that are equally rich and intricate. In such a scenario, where representation is selective, how do you begin to understand diversity? Most school textbooks are ill-equipped to explain India’s caste system and how it continues to exist in latent and manifested forms. How do you then explain to a young adult what it means that Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar, felt forced to commit suicide because of the way society treated him in a city as big and supposedly modern as Hyderabad?

In his suicide letter, Rohith Vemula, wrote, “My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.” Those words are haunting, as is the rest of the letter. A friend of mine read the note and said that’s how his own childhood feels in hindsight, centred around his identity of being a Dalit. It was like the child didn’t matter, he said, because he grew up in an environment that constantly reinforced discrimination.

As children, we are rarely made aware of our own positions of privilege and as a result, we soak in prejudices — after all, how will we think of examining them if we’re not told prejudice exists or that it’s a topic of discussion? A subtle sneering at the children who play in public parks, or the ones who are “not like us, no” is all it takes sometimes. That difference is always palpable, embossed like an invisible line, whispered in school and college corridors, and even in staff rooms.

To not talk about this inequality, to ignore it, makes us equally culpable. It can only lead to a generation of citizens who would rather not question these complexities, the status quo, or their own source of privilege: caste and class. This further snowballs when it comes to the idea of merit, whether in college, the workplace, or in any other part of our lives.

If by reading a book, children can become more empathetic, then as adults, we can do so much more to encourage them. Maybe start by opening a dialogue. Answer questions. Listen to them with an open mind. Surround them with stories, books, films on inclusion and human rights. And lead by example.

Children are quick on the uptake. In the first Potter book, Draco Malfoy holds out a hand in friendship to Harry, “You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.” Harry didn’t shake his hand.

Bijal Vachharajani writes about education for sustainable development, conservation, and food security. She’s the former editor of Time Out Bengaluru.

From Landour with Love

Posted on January 13, 2016 by bijalv

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/entertainment/from-landour-with-love/article8099859.ece?ref=tpnews
RUSTY & MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Sitting in a city, surrounded by buildings, enveloped in smog, Ruskin Bond’s books are like a breath of much-needed crisp, fresh mountain air. Bond’s writing takes readers into a world that for many of us is reserved for “vacation time”.

His words take us on a journey through the winding roads of the mountains, where tigers and leopards lurk in deep forests, fallen pine cones and dried leaves crunch beneath footsteps, spooky caretakers and ghosts haunt forgotten houses, and children make imaginary friends.

Even now, bookstores and e-stores are filled with titles from Bond, charming readers. A year and a half ago, when I spoke to the writer about the sheer number of his books that are out there, he said, “When I go to the bank, as I did on Saturday, and I find my bank balance has become alarmingly low, I rush back and immediately get to work at my desk.”

Inimitable humour

His inimitable sense of humour aside, Bond is a compulsive writer. “Even if it wasn’t my profession, I would still write for myself,” he said. “I am fond of writing; I enjoy it, whether I am writing an essay, a story, or a poem.”

Now, almost a decade later, Bond is back with one of his most beloved characters in Rusty and the Magic Mountain . In his ‘By Way of an Introduction’, the author writes, “But I’ll never write another,” said Rusy, “after so much bother.”

And here he is, at his desk near the door… telling a new tale. In this instalment, the Anglo-Indian boy’s “adventure wind” was calling to him. And he sets off to explore Witch Mountain with his friend, little Popat Lal, and wrestler, Pitamber, who is always eating whatever food he can lay his hands on. It’s an odd bunch, Bond’s books offer a deeper understanding of human nature.

Some characters he writes with wit and cleverness, others, he paints with a brush of benevolent malevolence, and some, with compassion. Whether it’s the eccentric Uncle Ken, the food-loving Aunt Mabel, or the shy Mr Oliver, his characters are quirky and colourful.

In Rusty and the Magic Mountain , the three friends find themselves on a fantastical quest: there’s a mysterious one-eyed caretaker who never removes his hat, a cat who has a penchant for blood, a community of dwarves whose forefathers worked in silver mines without sunshine and fresh air, and an evil Rani and the gorgeous Reema. Bond tosses together the supernatural with adventure to put together a hilarious tale that Rusty’s old and new fans will love.

Wayside stations

Bond’s stories evoke a strong sense of place — whether it’s a tea stall tucked away in a dusty corner or a sylvan forest in the valley of a mountain. For instance, he describes a pond in Friends in Wild Places: Birds, Beasts and Other Companions , “To the inhabitants of the pond, the pond was the world; and to the inhabitants of the world, maintained Grandfather, the world was but a muddy pond.”

In another story, he writes about his fascination with small wayside stations. “…these little stations are, for me, outposts of romance, lonely symbols of the pioneering spirit that led men to lay tracks into the remote corners of the earth.” How hard is it then to imagine a muddy pond that’s home to croaking frogs, deserted railway stations, or quaint hill stations? Not very. But mostly, Bond’s stories evoke awe, concern and respect for all things wild and wonderful; whether it’s a blue periwinkle that Rusty plucks from a bush or a leopard crouching in a railway tunnel in Friends in Wild Places .

Lavishly illustrated

This book, lavishly illustrated by Shubhadarshini Singh, brings together stories, some old and others new, about his real and imaginary friendship with animals, birds, and trees.

Bond reminisces about the urban wildlife of Delhi, a tree that gives him a basket of walnuts every year, and a baby spotted-owlet who lived under his bed.

For Bond, his relationship with animals and plants is deep.

As he put it, “After all, animals only kill for food, don’t they? And we humans kill for land property, greed, envy, jealousy — these are our motives for killing. Animals need space, that’s all they want really. Let them have their forest and wilderness.” And maybe, that’s what resonates in his book, reverence and love (and some humour) for humanity and the environment. And that’s why we keep returning to his stories.

Bijal Vachharajani writes about education for sustainable development, conservation, and food security. She’s the former editor of Time Out Bengaluru .

When I find that my bank balance has become alarmingly low, I rush back and immediately get to work at my desk

Ruskin Bond

Bond tosses together the supernatural and adventure to put together a hilarious tale