Hutoxi at Valley School - The Story from the Horse's Mouth

A parent of a Valley School student had written earlier about author Radhika Chadha's reading at Valley School. Here's Radhika's side of the story....

I read out some of my stories at the Valley School, Bangalore, earlier this month, and the warmth and enthusiasm of the children and the teachers made it an amazing experience. The hugs, the clamour for autographs and the cards and slips declaring fandom, all made me feel like a movie star – but what really left me totally gobsmacked, was the children’s engagement with the stories.

Before my visit, the stories from my Baby Bahadur Series had already been read out to the children – and some of them had been used as part of their creative writing class. Which is probably why it felt less like a book reading and more as if I had walked into a book-club … where the audience was fully familiar with my stories and ready with searching questions. Kids cuddled up cosily and demanded that I read the book of their choice – and as soon as I picked one up, I was greeted by a number of excited voices chirping up with a quick review of the book and their opinions as to why they liked it.

What was even more amazing was the insightful and thoughtful way in which they had analyzed the characters. One little fellow in first grade made this critique after I read out Yes, Hutoxi : “Hutoxi thinks she’s always right,” he said. We pondered over that thought for a few minutes and when I asked the others what they thought, there was a volley of responses quoting Hutoxi’s words from other books which showed she wasn’t infallible.

A rapid-fire question session followed the reading : At the end of Hutoxi, did the herd of horses turn out to be her family? Why do the animals obey Hutoxi – is it out of love, or respect, or fear? Where was Basava’s father when all this was happening? When do I plan to write about Kamalnayan? Why are the sentences in Basava longer than the ones in the Baby Bahadur series? Why do I write about animals and not about people? How is a book made? Who is the first to read my story after I have written it? How many changes do I make to a story after it is written? And so on!

After reading Snoring Shanmugam, I often point out how Amma’s technique of stopping snoring can be put to use. This time I got feedback on how successful this had been by some adventurous children who had heard the story before and had already tried this out. One complained “My father is too heavy for me to roll over” and was told by a classmate to “just poke him - my father snores all the time and he snores in the afternoon too and he gets up fast when I poke him”. This led to an exploration of impediments to implementing this strategy, such as “I go to sleep before my mother. So I have to pretend I am asleep, wait for her to sleep and then poke her” and “I sleep in another room, I have to sneak into their room to do this”. And there was a some serious discussion about the possibility of repercussions from irate parents : “My father gets angry when I do that”, said one early experimenter with this method. “You must poke them and then quickly run out of the room” was the sage advice from an expert. I suspect there may be many parents out there whose sleep has been disturbed by the Amma Anti-snoring Technique. Ah well, it’s all Shanmugam’s fault.

I was given a peek into the kids’ creative writing experience, which was a real treat. The brief to the children had been to rewrite the end of Mallipoo, Where are You? I was vastly amused by the zaniness and irreverence with which this had been done. Some excerpts :

Bahadur came and told them the piglets are missing. “We don’t care, what’s the big deal,” said Anna and Akka. “Are you out of your mind!” said Bahadur. “No, we are not,” said Anna and Akka. Oh, now I see the drunken monster. Mangal Singh made them drunk.

They start to look for the piglets. Bahadur finds a piglet in a rabbit hole, dead, because he got suffocated. Mannu saw two piglets drowned in the lake. Anna and Akka found three piglets being eaten by Shanmugam. When everyone met at the mud pit, Mallipoo was sleeping. Then Mannu, Anna, Akka and Bahadur said, “Oh God, save us!” Then Mallipoo becomes a God and makes all the piglets alive and teleports them to the mud pit.

Note to Tulika –a bunch of young writers here, just raring to go!

Thank you, teachers and children of Valley School, for giving me a dekko into how my books are used in class – I had a marvelous time.

- Radhika Chadha

When Baby Bahadur came into this world…

When I told my then five-year old a bedtime story about a sleepy little elephant (in the vain hope that it would induce him to go to sleep early), I had no idea that Baby Bahadur and his friends would sneak in and settle down so decisively in my life. I remember, when the first of the series —  I’m So Sleepy — was published, Radhika Menon did tell me right then that she saw a series in the offing, but I didn’t quite believe her, so it feels slightly surreal that Yes, Hutoxi!, the fifth in the series is coming out this month. Shanmugam popped into my head a few days after I’m So Sleepy was published — I remember getting up from bed and writing out the story in the silence of the night (rather appropriate, for a tale about snoring). And over the years, Kamini and Mallipoo came along to keep Bahadur — and me — steady company.
 

Writing the Baby Bahadur series has been an unexpected source of joy for me — thanks to Deeya for being such a wonderful editor and bouncing board for my ideas, Radhika and Sandhya for their suggestions and encouragement, and Priya for her amazing illustrations. I remember toddling over to Tulika to see the illustrations for I’m So Sleepy and laughing out loud at how she had Bahadur almost cross-eyed with sleepiness — and with each successive book I have been freshly captivated by the vibrance and zany humour with which Priya’s visualization has captured the stories.
 

Indian names are so very evocative… and Indian nicknames can be so very amusing — for me, part of the fun is in wondering what to call a character. Authors are supposed to have a disclaimer that none of their characters are derived from real life — but here I have to admit that while the characters and their personas are, of course, fictitious, almost all the names are taken from people whom I’ve known personally, or are derived from experiences in my life, or are inside jokes in the family. Except — or is it, including? — Gabbar — we all know where he came from! I must hasten to add, however, that I have no idea whether the original Shanmugam snores loudly or whether the original Hutoxi snorts in exasperation, so any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Book readings delight me with the kind of comments and questions kids come up with. Only once did a mother complain to me that she found “all the names so confusing” — I think that is an outlier — I generally find children enjoying the different names  — and remembering the entire cast — right down to all the little chameleons whose names begin with “K” and all Paytu’s babies that end in an “oo”. Though a disapproving young reader once ticked me off sternly for using a “bad word” (Kamini) and looked unconvinced at my explanation that it is pronounced Kaaamini — such are the perils of transliteration.
 

Snoring Shanmugam  is usually the favourite — the last time I read this out, I sat with one hand poised like a conductor (orchestra, not bus) and told them to yell ‘khorhrhrh…’ when my hand was raised high, and to whisper ‘phsheew’ when I brought my hand down — the sound effects resulted in gales of laughter, with some of them confidentially whispering to me that “my papa also snores like that”. To such sufferers I have strongly recommended Amma’s technique to stop the khorhrhrhible sounds. Even Gabbar seems to have his own subversive fan following — I encountered one bloodthirsty little fellow who stood at my knee and whispered, “Yes, yes, eat all of them” when Gabbar made his appearance.
 

A little while back someone told me her family called her a “Snoring Shanmugam”; once a gentleman told me that his son was “such a forgetful Bahadur”; recently a blog post talked of a person in a multicoloured outfit being called a “colour colour Kamini” while another said her daughter insists on being called Mallipoosundari. It is a delightful and moving  feeling to hear of readers taking my characters so warmly into their lives.
 

“So, what’s the next one about?” is something I often get asked. Well, I have no idea just now, but I am sure Bahadur and his pals will let me know soon enough.

- Radhika Chadha, Author

Writing creatively in the company of Tulika books

This was the first time I have ‘taught’ creative writing. I read voraciously and am at a loss if I don’t have a book on standby to read after my current one. Books open up worlds that I may never inhabit, with perspectives very different from my own. Words are used with such skill that I am under the spell of the author. How do I open up these worlds to young children so that they are never alone when there are books in this world? How do I nurture children’s curiosity and the urge to express themselves without fear and with joy?

These were my thoughts when I agreed to ‘teach’ creative writing to six mixed-age classrooms with second, third, and fourth standard children. I had noticed that these children were extremely articulate while speaking but were strangely reticent when they had to write. So I decided my goal, if you will, in this first year was to create spaces in the classroom where children were free to express themselves without the shadow of criticism, evaluation, or that looming demon – spelling mistakes.

I realized that one needs access to good quality writing in order to learn to recognize it and acquire the skills to write well. Of course, there is no dearth of good children’s literature. But I wanted the children to realize that well written books that are interesting to read, with thought provoking illustrations need not be from the West but published in India; that characters need not have exotic, English names to be interesting.

We read, It’s Only a Story by Cathy Spagnoli when we discussed where authors get their ideas from. Children loved the circular nature of the story and enjoyed predicting what was going to happen next. A couple of children even commented how it reminded them of Hen Sparrow Turns Purple. I used Snoring Shanmugam and Colour-Colour Kamini to illustrate how one uses characters and setting to tell stories. They welcomed the characters back in Colour-Colour Kamini as if they were reunited with old friends they thought they would never meet again.

My biggest surprise was with Mukand and Riaz by Nina Sabnani. It so happened that I read the story to some of the classes soon after the Bombay blasts. Class teachers were disturbed to hear some of the children talk and comment disparagingly about Muslims, especially as there were Muslim students in the classes. Mukand and Riaz made the whole situation real to the children, provided a historical context, and the children could identify with the characters. “Muslims” became real people, real children, just like them and not some demonised abstraction. They loved the surprise they got when they realized that Mukand was the author’s father and the ‘story’ really happened. The illustrations in all the books I used extended the children’s imagination and they remarked how they help in hooking their interest in making them want to read further.

Using Indian literature that the children could relate to made story writing accessible and possible in children’s minds, opening them up to the notion that they could write interesting, enjoyable stories set in familiar contexts, that they need not be exotic and ‘foreign’, that they too could write stories that others would want to read.

- Bharati Srinivasan, Special Educator and Creative Writing Facilitator