More love for the kaka

Which colour is Kunku making today?

"The book has brilliant big visuals which can keep a young child interested in the book too. When I read this book to my son I could see him getting curious about various things, asking more questions on how and why of colors, later I saw him taking a reddish leaf that had fallen down and rubbing to see if it will make red color. . . next morning he brought the book to me and said mumma lets see which color is Kunku making today."

Read Bookrack reviewer Monika on The Mystery of Blue here.

More Mayilspeak

"The book definitely takes you back to your childhood... I loved the way she (Mayil) expresses minute things in the everyday life. Wish I too had a diary when I was 12. It would have been such fun to reread it."

Read Swati's review of Mayil Will Not Be Quiet! here.
 

Blue + Black is Green

"Let’s Plant Trees is a book that’s meant to make you smile. Filled with simple illustrations, it’s a visual delight that concerns itself with the various roles a tree has to play in our daily lives."

Read Time Out's review of Let's Plant Trees and Black Panther here. (Our green offer has been extended by popular demand.)

A special note

Anita Balasubramaniam wrote in to say how much her daughter, Nidhi, loves our books. Thank you, Anita, for sharing this. It made our day!

"When my daughter Nidhi came into our lives, it was quite natural that I stocked up on Tulika books for her. She has been growing up listening to these books being read to her since she was about a year old. [These books are contributing a great deal to Nidhi's learning in these early years] We never read with the intention of "teaching her something from the book." It is for the sheer joy of reading that we read. Nidhi now picks up books on her own, looks at them, talks to him and enjoy them for what opportunities they offer to her to make sense of life.

Often we are just reading a simple story for her - either while eating, at bed time, while traveling and so on. At other times we are looking at the details in the visuals - details which we often find in our daily lives - the stool that kiran drags to the fridge and sits on in where is amma, the flower pots in minnie's house (where is pooni), the lizard in grandma's eyes, and so on - all these are around in our lives and in the visuals waiting to be discovered - so once every few readings we will notice something new :). Sometimes we are discussing the story while we are traveling or experiencing something new - making connections with what we have already ready. So she knows when someone is singing I would ask her how thangi sings and she would say aaa, aaa, aaa in her baby language. When we see a dog, crow, cat, or cow, we make connections with where is pooni. Thakitta Tharitkitta is another favotire - we have sung it in the car, on the beach, at home a gazillion times and even created our own story based on the visuals which she loves! Every book has been read and re-read hundreds of times. . .

One thing that has emerged in this "repeated reading" of tulika books with my daughter is that in addition to the story the visuals in these books provide a very rich opportunity to connect experiences in our every day lives in India with what we are reading. The context of life in India is present in the visuals waiting to be experienced, discovered and made connections to :) A big round of applause for all the illustrators :) I must also say that the books being paperback is wonderful - we can carry many of them with us whenever we are traveling :)

Keep those books coming! We love them."

Where Did Blue Come From?

How did people many, many, many years ago have clothes that were red, orange, purple, pink...? Where did colour come from?

If you, like Muriel Kakani, are fascinated by the world of colours, Tulika's latest offering - The Mystery of Blue is for you! Muriel is a Belgian settled in India for the last 17 years. During this time, she has travelled to almost every corner of the country, imbibing information about India's culture and ecological traditions. Read on and discover what makes this travel-happy writer tick!

The Mystery of Blue combines fact and fiction and has the quality of myth to it. What inspired you to write such a tale?

A few years  back, I happened to read an article by Jasleen Dhamija in Amruth magazine. The article described some of India's amazing skills and expertise in producing vegetable dyes. Unfortunately, most of these dyeing traditions are on the verge of extinction as chemical dyes are cheaper and less time consuming. I felt very sorry about that not only because  India's rivers are getting polluted due to chemical dyes but also because one of India's most fascinating and brilliant examples of traditional knowledge is disappearing.

In the last few years, there has been lots of talk about India shining… India is proud of its 5000 years of civilization… But very few kids know what India really contributed to the world in those 5000 years. One has to see the amazing collection of textiles presented in the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad to understand why in the mind of Europeans India was seen as a fabled land!! As early as 200 BC, Roman ships set sail every year from Egypt to dock at ports on the Southwest coast of India to acquire cotton and indigo. So much gold was spent in this trade that Roman senators complained about the drain of wealth from Roman treasuries to India.

That is how I decided to make a story about indigo, India's most famous dye… The dye that made India so rich and so fabulous!! I thought that, may be, more than BPOs and IT industries, reviving (preserving) such ecological traditions would make India shine once again. I felt like doing my bit towards that through a story.  

Which is your favourite colour and why?

I have no favourite colours. I like all colours. I have always liked India for her vivid and brilliant colours especially since I come from a country where there are rules about colours and where people have a preference for dark and dull tones.

  How did you do the research for the story? Was it difficult to balance the facts with the fiction?

I did all my research for the story online. I didn't have a chance to visit Ilkal though some 10-12 yeas back, while on a tour around India, I had visited the Chalukya temples of Badami, Pattatkal and Aihole. So I had a fair idea about the region.

Balancing facts with fiction is a continuous effort especially that my goal wasn't just to tell a fascinating tale but to share with kids all I had learnt on the subject. There is a definite temptation to always add one more piece of fascinating information!!

 You've lived in India for the last 17 years. What brought you here and what made you stay on?

From a very small age, I have been fascinated by faraway lands. My friends from nursery school onwards were always children with brown skin. My favourite doll was a little brown doll I had named Tumai after the hero of a TV serial for kids based on Rudyard Kipling's Elephant Boy.

Then when I was 14 years old, I saw that Oscar winning movie of Richard Attenborough's- Gandhi- and that is when I decided that one day I would settle in India.

I made my first trip to India in 1989 as a student. I had come to do field work in a NGO, Maharashtra Prabodhan Seva Mandal (Centre of Holistic Studies) founded by the late Winin Pereira, eminent Indian ecologist. That was when I had an introduction to India's ecological traditions.

Why do you believe that Indians were the world's first environmentalists?

India's religions and cultures have always emphasized environmental protection and harmonious living with nature. The Vedas, several millennia old, are composed of hymns that show the great respect and reverence for nature that Vedic people had. The Rig Veda represents the greatest homage ever rendered to the environment.

 How do you think children can be encouraged to think green?

If we want future generations to preserve nature, we need to give them the chance to appreciate it first. True caring for the environment will come when people love the world as their own-self. Love and empathic feelings are the greatest stimulant to the will, not knowledge. Feelings are more important than facts when talking about saving the Earth, preserving the environment and ecology. 

If we want children to develop love and concern for the environment, we need to invigorate ecology with emotions because only emotions that affect the heart can bring a change of attitudes.

One of the best ways to create these attachments and instill ecological values and ethics is to tell stories that impart pro-environmental emotions.  

Here's a grinning Muriel with her friend and neighbour, Sona Bai.  

Muriel: We have been neighbours for the last 10 years. She is very dear to me. And the amazing thing is that she doesn't speak a word of Hindi and I don't speak a word of Marathi but she somehow understands my Hindi and I somehow understand her Marathi and we are best of friends!! This photo was taken on the festival of Guddi Parva.