Bookstore Round the Corner!

 

Now, we know your idea of a cozy afternoon is to curl up with a Tulika book and bite into a hot bonda, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside (look at us getting carried away). 

Well, imagine if we said you could sit in a room full of Tulika books all day long and devour each one. Read all your favourites, picture books and paperbacks, nonfiction and resource books and gaze at our gorgeous books+ products all in one place...  

No, don't pinch yourself. It's true. It's here. The Tulika Bookstore. So catch a bus or a train or a parachute or a plane and get here. If you're a Chennaiite, hurrah! -  we're just around the corner...

24/1 Ganapathy Colony Third Street in Teynampet

....to be precise! We're open from Monday - Friday between 10 am - 6 pm and on Saturday between 10 am and 5 pm.

Vyasa's Mahabharatha and Ismat's Eid

Two special festivals fall on September 1st: Vinayaka Chathurthi and Eid, and we have books to celebrate both! - Vyasa's Mahabharatha and Ismat's Eid. Sandhya Rao, who edited Fawzia's delightful tale, and Chitra Krishnan, author of Vyasa's Mahabharatha,give us insider takes.

Tulika’s Ismat’s Eid is Marshall Cavendish’s Nabeel’s New Pants. Author Fawzia Gilani-Williams who is currently relocating to the UAE, lives in the US, but grew up in UK in the 1960s and 70s. So when she recently got a chance to go ‘home’, she was excited about the possibility of taking Ismat aka Nabeel to kids there. But she found herself on a rather sticky wicket of a sartorial kind… because, you see, when we say ‘pants’ in UK, they see the piece of innerwear that Superman made outerly famous! So how could she, in all seriousness, talk about Nabeel’s pants, forget the fact that he had bought them for Eid???!!! Luckily she happened to have taken Ismat along on that trip!

It’s only words, you might argue. But some words conjure pictures that need no imagination…

But back in the US and Canada, Nabeel reigns supreme, while Ismat steals hearts in Tulika’s world, thanks also to Proiti Roy’s marvellous illustrations. 

When Tulika first commissioned Proiti to do the pictures, she came up with not one, not two, not three, but eight different styles, each more delicious that the other. And each rendered with care and affection. Proiti used Indian ink and gouache water based paint to render the pictures. Take a look at the book: you will fall in love with the girls in Ismat aka Nabeel’s family: Habiba, Yasmeen, and Mahjabeen. No wonder he bought them each something special for the festival. Eid Mubarak!

Sandhya Rao

Vyasa’s Mahabharatha? Just utter the name and I puff up with pride like a cockerel ready to crow at first light! (this includes wobbly chins and crest - read grey hair- standing on end!!)

I am inordinately proud of this slim, colorful volume that set me on the first step of realizing my dream… to fill the blank space next to profession in my passport with the letters A-U-T-H-O-R. 

A first small step in terms of literary achievement but a giant leap forward in terms of moral and mental attainment of goals … the degrees of separation between dreams and reality just got a whole lot smaller!

In any case, it was all quite fairy tale-ishly  simple. Once upon a recent time, I walked into Radhika Menon’s (Tulika) office and while chatting, narrated the famous story of the origins of the Mahabharatha. It happens to be my husband’s favorite story, one that I have been subjected to ‘n’ times…Being a sucker for a good tale it was never a trying experience. However I digress. Back to Radhika’s office where she is casually suggesting I put it down, as Our Myths, a new series, was in the Tulika pipeline.  

I floated down the narrow stairs and back home as I had just been officially commissioned to write a story! Casual maybe …but let us not split hairs here! Don’t get me wrong, I do have academic tomes to my credit, seen my name in print on ponderous volumes! Never before have I been commissioned to write a piece of fiction! I refused to float down from my own private cloud 9.9 despite my daughter’s dire warnings that I should take a huge big reality bite…No one was allowed to rain on my private parade with Mr Cockerel in the lead…

Of course as sure as night follows day, months of agonizing followed! My natural tendency is to write serious, humourless, researched pieces complete with footnotes et al … I am after all a dyed-in-the-wool academic … it took Sandy’s (Sandya Rao - Tulika editor) frequent and well placed editorial kicks to get me to reach into my inner child and the eternal spring of innocent laughter so that the tone and words were finally just right!

And then came the day when they (Tulika) showed me the illustrations! What to me was an ordinary single layered narrative was transformed into a masterpiece of multilayered hues and proportions by the illustrations!

And then came two very important days in my literary career…because now I can only talk in such majestic terms of my life after Vyasa’s Mahabharatha…  (i) When the book was released and I was asked to autograph it in public (ii) When I received my very first cheque as royalty… forget the dearth of zeros…no Midas could have been happier, no Ali Baba’s cavern could hold more riches! This was proof that I had arrived… everywhere I looked or turned, I simply presumed people were whispering beneath their breath Vyasa’s Mahabharatha … My own private cockerel of course continues to send out clarion cries of “here comes the  writer”  and I slumber on content with a beatific smile on my lips… I may not be Anna but I certainly am Vyasa’s Mahabharatha!

Chitra Krishnan

It Adhu But Aanal What Enna Meaning Artham?

Before we get into what this intriguing title means, have you availed our Madras Day offer yet? 3 bilinguals for Rs.275 and 5 picture books (Tamil) for Rs.450! Quickly send your order to tulikabooks@gmail.com and then come back and read this post with your kaapi and kozhukattais. 

As part of Madras Week celebrations, Tulika conducted a Madras kweezzz on Twitter (you don’t know what a kweezzz is? Tells us you haven’t been following our blog closely! Pffftttt.)  A pioneer in bringing out bilingual picture books for children in India, Tulika has always delighted in the aviyal of cultures that makes up our country. Our bilingual titles are in English paired with one other regional language- Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bangla. Our single language titles too are published in all nine languages. While we ensure that in translation the meanings and connotations are accurate, we are open to different ‘styles’ of language and not just what is ‘correct’ and accepted as ‘right’ in children’s books.  Colloquial usages that children hear all around them appear in the text with no apology. Using as many common and conversational words helps the reader enter the new world with confidence. To put it in Madras bashai, this is no place to put scene, even if the purists do feel-pannufy!

So for Madras Day, in keeping with the spirit of Tulika's multilingual tradition, we decided to celebrate all things Madras, including its beloved dialect. Here's a sample!

Q.  In case you miss the bus, there’s always ________________ service.(Fill up with the most appropriate Madras bashai)

A: Nataraja

If you are not from Madras, you will probably require an explanation. The word 'Nataraja' here has nothing to do with the God of Dance. It's simply a fundoo way to say 'nada' (which means 'to walk')! Bewildering? It wasn't for the bunch of enthu cutlet Madrasis who tweeted away with great gusto! Those away from their home city went on a nostalgic trip and started dreaming of Buhari Otel Biryani even! Feelings, pa.

The senti responses show how much a dialect can mean to people- it's not just about speech but about memories, places, and incidents. Every language in India comes with so many dialects that even if you are a master at one, you may still be left clueless when listening to another! Languages borrow generously from others and even turn the word on its head to mean something else altogether.It is this rich, sometimes even comic, diversity that makes it so much fun for us to explore them. In future, we plan to do many more dhool bilingual kweezzzes in many more languages. Watch this space and brush up your bashai! 

And really, if you don't have a Twitter handle by now, you are a maha wasteu!

Jumpstart 2011

Briefly, here is what Radhika Menon had to say at Jumpstart 2011 in Delhi, August 24^th and 25^th.

Over the last two years there has been a lot of interest in the boom in the children's books market. The reports, however, are restricted to the feedback and sales figures of English language books in the bookstore chains which are by and large from the big publishing houses and distributors. What this means is that if the books are not seen in the large bookstores they don’t exist in reports or ratings. Nevertheless books by smaller, independent publishers do exist well and find their own space thanks to the efforts of the publishers themselves.

Other reports have to do with the huge disparity between the English and the Indian language children's book markets. English books certainly have the advantage in the urban markets. But the sales figures of books in some of the regional languages far exceed those of English books. There are the mass-produced, low-priced books of course, often of poor quality, which have a monopoly over government orders in the various states. Their sales run into lakhs every year.

However there are Indian language publishers who have sell their low-priced books in quantities that the English language publishers can only dream of. They sell successfully through direct marketing and distribution, school and community book fairs, small bookstores and mobile bookstores, catering to the specific needs of their buyers.

On the other hand, the chain bookstores, which have as many as 50 to 75 bookstores each across the country, stick to tried and tested strategies - a one-size-fits-all-approach. This obviously cannot adequately meet the diverse and growing demands of children's book publishing in India today. According to media reports the children's sections in these stores make up to 30% of their total sales. The books sold are the imported books that flood the market and Indian books published by the large publishing houses.

In this scenario, an independent multilingual publisher like Tulika, trying to straddle both the urban English book markets and the regional language book markets, has to find strategies for building an alternate distribution network. It’s the only way. It remains to be seen if the rapidly opening up online space offers a more Ievel playing field.

Namma Kweezzzu

Chennai is a special ooru and 
Tamil is a special mozhi - versatile, extensive, and growing every day, posing challenges for translators and editors. How do we bridge the gap between the spoken and the written, the formal and the informal? How can we communicate simply to children, while retaining the integrity of the language, staying true to its rhythm and syntax, and capture its sounds and moods? We're constantly trying to find creative ways of meeting these challenges, not only in our Tamil picture books but also in our bilingual books which have English paired with Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati and Bangla. 

Don't miss the Namma Kweezzzu on Friday, 26th August 2011, 3.30-4.30 PM as part of Madras Week celebrations.

How to play: 

 1. If you don't have a Twitter id yet, GET ONE quick gun murugan!
2. Log in, search, and follow kweezzz this very second.
3. Log in at 3.30 PM on 26th August, Friday, and watch out for the questions appearing from kweezzz in your Timeline.
4. To answer, type @kweezzz (your answer) in the What's Happening box. If you don't type @kweezzz, we will not be able to see your answer. Goyya only then!
5. Please answer a question within 2 minutes of it appearing on the Timeline. Late-ah vandha inga latesta vara mudiyadhu.
6. The answer to a question will be revealed at the end of the said 2 minutes. A total of 10 questions will be asked.
7. The final winner will be decided by Tulika and s/he will get a free copy of any bilingual picture book or picture book in Tamil of his/her choice. 
8. Don't forget to follow tulikabooks on Twitter to hear all our tweets! Let the kondattams or bondattams (as the prince of Bondapalli would have it) begin!

There are semma offers, too! Buy any 3 bilingual picture books for Rs.275! Buy any 5 picture books in Tamil for Rs 450! Offer valid till September 7, 2011 wonly!

Look who's 1!

Young India Books, a site dedicated to promoting Indian books for children, turned a year old recently.The site features reviews of children’s books - from picture books to young adult fiction. Aside from being a rich resource for children’s book buffs, the site is equally informative for parents, educators and researchers. The simple, user-friendly interface allows users to search according to age, book title, theme, genre, authors, illustrators, and also features articles related to books and reading. Experts contributing write-ups and reviews include historian and environmentalist Nanditha Krishna, award-winning children's writer Lisa Bullard and art-historian and writer Pheroza Godrej.

Founder Shamim Padamsee is also a Tulika author. Her Birdywood Buzz: The Vulture Returns is a zany take on filmdom, the deliciously whacky A Silly Story of Bondapalli has delighted readers of all ages. Her first with Tulika, Dancing on Walls, an imaginative story on the possible origin of Warli paintings, is a much-loved picture book. Her love for children's books is reflected in her own thoughtful reviews for the YIB site.

Happy Birthday, Young India Books! Here's to books, reviews and lots more!