Gajapati Kulapati comes to Chennai

You are invited...

In the moment. . .

Sometimes we find stories in the things that we see and experience. At other times stories find us. In the case of The Tamarind Tree, both were true! I had just put down the phone after rashly promising to write a story for my 5 year old nephew. As I turned to look out of the window, I heard the happy shrieks of young boys climbing the tamarind tree outside.  It was something I had witnessed each fruit bearing season. I could not resist sharing it with a little boy who is growing up in a time when the joy and adventure of life are rarely sought in the infinite possibilities of the everyday and the commonplace. 
- Lata Mani, Author 
Lata talks a little more about the pleasures of experiencing stillness and savouring little things that very often lead to discoveries about self and the world, in the following excerpts from articles that appeared in The Hindu...

 ... The last thing she expected to do was write for children. “I did not read much as a child. My stories were oral. I imagined telling a story, not writing it…” All that changed when her nephew Gautam asked her to write a story for him. “When you promise a child something, you have to fulfil it. I bravely ventured into new territory, and enjoyed doing it. That’s because I love children’s books. Take A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Earnest H. Shepard’s line drawings of Winnie are still alive – and the discovery of innocent relationships among species… That is so important at a time when the world of Nature is often shown as uncertain and dangerous,” says Lata…  

So did she follow a plan to capture kids’ attention? “No, but I realised that my nephew and his friends had very little time to do nothing. As a child, I spent a lot of time looking at the clouds, apparently aimlessly. Now everything is so activity and plot driven…movies, television, books. I wanted to give them (children) a chance to make a discovery that was not didactic.”

That is probably why her books are about slice-of-life moments – four boys’ outing under and atop a tamarind tree, a kid and his father marvelling at a spider’s web – and blissful languor. “A lot can happen when apparently nothing is going on,” she says. Strangely for someone who so evocatively describes the act of plucking a ripe tamarind and eating it that you whiz past to your childhood on a magical cloud. Lata has never climbed a tamarind tree or tasted its intense sweet-sour fruit. “I grew up in Bombay,” she laughs. “I now live in Koramangala (Bangalore) and saw some boys climbing a tamarind tree. I discovered nature late in life. But I have learnt the joys of paying attention to it. And, I want kids to enter a world and discover things.”
- February 2009, The Hindu, Metro Plus 

Her newest venture is in the realm of children's books, brought on by a promise to her four-year-old nephew. These stories are "not plot-driven," she says. "Children are so driven by activity. My most cherished memories of my childhood are doing nothing, looking at the sky, tracing some shapes in the mud, throwing a ball up and down, lots of time for my mind to breathe and float like a kite in the Bangalore sky. 

Children these days are so programmed, taken from one activity to the next and I thought "Is there a way in which one can write stories that built in a sense of ... contemplation in a very simple way that invites children to do nothing? And yet there is so much richness in allowing your mind to wander and see your relationship with Nature."

That is what she has tried to do with The Tamarind Tree and her latest The Spider's Web, about a boy learning the difference between looking and seeing, through his father's camera.
- February 2009, The Hindu, Literary Review

The thumb rules!

Children love making a mess, and I do too. Fingerprints are delightful symbols of grime and mess, and when Tulika asked me to do a series using them, I was grateful to be part of this project - one they could have asked a child of three to do for free!

Thambi and Thangi are from real fingerprints, and I finger-painted the textures for the ground, trees and whatnot, thoroughly reliving my childhood in the process.

When I painted the faces on to the fingerprints, I realized that
the fingerprint ‘device’ had a singular advantage. The large Humpty Dumpty form is perfect for big eyes and mouths, which is scope, as any cartoonist will tell you, for powerful portrayal of raw emotion. For us illustrators, expressions rule!

I love Thambi and Thangi, and I hope everybody who meets them does.

- Ashok Rajagopalan, Illustrator

Tulika's Tamil stories: Bridging the spoken and the written

Some time ago, a lively local radio jockey called to ask what I thought was special about Tamil. Words, I replied. Original and borrowed and the way people used them. In different places, in different ways. All amazingly creative.

Tamil is such a versatile language, but what happens when we write for children? It’s the Full Missyamma Mode: didactic, prescriptive, and correct at the cost of resonance, mood and elegance and if Tamil doesn’t have resonance, mood and elegance, what does it have?All this and more. That’s why it was so much fun the other evening with the irrepressible Jeeva Raghunath, a born storyteller. The event was a celebration of Tulika’s Tamil books in the spirit of Madras Week. Come on, she said, TuliKAKAvin kathai kelunga… listen to Tulikaka’s stories. She went from the mad verse of Aavilirundu Akkvarai to the peculiar sounds of Gasa Gasa Para Para’s ‘jnya-jnyaa-jnyi-jnyii’ to the great merriment of children and adults present at the Madras Terrace House. It didn’t matter even if you didn’t understand all of it… fun and laughter go beyond words.

She told the stories through the frame story of her popular Malli, capturing the flavour of place and tongue with her warmly amusing imitations. Once past her own books, she then went on to Cathy Spagnoli’s classic Priyavin Oru Naal, giving it full sound and tune with old Tamil film melodies, and Muthu’s story of the magic vessels… and lots more, each rendered in a special and different Tamil accent, all spoken and heard on the streets of Namma Chennai. Kamaal Hassan, you got competition machi!

Jeeva has a fresh, new approach to Tamil and she is completely convinced that when children read, they must connect. So, not for her the tongue-twisting chasteness of high literature (beautiful though it is, she always says; she loves her mozhi, she always says). Her tongue twisters leave the reader gasping for more.

But there are always naysayers and recently we went on a critical appraisal of Tamil for children’s books. As always, we went to our friend, philosopher and guide, Cre-A Ramakrishnan. His considered opinion: there are some things that are sacrosanct, but the effort must be to bridge the gap between the spoken and the written. Go on, he said, you’re heading the right way.

So, adjust the mindset light-a for a wonderful journey through Jeeva’s stories, written and told. Piragu you will understand what I mean… Semma Tamil, Namma Tamil!

- Sandhya Rao, Author and Editor