Tulika at Bookaroo Delhi and Pune!

Ruru's Kukaroo-kuroo at Bookaroo Delhi 

Move over, lungi and singham dance, we say, because the simply spectacular Jeeva Aunty is here with a foot-tapping (soon to be chart topping) number with so much zing it’ll also make you sing! Jeeva Aunty will flag off and finish the celebrations at Bookaroo, Delhi with Rooster Raga.

When: Saturday, 23 November, 11 am
Where:  The Stage, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA)
Ages: 4 – 40

When: Sunday, 24 November, 4 pm
Where: The Stage, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA)
Ages: 4 – 40

A sneak peek below!

Pune welcomes Bookaroo (30 - 1 November)

Ruru Kukaroos On!

Clap and tap along with writer Natasha Sharma and skip, stretch, stamp and roll with Ruru’s friends as they teach him to find his raga!

When: Saturday, November 30, 12:30 -1:30 pm
Where: The Palms, Shambaji Rao Park, JM Road, Pune
Ages: 4 - 6

Doodle Away with Kavita Singh Kale

Meet illustrator extraordinaire Kavita Singh Kale!

Create stories on the Doodle Wall with imaginative drawings and introduce your friends to the world!

When: Saturday, November 30, 3:30 - 4:30 pm
Where: Doodle Wall Ages: 10 - 12

Draw your best friends on a postcard and take it home to post later!

When: Saturday, November 30, 11:00 am to 12:00 noon
Where: Crafty Corner
Ages: 10 - 12 

Catch storytellers and Tulika writer-illustrator Deepa Balsavar and Jeeva Aunty in action at Bookaroo Pune too!

Mayilwriter is Back! 

Now on her second diary, Mayil is 13 going on 14 and what else? Teen queen, says Amma. Terrible teens, says Appa. In her own words – Mostly Madly Mayil. Meet her and writers Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam at the launch of the sequel to Mayil Will Not Be Quiet! Enjoy some of Mayil's rib-tickling ruminations and colourful comments, then with a little help from Sowmya and Niveditha – and Mayil, of course! –  write your own diary entry.

When: Sunday, 1 December, 12:30 - 1:30 pm
Where: The Palms, Shambaji Rao Park, JM Road, Pune
Ages: 12 - 14

Visit www.bookaroo.in for more details.

The Pleasant Rakshasa story

When I was an editor with a children’s magazine, I sat next to a pillar in office that had the image of a purple-coloured rakshasa who looked like he was about to smile at me. However, he was part of a story that did not allow him to be pleasant. He was supposed to be scary and gory and not nice at all. 

As part of my job, I routinely edited stories in which the villainous person was described to be ugly and somehow, that seemed to be enough validation for their appalling behaviour. But who decides who is ugly and who is beautiful? I’m not going to be untruthful and say that it is only inner beauty that matters. Given a chance, all of us would like to be thought of as beautiful people. But what interests me is how we make these decisions. 

When my mother was a teenager, she thought body hair was beautiful and used to oil her hands and legs to make hair grow. She was pretty disappointed that it didn’t work. It was only when she went to college that she realized that a hairy lady isn’t considered to be desirable!

Maybe it’s because I was (and still am) a five-footer in my adolescent years when beauty pageants and leggy women became a rage, I had a complex for a long time about my height (or the lack of it). It took me a while to become comfortable with my own body image and chuck those ridiculous platform heels. The time I’d wasted on teenage angst got me thinking about these issues. Learning to accept yourself in all your imperfect glory is a very hard but liberating thing to do. Aana and Chena is essentially about this celebration. Mayil naturally led to an exploration of these themes, it being the diary of a girl who is just reaching adolescence. 

With Karimuga, I wanted to create someone with conventionally ugly features and see if he can emerge as someone likeable AND beautiful. I thought I owed it to that rakshasa on that pillar. 

Pleasant Rakshasa - Quirky Q&A

The Rambunctious Rakshasa Rhyme

Woohoo, Bookaroo!

Writers Niveditha Subramaniam and Sowmya Rajendran took snow kings, sky monkeys and a merry rakshasa with them to Bookaroo. Sowmya shares notes on their sessions.

Who wouldn’t like to listen to stories in the shade of a big banyan tree? 

The stories we had chosen for our storytelling sessions were The Snow King’s Daughter and The Sky Monkey’s Beard. The Kahani Tree sessions are all 30-minute ones and are conducted for different age-groups. We had planned to do dramatized readings of the stories for the 6-8 age group. But when we actually got to see some of the sessions at the venue, we realized that despite the age-group indication, children of all ages were sitting in the audience, expecting to be entertained! 

Most of the storytellers for the Kahani Tree sessions chose to perform stories with songs and a lot of repetition – a smart move since it allowed the audience to participate and follow the story despite the distractions that an open space with thronging crowds offered. I was quite apprehensive of doing The Snow King’s Daughter – a story about a child living in exile – for this audience. 

The subject isn’t light and doesn’t lend itself to an if-you-are-happy-and-you-know-it kind of song and dance. The text is also rather subtle and layered in places and if the audience isn’t listening carefully, it’s likely to be lost on them. And an uninterested audience of children can really be merciless, especially since they don’t realize they are being so. 

Niveditha and I racked our brains to see what we could do. I had taken along a pair of hand puppets – a zebra and a monkey – and we decided to use them somehow. At least, it would give the really young kids something to look at! So, for The Snow King’s Daughter, I began the story by asking children where they went on their last trip and how they had travelled. Some had been to Indonesia, some to Darjeeling. Some had travelled by plane, some by car. But did they know how Keshav from the book travelled? With the help of his straw mat and atlas! He simply makes a huge red ‘X’ on the place he wants to visit and hey presto! He’s there! And on his last trip, Keshav went to Africa and made friends with this…this zebra! One of the kids in the audience named the zebra Avi and I told them that Avi was a very naughty zebra who had to be shushed now and then. They promised to take care of that and so we began!

Instead of doing the dramatized reading that Niveditha and I had originally planned, I simply ‘told’ the story in the language and words that came to me at that point. Niveditha showed them the pictures and the zebra made annoying interruptions (‘Where is this cold place?’ asked Amma; ‘Chennai! Chennai!’ said the zebra). The children shushed in the right places and were also obliging enough to answer the questions I asked them on what was an ‘independent country’ (‘a free country’), who ruled India previously, the location of Tibet and China and so on. The zebra shook hands with all those who answered. 

Niveditha, too, chose to tell the story rather than doing a dramatized reading. I held up the book so the children could see the pictures. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that children love monkeys and so, from the start of the story, they were hooked. The floating sky monkeys with their bubble-like yellow eyes held their attention and when Niveditha’s naughty little sky monkey made faces and pulled the ears of the tiny members of the distinguished audience, there were happy giggles and smiles all around. 

And of course, when she asked them to wiggle their bums and pretend they were sitting on a cloud, there wasn’t a kid in the audience who didn’t want to do it. At the end of the story, Niveditha blew out bits of the grandfather’s beard (wads of cotton, inspired by storyteller Jeeva Raghunath’s take on it) into the crowd!

Neither of us is a storyteller (we’re more the type that sends out manuscripts and sits impatiently in a corner waiting for the publisher to get back), so this experience was quite challenging. But one lives and learns and I’m glad that we were able to manage the situation fairly well!

For The Pleasant Rakshasa, our new book together which I’ve written and Niveditha has illustrated, we had signed up to do a reading and activity at the ‘Crafty Corner’. The Crafty Corner is the arts and crafts section where children draw, paint, and make stuff. 

Since this was a registered session, there were about a million parents (okay, maybe not a million, but it sure felt like it) trying to get their kids in. Jo Williams of Bookaroo, the self-acknowledged bouncer of the Crafty Corner, finally managed to sort out the fifty who were to attend the session and we began the session by singing a silly rakshasa rhyme. The children were impatient to get their hands on all the lovely sketch pens and pencils but they were obliging enough to sing along and humour us. Karimuga’s hairy legs and big belly were a hit, as were his awesome yellow teeth. 

After the reading, Niveditha showed the children how to draw Karimuga and before you could say ‘rakshasa’, an avalanche of children fell over us, demanding paper, pens, sharpeners, and nuclear weapons. The volunteers handled the situation admirably and not before long, the fifty odd kids were settled at their desks, drawing away happily. We helped them cut out their masks, punch holes, and tie the threads. By the end of the hour, there were quite a few rakshasas romping around Bookaroo!

Two days, three sessions. Each with its own challenges and happy moments. The two of us had a whale of a time dealing with all of it and next November, we’d be sure to sit inside our respective straw mats with an atlas in hand, a huge red ‘X’ over Bookaroo on it!

Bookaroo in the City: Mayil Will Not Be Quiet

As part of Bookaroo in the City, we took Mayil Will Not Be Quiet to Satyug Darshan Vidyalaya, Faridabad. The auditorium was packed with 80 children (eight to twelve-year-olds) and we were excited and slightly nervous as the back rows filled up. 

How many of you write diaries, we asked.

Just two hands shot up – a girl and a boy. 

Why do you write?

The girl said she wrote about things she couldn’t talk about with other people. She wrote about her feelings, she wrote about things that happened every day, she wrote down secrets. The boy said writing was creative; it helped him write better and read better too. 

We introduced Mayil and read the first entry from her diary. There was a soft giggle or two as we read out the warning bit (“No sneaking, peeking, touching or EATING.”). But what got them thinking was Mayil’s question about Dasharata wanting a son to “carry” his name. Why didn’t Dasharata want a daughter, she wonders. Couldn’t she rule a kingdom too?

“Girls leave home and become part of another family,” said many. But when we asked if girls could rule a kingdom, neither the boys nor the girls responded, at least not at once.Then we spoke about a sporting star that came from their hometown. They all knew who she was, but some didn’t know that she was from Haryana. Did they know that Saina Nehwal’s grandmother hadn’t visited her at first when she was born? Could they guess why? “Because she was a girl,” came the replies. Saina Nehwal’s mother was a badminton player too and Saina is a champion today. 

So could girls and boys do the same things if they wanted to? They nodded their heads. 

The liveliest discussion – the one that really got them talking – was the one about heroes and heroines. Who was the perfect hero? Which heroine did they like the most? “Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan!” said one. “Dara Singh!” said another, as the others burst out laughing. “Edward Cullen and Bella Swan!” said another (those teenage vampires just get everywhere, don’t they). Why are they perfect, we asked. But they just smiled shyly. So we took another approach:

Tall or short? – TALL
Fair or dark? – FAIR
Thin or fat? – THIN
Big eyes or small eyes? – There were shouts of big, small and even medium!

Were all beautiful people tall? – NO!
Did they know dark people who were beautiful? –YES!

So what was beauty? Who decided who was beautiful and who was ugly? What did beauty have to do with who they were? These were some of the questions we raised. One boy said Johnny Lever was dark and not great to look at, but he was funny and entertaining so it didn’t matter. There were many who didn’t speak, but they were thinking and talking to each other. When we concluded the session, at least half the room wanted to start a diary!

Our second session was with The British School – and they had a lot of opinions! Their responses to the questions we raised were instinctive, often downright blunt and very decided! 

We read the same entry about Dasharata wanting a son. Some boys and girls said that they had their mother’s name as well as father’s. That led to another discussion – who was the head of the family? They had different answers:

“The person who brings home the money.”
“The person who earns the most.”
“The person who wins the argument.”
“The person who is older.”

One girl said, “I think my little sister is the head of the family. We all do what she wants!”

 

Another interesting discussion revolved around dolls – could boys play with them too? Lots of boys put their hands up – but many, after first clarifying if action figures counted. Does Ken (Barbie’s boyfriend) count as a toy, we asked. Someone said, “Ken is a doll. He doesn’t have weapons.” 

This naturally led to a conversation about sissies and tomboys:

“Tomboys hang out with the boys.”
“Tomboys have short hair.”
“Tomboys are hairy. I had this friend. She was a tomboy and she was really hairy.”
“Sissies are like… shy.”
“Sissies are scared.”
“Sissies are girly sort of boys.”

What were their definitions of sissies and tomboys based on? Appearance? Personality? Both? The teachers were also involved in the discussion. For instance, when one of the boys said women can't handle swiss knives, a teacher quipped that she won't be taking him along for camping trips then!


We read another entry from Mayil’s diary – where she meets a trans woman on a train. When we were writing this entry, we had wanted children to think about and understand the difference between sex and gender. But we were really happy that it also provoked thoughts and insights on identity, self-definition, recognizing and learning to accept differences and acknowledging and being able to talk about discomfort. 

When we finished reading this entry, one boy said he didn’t understand or think it was “natural” for a girl to want to be a boy or vice versa, but he would respect it, because it was that person’s choice. Others were less certain and said so. We heard quite a few say, “I don’t get it” and “It’s weird” and “Why would anybody do something like that?” 

And it was fitting that the session ended with some questions remaining unanswered.Because Mayil is about issues that remain unresolved, even if solutions have been found, for the moment. Mayil writes as she thinks. She has plenty to say and plenty to ask. She doesn’t always say or do the right things: she is embarrassed when she thinks that her friend, VS, is going to read out a poem in class, she thinks her brother doesn’t stand up for himself even when it’s not his fault. But she is not afraid to be wrong or say sorry. And she isn’t quiet!

Sowmya and Niveditha

A big thanks to Jo, Swati and Venkatesh for having us at Bookaroo and to the students and teachers of both schools – we loved being there!

Tulika at Bookaroo 2012

The 5th edition of the Bookaroo Festival of Children's Literature is around the corner and Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam are off to celebrate! They kickstart with Mayil Will Not Be Quiet which goes to Bookaroo in the City and finish with The Pleasant Rakshasa, their latest, which has its launch at the Main Festival. Set in Sanskriti Kendra, Anand Gram, MG Road, the Main Festival is open to all. Check out the full schedule below:

The Snow King’s Daughter
by Sowmya Rajendran
Pictures Proiti Roy
Keshav’s favourite game is to hide in a rolled up mat and pretend he is travelling to different places. He is delighted when he discovers that his neighbour, Lobsang, is really from a place that he has marked in his map – Tibet! Join Sowmya and Niveditha Subramaniam for an animated storytelling session.

Date: 24 Nov 2012 | Location: Kahani Tree
Age Group: 6-8 | Time: 16:30 to 17:00 pm

The Sky Monkey’s Beard
by Niveditha Subramaniam
Pictures Priyankar Ghosh

Sky monkeys like nothing better than to float for hours. Then one day, a naughty little sky monkey does something most unskymonkeylike and there is a huge hullabaloo up above! Join Niveditha and Sowmya for an animated storytelling session. 

Date: 25 Nov 2012 | Location: Kahani Tree
Age Group: 6-8 | Time: 11:00 - 11:30 am 

The Pleasant Rakshasa
by Sowmya Rajendran
Pictures Niveditha Subramaniam
Rakshasas are the life of this party! Join Sowmya and Niveditha for a dramatized reading of  The Pleasant Rakshasa. Meet Karimuga the rakshasa and his motley crew and make your own mad monsters.
Date: 25 Nov 2012 | Location: Crafty Corner

Age Group: 6-8 | Time: 13:30 to 14:30 pm

Powerless in Perambur

Author Sowmya Rajendran describes the process of writing 'Power Cut' , a Tulika title that is due for release shortly. Watch this space! 
Update: The book is now available on the Tulika site.

In 2005, Chennai was hit by a series of cyclones and thunderstorms. The power went off in Perambur (where I used to stay) for two days in a row. After celebrating the fact that the exams had been postponed, there was precious little to do - no TV, no computer, no cell phone (the battery died!) and nowhere to go! 

I did appreciate the beauty of the rain, the extra-fresh greenery of the garden and the happy frogs, but these could not entertain me forever. My parents, too, had nothing to do- which is a rare occurrence. So we sat around the drawing room and played word games. Not knowing when the power would come back gave the situation a tinge of happy fatalism. All we had to do was eat endless packets of Marie biscuits and play. This was a license to be lazy and we used it to the maximum!

It was a lot of fun and it brought back memories from my childhood when I used to make animal shadows in candle-light. There’s nothing unique about that experience- every child would have made a deer or a bird or something when the candles were out on the table. And it’s this non-uniqueness that prompted me to write Power Cut. We’ve all done it and I thought it’ll be fun to see it as a book.

The story is in first person. I struggled a bit while trying to decide what to call the parents - I tried writing with ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ but it seemed strange to me because I was picturing them as my parents. So I made them ‘Amma’ and ‘Acha’ (which is what I call them). This got changed in the editing since the story is being translated into other languages- quite understandable and I’m very happy with the way the final manuscript looks, too!

I still make animal shadows when the power goes off, the darkness makes grown-ups stop worrying about looking silly. I think if we worried about it a lot lesser even otherwise, we’d be much happier.

- Sowmya Rajendran

Never to forget...

Like Keshav in the story, I've spent many an hour as a child sitting rolled up inside a mat, inventing bizarre stories for my own entertainment. When I started writing The Snow-King’s Daughter, I had a specific tale to tell. I went to college with two Tibetan girls — Lobsang and Tsomo — who were very proud of their history and culture. The story of their struggle to make it in a new country despite all odds was moving and inspiring. Of all the things that I learned from them, their belief in making new beginnings without forgetting the past is one that I value the most. Their laughter and love for Tamil kuthu songs helped me set the tone for the story I had in mind — a narrative that would allow the characters respite from pity without wiping the issue off the table.


The friendship between Keshav and Lobsang (of the story) is like any other between children. They play, they talk, they make things up...and just like that, they grow up together. The discoveries that they make about each other and the world around them come in moments, not events. It never strikes Keshav until he's told that Lobsang is Tibetan; the differences don't really matter, but they are fun to figure out. Just as Lobsang has her way of coping with her loss, Keshav finds his way of acknowledging it. In the world they create for themselves inside the mat, snow-kings and princesses are real and valuable.

This is a story I've hugely enjoyed writing and I hope Lobsang will find the Snow-King. 

- Sowmya Rajendran, Author

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