It’s been our privilege to have Indian writer, editor and blogger Richa Jha as our guest blogger for the past two weeks. Today we present the final part in her three part series:
Reader-less Books: Reading Habits of Indian Children ~ by Richa Jha
If you haven’t read the previous entries, you can get caught up by reading Part 1 here and Part 2 here. In today’s post Richa addresses some of the reasons on why Indian youth may not be reading books written by Indian authors.
We can’t see them
Our books get lost in the sea of international books on the bookshelves at the stores, especially when there are tens of series vying for attention. A single spine in the middle of it is no show. Some of the bookstores do have dedicated shelves or sections for Indian authors, but the traffic is thin there. Children’s books continue to figure low on most 
publishing houses’ agenda. The lack of the necessary promotional push for these books from their side affects their visibility. So does the media’s cool shrug at most of these books. The bookstores aren’t too enthusiastic either to back the Indian authors as they don’t see them moving off the shelf much. This chicken-egg situation only compounds the general feeling of apathy that the Indian authors sense towards their work, in general, from all sides.
Let’s blame it on our parents!
My generation of parents grew up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton and Edward Stratemeyer (creator of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew), and for most, that fodder lies frozen in time. An essential rites of passage, we expect to see our children reading these. Most parents shy away from even exploring the Indian-Author shelves at bookstores.
At the same time, we do have a new (but small) breed of parents who are keen to introduce their children to the growing world of Indian YA fiction. But while the parents take care to buy these books, most children are reluctant to explore them. Buying, therefore, isn’t always enough. A possible way to get our kids interested in them would be to explore the book together. I remember sitting with my son a couple of years ago and reading aloud a relatively unknown gem by Ranjit Lal, The Red Jaguar on the Mountain. By the end of the first chapter, he was hooked and came back later to say, ‘The book is so cool!’
Things can only get better from here. Last month, India’s first zombie fiction for young adults, Zombiestan by Mainak Dhar hit the shelves (the second one by him is due for a release soon). Payal Dhar’s There’s a Ghost in My PC, Oops the Mighty Gurgle by RamG Vallath and The Deadly Royal Recipe by Ranjit Lal – all for middle schoolers slated for release soon – promise to be a hell of an adventure-and-fun packed reads. There’s visible promotion around them and the publishers and the authors seem to be having fun talking about their books. Don’t stop me from turning up that bubbly voice inside me that’s humming now-these-are-what-our-children-will-go-grab. Out of choice. Ahem! Amen.
Richa Jha is a writer and editor and, like many of us, nurtures an intense love for picture books. In her words:
I love picture books, and want the world to fall in love with them as well. My blog Snuggle With Picture Books is a natural extension of this madness. The Indian parents, teachers and kids are warming up to loads and loads of Indian picture books beginning to fill up the shelves in bookshops. It’s about time we had a dedicated platform to it. The idea behind the website is to try and feature every picture book (in English) out there in the Indian market. Usually, only a few titles end up getting talked about everywhere, be it because of their true merit, or some very good promotion, or some well-known names associated with them. There are many other deserving titles that get left out in the visibility-race. This website views every single book out there as being deserving of being ‘seen’ and celebrated.
Lila Majumdar, translated by Srilata Banerjee and with an introduction by Subhadra Sen Gupta,
The Burmese Box: Two Novellas
Puffin Classics (India), 2010.
Ages 9-12
Lila Majumdar is one of India’s best loved children’s authors, and it is clear from reading the glowing introduction by accomplished writer Subhadra Sen Gupta that she has shaped the imaginations of Bengali-speaking children for generations. Translations of her exciting stories are long overdue, and fortunately, her granddaughter and translator Srilata Bannerjee agrees.
Reading The Burmese Box and Goopy’s Secret Diary (the other novella contained in the collection) as an adult is like rediscovering a long lost childhood friend that I never actually met. The stories are fast-paced and exciting with little time wasted on set-up and exposition for, as Banerjee states in a translator’s note, “no child appreciates long-term planning.” These stories take place over no more than a day or two (despite harking back, in the case of The Burmese Box, to a family legend more than a hundred years old) and are filled with plot twists, remarkably eccentric relatives, bungling grown-ups, and the accompanying confusion so natural to childhood.
In both stories, a boy protagonist of about 11 gets pulled into the intrigue of missing jewels and family legends. At first the boys are excited for adventure, but doubt settles in once it is too late to back out and the possibility of real danger looms. What will become of the treasure? Who are the thieves? Why don’t the adults see the obvious? And what exactly is going on here anyway?
The protagonists encounter dream advice from long dead ancestors, secret tunnels in dilapidated mansions, carnivorous cows, and plenty of shifty characters, but everything turns out okay in the end. It would seem that disaster is averted thanks to the innocence and integrity the young heroes retain. Grown-ups who might have mucked up the situation never receive the necessary knowledge to carry out their plans, and justice—no, not justice but something even more important, fairness—prevails.
There will be some challenges for children not familiar with Bengali culture and family relationships as the terms for different relatives are very complicated to those of us used to the English system. Nonetheless, the book kept my eight-year-old son (who preferred Goopy’s Secret Diary) enthralled. I had to wrest it back from him in order to write this review! Fortunately, explanatory notes are included at the end of the book along with biographical data, “Things to Think About”, and a translator’s note that is particularly special considering the translator’s relationship to the author. The Burmese Box is destined to become a classic once again, this time in English.
Abigail Sawyer
July 2011
Forward by N. R. Narayana Murthy,
A Clear Blue Sky: Stories and Poems on Conflict and Hope
Puffin Books, India, 2010.
Ages 13+
War. Violence. Death. Poverty. Hatred. Displacement. No matter where we live, as human beings we hope that these dark parts of life will not touch our lives, but even more, that they will not touch the lives of our children and young people. For many, however, darkness weighs heavy on childhood. This has been particularly true for millions living in southeastern Asia over the last decades, as religious and national conflicts have marked and scarred the lives of the children growing up in them. This collection of stories and poems from writers from India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan sings stories of their national and personal grief.
The grace of the collection is how the writers manage to remind us of our own saving grace: how, paradoxically, “conflict and hope” can co-exist, as the subtitle indicates. In “A Time to Mend” by Asha Nehemiah, after an angry mob breaks into a church in Bangalore, beating the priest and leaving the church in ruins, a shaken and distraught Mubina and her brother bring home the damaged altar cloth, where their grandmother, the one person in the city with the skill to repair it, makes it whole again. In another story, “The Answer” by Rohini Chowdhury, childhood sweethearts meet again, decades after being torn apart by the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. Perhaps one of the most haunting stories is Adithi Rao’s brilliantly told “Turban for A Little Boy”, which uses the format of a boy’s essay to convey how the innocence of a child can unintentionally provide the catalyst for evil – and how that innocence is then scarred.
Masterful storytelling techniques throughout offer classroom uses far beyond social studies; and the short bios of each writer at the end of the book also provide options for further reading. The stories question the very idea of the reality of storytelling itself. Some tales are clearly fiction, but others, particularly a set of first-person stories, will leave their teenage readers wondering, “Was that real? Did that happen to the author? Or is it made up, historical fiction?” Such doubt creates unique teaching moments, about perception and reality, and about storytelling itself, as well as about the way people thrive, survive, and find hope in shards of despair.
Sara Hudson
July 2011
