A big, brown, friendly bear rests by the tree trunk as a monkey in a paavadai eagerly listens to him. This is one of the glimpses that nudges listeners to just plunge into Karadi Tales’ visual universe. On their YouTube channel are stories and songs translating Karadi Tales’ audiobooks and Karadi Rhymes into vibrant visuals for audiences, young and old. The bear continues to be the narrator, and we, like the paavadai-clad monkey, listen in rapt attention.
For many children in the previous generations, stories were often those told by grandparents, made up by parents, and penned in some magical city that felt unfamiliar yet imaginable. When Karadi Tales entered the storytelling world on June 26, 1996, Indians saw a significant shift. From moral and mythological stories to narrations from our neighbourhoods, the three-decade old award-winning children’s publication house has been instrumental in setting the tone of tales that are rooted in India.
Founders Shobha Viswanath, CP Viswanath, and Narayan Parasuram began their journey to cement the gap that was audiobooks for children — a result of their personal quest to find an Indian audiobook for their five-year-old. “We started with stories already known to many Indian children; whether it was from the Panchatantra or the Jataka (Tales), or from our folklore, and retell them. We basically chose Indian stories — not a Cinderella or a Goldilocks or a Snow White — and set them to good background music, with situational songs like we are used to in Bollywood films, and a good narrator to tell the stories,” begins Shobha.
Soon, Karadi Tales grew into a multi-format storytelling house spanning audiobooks, picture books, classrooms, rural storytelling projects, and accessibility initiatives. Yet the idea remains unchanged: stories that feel rooted, lived-in and emotionally immediate.
Where sound meets story
At its core, Karadi Tales returns to something older than publishing itself — the oral tradition. “Indian storytelling was always oral storytelling,” says Shobha. “It was never like, let me tell you a story and somebody pulled out the book.” Even as stories have moved across books, films, animation, and digital platforms, she believes its emotional centre still lies in listening.
Narayan traces this further. “Storytelling traditions in our land have always emerged from the confluence of dhwani (sound) and chitram (image),” he says. For him, sound, image, and word are inseparable in storytelling. “The storyteller must, in some measure, also be a musician; the illustrator, a writer; and the voice actor, a visual artist,” he adds.
In the audiobooks, this philosophy is not abstract. Classical ragas, rhythm structures, and layered soundscapes shape the emotional world of each story. But equally important are the pauses. These silences are built into the narration itself, alongside rhythm, repetition, and tonal shifts that children respond to instinctively long before they fully understand language. While music shapes the emotional atmosphere, pauses create a space for imagination, anticipation and reflection. “The goal is never to make the listening experience overly polished or fast-paced. Instead, we want children to settle into the emotional cadence of a story,” says Narayan.
Bringing that impact were voices of performers who they have worked with over the years. As Narayan puts it, they do far more than read aloud — they “inhabit the emotional world of the story”. Among them, actor Naseeruddin Shah remains especially memorable. “There is no denying that Naseeruddin Shah, being among the very first voices of Karadi Tales, remains etched in the memories of many who grew up with our stories,” he says. The voices chosen to tell the stories always had a neutral accent, without taking a regional tone.
Close to home
The motto of Karadi Tales is a simple insistence: stories should feel close to the children who hear them. “For generations, children in India grew up reading about English boarding schools, snowy landscapes and lifestyles that felt aspirational simply because they were distant and unfamiliar,” says Viswanath, adding it was equally important for children to encounter characters, families and landscapes that reflected their own lives.
The stories centred on Indian childhoods — paatis, aajis, local food, regional rituals, everyday textures of life. “What is wrong with our setting?” asks Shobha, who has also authored books within the Karadi catalogue. “Children would like to see their lives reflected in books,” she says. Even familiar cultural references become anchors. “If there is an aaji making bisi bele huli anna, the child immediately relates to it.”
As a natural next step came Karadi Rhymes — a collection of original rhymes inspired by Indian childhoods, written by Shobha, set to music by Narayan, and sung by Usha Uthup — that helped children tune into sounds around them.
The idea of “belonging” eventually expanded beyond urban childhoods. Karadi Tales’ StORI (Stories of Rural India) series draws from the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), bringing reportage-based narratives into children’s publishing. What began as a search through the PARI archive soon became a publishing idea shaped by a gap in understanding. “It was fascinating for us as urban adults. I was thinking how little we as adults even know of rural India,” she says. The stories were not romanticised but grounded — shaped by labour, resilience and everyday survival. Through these narratives, the series moves beyond simplified ideas of rural life.
Beyond the page
As storytelling expanded geographically, it also changed form. Picture books introduced a new logic: the story was no longer contained in text alone. “The text tells you only half the story,” she says. “The other half has to be gleaned from the visuals.”
This allows illustrators to respond more freely to the manuscript. “We act as facilitators,” says Shobha. “Thinking carefully about what visual language would best serve the story, and helping shape the relationship between text and image.” Often, illustrators also pick up emotional layers that are not explicitly written. “That element of surprise is one of the most magical aspects of creating picture books,” she adds.
Across three decades of working with children, I have seen that they continue to respond deeply to meaningful stories. Truly good stories ask children to slow down, imagine, empathise, and feel.CP Viswanath
That understanding of picture books eventually led to a more fundamental question: “Who gets excluded from the experience of picture books?” Dreaming Fingers stemmed from here. Developed after a conversation at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the project explored tactile and Braille picture books for visually-impaired children. “How does a visually-impaired child experience a picture book?” Shobha recalls asking. “What does colour mean to them?”
Though eventually discontinued due to production constraints, the project reshaped the team’s understanding of storytelling. “It taught us that stories are never limited to sight alone,” she says. “Children experience stories through emotion, rhythm, physical interaction, and imagination.”
The future of storytelling
Today, Karadi Tales operates across a far wider landscape of storytelling, and the format has changed dramatically. “The biggest transition has been technological,” says Narayan. “Our audiobooks have travelled from cassettes and CDs to today’s QR-enabled access. What has remained unchanged, however, is our belief in the power of listening.”
Even as platforms evolve, the question of imagination remains central. “Imagination never goes out of fashion,” says Viswanath. “Stories set in forests, folklore worlds, our Puranas and magical landscapes continue to hold enormous power.” But he also points to a growing tension in today’s media environment. “AI-generated imagery and highly immersive digital entertainment have changed how children encounter stories. It entertains, but children lose their imagination when everything is visualised for them.”
That shift, he adds, makes storytelling even more essential, not less. “Good storytelling will always remain a powerful counterpoint to passive consumption,” he says. The aim, he adds, is to ensure that stories still leave space for uncertainty, humour, mystery and emotional depth. “We began with the desire to bring Indian stories to Indian children, and that impulse continues to guide us even today,” says Narayan. Whether through books, audio, or classrooms, the focus remains on creating stories that are rooted yet expansive, familiar yet open-ended.
In their 30th year, the team looks at expanding storytelling across multiple formats, languages, and learning environments. But the direction, they emphasise, is not towards replacing older forms, but deepening them. As Shobha puts it, children still respond most deeply when stories are meaningful. “When children encounter stories that genuinely engage them, the desire to read and listen is very much alive.”
In that sense, Karadi Tales returns always to its original premise: not the medium, but the child — listening, imagining, and making sense of the world through story.
Stories for education
Karadi Path, another vertical by the team, was an accidental foray into education when schools began using its audiobooks for language learning. Now, this structured language-learning programme is used across thousands of schools, including tribal communities and Anganwadis. “If a school has seven English periods a week, we take three,” says Shobha. “Those are replaced by a Karadi Path classroom.” The foundational principles of Karadi Path emerge from Indian multilingualism; that children learn language most naturally when immersed in a rich language ecosystem, notes Viswanath. “Joy is not a luxury in learning, it is often a prerequisite for it,” he says. “Stories, music, movement, and conversation are central because children learn best when they are emotionally engaged.”