CHENNAI: The Dalai Lama termed love and compassion as necessities, without which humanity cannot survive. In a world fuelled by mounting needs and fewer means to fulfil those needs, these essentials might sometimes be lost on adults. But, children fare better, it seems. Celebrating this facet, as a means to remind the adults in our midst, is Anjali Sharma and Deepika Ahuja with their book My Act of Heart. The book brings together real acts of compassion from children around the world, piercingly decked with illustrations from children themselves.
A project by the Charter for Compassion, putting the book together turned out to be far more rewarding than either author has ever expected. “Deepika pitched the idea; it resonated with me too. So, we decided to work on it together. We reached out saying we are looking for stories where children have performed acts of compassion to anyone or the environment. We started getting entries from across the world. What surprised me was how these acts were common across different geographies. Compassion was a common thread running across diversities, economic strata and other differences. If they saw something, they went the extra step to address it. It was very heartening to see how common this was,” shares Anjali.
On her part, Deepika was struck by how these ideals prevailed among kids as young as five years old. Besides, children seemed to have a better handle on kindness to self than most adults, it seemed. “There were two stories on self-compassion. It was at the age of 30-32 years that I thought about compassion to self. But, here there are children of 10 years talking about it,” she points out.
And so you’ll find stories of a five-year-old helping out a friend cross the finish line in a race, a teen’s special connection with his ageing grandmother, a young boy finding a home for a girl who lost hers to a fire, a child donating all her savings to the elderly affected by Cyclone Fani and more. These stories were made more compelling by the illustrations that came along with it, says Anjali. “A few children sent in illustrations with their stories. For the rest, we invited a group of children and asked them to draw what appealed to them from the story. We also had designers from Integrated Design Works to coordinate with these children. Where the stories were difficult to interpret, these professionals stepped in to fill the gap,” she details.
While the stories spoke for themselves, given they were real-life incidents, the authors left the writing process itself to the fluidity of the entries that poured in. “We were not very particular about the language; some stories came in Hindi, Tamil and then Spanish. Also, we had the age of contributors as 6-16. So, we knew we would have those challenges. We focussed more on how compelling the act is. Then, in varying degrees, edit these stories to have them in a format suitable for children. But, of course, some children wrote very well and we didn’t have to tweak it much,” explains Anjali.
As simple as it seems, the book has been in the making for over a year and a half. Thanks to the pandemic that had stalled too many publishing projects. Eventually, they decided to go down the self-publishing route to get the work out, says Deepika. While it may as well serve as a beacon of hope in such difficult times, they hope it would also help parents have meaningful conversations with children on compassion and kindness. “Each of these stories will not just make children pause and think but also give a trigger point for parents and educators to initiate such conversations with their children. When you have a story to discuss these things, it gets through more easily. And these are real acts; so, we feel it will inspire children to look at day to day things very differently,” admits Anjali.
Stories of hope
You’ll find stories of a five-year-old helping out a friend cross the finish line in a race, a young boy finding a home for a girl who lost hers to a fire, and more.
Pick your copy
The book will be available in stores in the last week of February.