Except perhaps in Bengali, children’s literature in India has traditionally been understood as stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Hitopadesha and other classics that grannies would tell kids, with embellishments, often accompanied by a spellbinding performance. Then came Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle, and their ‘taboo’ cousins Indrajaal Comics and Chandamama. Chacha Chaudhary followed as a pan-Indian phenomenon of dumbed-down humour, before the digital era and nuclear families obliterated the need for kids to have a childhood — one full of stories at least. There of course were Tintin, Asterix, Enid Blyton, and more recently Hari Puttar (sic), but we’re talking Indian, remember.
Even though translations of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda and Professor Shonku and Sukumar Ray’s nonsense world of Ha-Ja-Ba-Ra-La and Abol Tabol — some worthy, others missing the point — have slowly started trickling in, a lot remains inaccessible outside the Bengali language. A vast treasure trove, from Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar’s fantasy world of Thakumar Jhuli (Granny’s Satchel of Stories) and Thakurdar Jhuli (Grandpa’s Satchel of Stories) to Upendra Kishore Raychowdhury’s Tuntunir Boi (Sunbird’s Book), Abanindranath Thakur’s Raj Kahini (Tales of Royal Valour), Nalak, Khirer Putul (Doll of Sweets), to Premendra Mitra’s Ghanada and Narayan Gangopadhyay’s Tenida, is perhaps to be left untranslated, till they get their own Gregory Rabassa.
In English, Anita Desai’s The Village By The Sea nothwithstanding, it’s only in recent years, with a proliferation of publishers for children, that indigenous literature for children has started growing wings. One publisher in particular — Tara — has been setting the benchmark, with their choice of original stories and voices, as well as excellent production values, that have gifted us albums worthy of preserving beyond the infantile years. Perhaps, generations hence will speak of these books in the same breath as Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm, if not for their content, at least for their beautiful artwork and calligraphy. These are collector’s items that enhance the imagination while feeding the young mind with ingredients for a rich, colourful life. Two books under review here are by Tara — Excuses, Excuses and The Great Race. A third is Ruskin Bond’s The Kashmiri Storyteller.
The best of the three is Excuses, Excuses by Anushka Ravishankar, already India’s most-loved children’s poet. A fantasy, it’s about the importance of discipline in childhood, and the fun in breaking ‘them laws’. It’s replete with humorous rhymes which, while not detracting from the importance of discipline, tries to broaden perceptions of an impressionable mind. As with all books published by Tara, it’s exquisitely illustrated, by Gabrielle Manglou from Reunion island. It opens with a rhyme about a boy’s resolve not to be late to school on the first day of the week. He sets an alarm, which reverses time, and he fails in his goal. Next day he starts on time, but finds an elephant shedding tears through its ears on the way. He is perplexed by the cacophony of sounds he encounters — cluck, coo, hiss and shoo — but decides to alleviate its distress, and reaches school minus his socks, having relieved the pachyderm. Strange things keep happening over the next few days. In reality, like the hyperimaginative kid in Calvin and Hobbes, he’s found a porthole to an alternative reality that provides him strange excuses for not doing what’s expected of him.
The Great Race uses traditional art of the low-caste Wagharis of Gujarat as illustration. Originally nomads, they’ve now settled on the banks of the Sabarmati. Their ritual illustrated cloth for Mother Goddess — Mata Ni Pachedi — is inspiration for the illustrations by Jagdish Chitara. It’s an Indonesian ‘Trickstar Tale’ retold by Nathan Scott, and part of Tara’s venture to bring traditional art to the mainstream through children’s storybooks. Kanchil the musk deer, knows he’s the fastest animal in the forest. He challenges the rest to a race. Many animals gather, but no one responds to his call, till finally, a weak voice does. It’s that of a snail — the slowest of the forest fauna. Harimau, the tiger is the starter, and he asks Gajah the elephant, to be the judge at the finishing line. The race takes place in two opposite directions. What happens next, is for you to find out.
Ruskin Bond’s The Kashmiri Storyteller is a mélange of stories, and the only one that doesn’t live up to expectations. While the other two can be enjoyed by young and old, some of Bond’s stories are not even fit for kids. In his best, he creates a milieu through the names of kids he knew who lived near Landour Bazaar some 40 years ago. Visibly then, not all stories are of Kashmiri origin, though the storyteller is a Kashmiri shopkeeper named Yaved, who sells curios and woolens. The most disappointing of the lot is a ghost story, which made me pine for Parashuram’s (Rajsekhar Basu) Bhusundir Math (Raven’s Moor), a story so sharp in its satire, yet so realistic in the world it inhabits, that it leaves your spines tingling, even as your ribs are tickled to the bone.
