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Opinion Column |
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NANDINI NAYAR PENI GRIFFIN
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Column #2
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| Nandini Nayar lives in Hyderabad, in the state
of Andhra Pradesh, India. She has been writing for as long as she
can remember but took it up as a career only after her first story
for children was published in 1999. Making up for lost time she has
been writing steadily since then, trying her hand at a variety of
genres. She has written travel pieces (co-authored with her husband),
runs two columns on books for children (‘Book Ends’ in
The Hindu and ‘The Good Read’ in The Hitavada), and published
dozens of essays on various children’s writers and aspects
of children’s books in Deccan Herald, The Hindu and The Hitavada.
She has contributed entries on 21 Indian children’s authors
for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (forthcoming
from OUP).
Over a dozen of her short stories for children have appeared in various publications in India. In 2003/4 three of her novels for children were serialized in the children’s pages of an Indian newspaper. Right now she is looking forward to the publication of her three picture books – all inspired by her 3 ½ year-old son’s prattle and antics – by Tulika Books, Chennai, India. She is also known to occasionally indulge in acts of writing for adults (both poetry and fiction). |
The movement of publishing books for children began with the Nehru Bal
Pustakalaya (The Nehru Children’s Bookhouse) and the Children’s
Book Trust (CBT). The brain behind CBT was Keshav Shankar Pillai, himself
a writer and cartoonist. Pillai recognized the need for books for children
and sought to create an appropriate agency for the publishing of these
books.
Immersed in the fairy tale world where sinister spies targeted the good, brave English man and found in the sturdy children of England an unequal match, we had no idea of the emergence of new trends. People were actually talking about what books children in India ought to be reading and things were actually being done. Champak (named after a heavily-scented flower) was the first magazine for children that I remember reading. This was in a small-sized format, with short stories and comics, and a few jokes – meant for the younger child.
Of course Chandamama (literally, Uncle ‘Moon’) had always been there – in its square format, with vividly coloured illustrations of demons, regal, richly-dressed kings, awe-inspiring gods and shapely goddess. This magazine, available in several regional languages, retold stories from Indian mythology and history. And then there was Children’s World, published by CBT. This magazine brought together the best of all the worlds for children. There were tales in the best Indian tradition, retold by talented writers. There were stories that had a contemporary feel to them, stories of schools and siblings, of the kind of problems that Enid Blyton and Famous Five or even the strawberry blonde Nancy Drew had never encountered in their lives. But problems that struck an immediate chord within us.
And then, to make things better, CBT announced a competition for the best book of fiction for children. This competition commenced in 1978 and the winner that first year was Arup Kumar Dutta. His The Kaziranga Trail was set in the North Eastern state of Assam and focused on the problems of poaching in the natural reserve of Kaziranga. The competition became a regular feature and the world of children’s writing benefited greatly by this.
Around this time Shashi Deshpande, soon to become a very well known novelist for adults, wrote four books for children. I remember to this day the joy I felt when I read The Hidden Treasure, her second book. I was struck dumb with delight, thrilled that there were children like me, children who spoke a language that I did, children who lived right under the eyes of their parents and still managed to have adventures. It was like a beam of light had suddenly been thrown on the whole idea of adventure books. These were not fairy tales, these were things that did happen to children !
And then in the 1980s came the children’s magazine Target. Target was a truly special magazine. It went beyond the limits set by the magazines of the time, it created a whole new idiom of what children liked and wanted and, what was really important, it actually invited children to speak up! It was here that I read some of the best stories, tales from the talented pens of Subhadra Sen Gupta, Paro Anand, Deepa Agarwal, Sigrun Srivastava and saw illustrations by the immensely whimsical pencils of Ajit Ninan and Atanu Roy.
Once Target entered our lives, we lived for the day when it was delivered to our homes. Subscriptions were annual and once the form had been filled in and sent off we could sigh in relief, assured of another year’s supply of the magazine. When the magazine ceased publication a few years later, it left a whole generation of Indian children disconsolate. Even now, when I meet a fellow Target fan, we sigh together for the days gone by and long for the magazine. Today my collection of old issues of Target is among my most treasured possessions.
And in the meanwhile another quiet revolution had been brewing, boiling up in the mind of one man, a genius far ahead of his times. This man was Anant Pai, better known today in India as ‘Uncle Pai’. Pai had worked for various publications when he was struck by the idea that what the Indian child needed was a comic book that would educate him/her about the wonderful history and impart a sense of the culture of the country. And this was how Amar Chitra Katha was launched in 1967.
Amar Chitra Katha, literally ‘Immortal Pictorial Tales’, started with the tale of Krishna, the most loved God in the pantheon of gods in India. What Pai achieved in these comics was amazing – the story was retold in a simplified form, encapsulated to interest the child reader. The colourful illustrations ensured that children would be attracted and want to read the story. Success was slow in coming, but once it did there was no stopping either the series or the man behind it. As the popularity of the comic book spread, Pai introduced various stories. He selected tales from the history of India, introducing individual books on great leaders, illustrious rulers and religious heads. He also introduced children to the many stories about the various gods of India, stressing the importance of festival and religious practices.
Today Amar Chitra Katha has over 500 titles and is a venerated institution. It came at a time when the Indian child, pressurized by the need to master English, had no time to pay attention to the vast storehouse of stories in the culture of his country. Amar Chitra Katha has introduced several generations of Indian children to the stories that make up the fabric of their lives. The success of this series prompted the intrepid Pai into launching Tinkle, a magazine for children with stories narrated through the comic book format.
This then was the revolution taking over India, and soon, even Enid
Blyton fans had to wake up to it. Although the comics and the magazines
found a following among Indian children, the books authored by Indians
took longer to find acceptance. Most children were by then so totally
hooked on the wonderfully limited world of Enid Blyton that it was
impossible to wean them away. And so we continued to pay homage at the
altar of the Western authors. We graduated, gradually and reluctantly,
from Blyton to Agatha Christie, PG Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer. The
boys disdained to read such namby-pamby books and instead became avid
fans of the Western sagas of JT Edson and Luis L’amour. And in
the meanwhile the world of publishing in India continued to grow. And
we
continued to remain oblivious of it, deliberately turning our backs on
it.
May 2005 © Nandini Nayar
Editor: Michael Thorn
Contact: 07803605045 or
email
©ACHUKA 1997-2005
