Why?” she asks, in Mahashweta Devi’s Why-Why Girl (Tulika Books), “Why? Why? Why?”
And the why-why girl she, I think, is the essence of today’s child, who asks her own questions and has a hand in her own destiny. Devi’s protagonist demands to be educated. In several other books, we have children conceiving their own presents and futures, if not their pasts.
A case in point is Sumati Sudharkar’s Paromita (Rupa & Co.) where a young girl in feudal Bengal fights her family’s efforts to make her into a child bride and instead, gains an education. And it is not all serious stuff, either. Stories that revolve around adults out to fulfill a child’s whims also find place on the bookshelf, even if they don’t abound, as yet. For instance, the absolutely delightful Young Uncle Comes to Town by Vandana Singh (Young Zubaan) where the adventurous Young Uncle survives every conceivable obstacle to emerge unscathed, almost, triumphantly holding a hair from a tiger’s tail for a baby who ‘wanted it.’
Work in progress
Yes, my contention is that, children’s literature in India, in the cotemporary context is finally growing up. It is still a ‘work in progress,’ if you will, but we are getting there. As yet, we could possibly have had a situation where J K Rowling would not have found a publisher had she been Indian. Harry Potter would have been found to be ‘too long, too complex, the language too difficult, and goodness, there were no illustrations!’ Of course, she had difficulties getting published in the UK as well, having been rejected by at least six publishers prior to finding Bloomsbury.
But take heart, we are growing up here too. I don’t just mean that there are more books for adolescents and teenagers, although that too, is true. I mean that even in stories for young people, from early readers onwards, the subject and content itself is changing. The very profile of the child character is changing. The fact is that authors and publishers, the ‘makers of kid lit’ as well as school, parents and children themselves – ‘the end-users’, are venturing out from the safety net of folklore and mythology and swinging free in previously uncharted areas like emotion, deprivation, bias and discrimination.
And the good guys are not all sugar and spice and everything nice and the bad guys don’t necessarily lose. The underdog could emerge a winner, even without being miraculously transformed into superheroes. Circumstances and situations can’t always be altered, but the child can come to terms with and alter her/his own course. Or not.
There is a lovely little book by Tanya Luther Agarwal called The Jellybean Story (Rupa & Co.) that deals with the coming to terms with dissabiltiy and even, dare one say, seeing the positive side of it, the joy of it, the ability of a blind girl to see what no sighted child could. So we don’t necessarily need to have the disabled character becoming magically cured or dying, she just comes to terms with the fact of her blindness and gets on with being truly special not ‘special’.
One of my very favourite stories is ‘Fire’ from Deepa Agarwal’s Not Just Girls (Rupa & Co). I love it because of its ability to confront reality head on and the questions that it raises. Not moralistic, not guilt inducing, but just gently prodding the reader to think. It is a story of two girls who are friends with a maidservant’s daughter. While they are friends, when push comes to shove, it is the servant girl who tells a lie and gets the others into trouble to save her own skin. And we are made to understand why she had to tell that lie.
In my ‘Literature in Action’ classes at the school that I teach (Vasant Valley School, New Delhi), I have had such interesting insights through the telling of this story to 11 and 12 year olds. Their first reaction is always, “How mean! It was her fault, then why did she blame the girls of the house?” Once even a, “trust a servant to do that.”
But then, through further reading, thought and discussion they confronted the reality that she really did need to lie. That the fallout of owning up for her, a servant’s daughter was far greater than any punishment meted out to the girls of the house.
The fact that a story like this makes the reader examine such immediate realities for today’s children that when they are talking about it, they’re actually talking about their own lives, comforts me as an author, editor, teacher and mother --- a person concerned about the health of children’s literature.
We, as the producers of kid lit, just have to learn to write the books that children want to read, the right stuff. See, there’s something quite unique in children’s books — the actual users, i.e. the children themselves, are not the actual buyers. Those who buy the books are well-meaning adults — librarians, teachers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and friend’s parents.
But, if you’re a reader, put yourself in that situation. Imagine never being able to buy the Seths, Ludlums and Ghoshs you wanted, but constantly being given the Cartlands, Cooks and Wodehouses you didn’t. Worse, imagine being given only books with ‘good moral values.’ Chances are you wouldn’t read them — and then you’d be condemned for being a non-reader.
What do children want
So we need to delve a little deeper into the minds of children and that is exactly what more and more people are managing to do. Luckily, this too is changing slowly and children have some say in what they read. Some schools have started getting children to draw up recommended reading lists and also go on book-buying expeditions to stock up the school library.
So, what do they want to read? I work a lot with children from different backgrounds and social strata all over the country. And I think that the answer is actually very simple - “Any good book.”
Look at Harry Potter again, he has broken every rule and comes out tops. And that, for me, is the key — break rules. Children’s minds and moral values are not fragile eggshells that will shatter at every rude word or irreverent line. Take Roald Dahl’s description, “her grandmother had a mouth like a dog’s bottom!” or the terrible Ms Trunchbull, who thunders, “I’m big and you’re small, you’re wrong and I’m always right.”
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There are many Indian publishers and authors and, thankfully schools, who are accepting that this is not something to throw your hands up in horror about. It’s just a good laugh and children see it as such. They’re not going to run amok, making rude comments about grandmothers and teachers, even if they are sometimes fearsome.
This in no way suggests that we should teach children to be evil, of course not. All it suggests is that today’s young know fully well that they’re imperfect people living in an imperfect world.
Today’s children don’t need to have every pill sugared; every cloud lined with silver. They are exposed to heavy doses of bitterness and dark clouds, whether it is violence on TV, divorce in the home or the pettiness of everyday living. And they need these subjects dealt with in their literature as well. A hands-on in-your-face look at the realities that impact them.
Books like Granny Knits by Uri Orlev (National Book Trust) which is told in lyrical verse, but takes a gentle look at the hard realities of how we treat people who’re different from us. I include this title in this article on Indian children’s literature, although it is written by an Israeli author, though published in several many Indian languages. Or there’s Anita Desai’s A Village By the Sea, which deals with the complexities of childhood amidst poverty in rural India, Sigrun Srivastav’s Trapped (Rupa & Co.) which talks about the 1984 riots, are but a few good examples.
In my own experience as a writer, I know that it was very difficult getting published. Now, however, publishers are approaching authors and requesting manuscripts. When I wrote my book on Kashmir, No Guns at my Son’s Funeral (India Ink/and Roli Books), I wondered how the publishers and subsequently the school teachers and principals who read it would react. Starting with the rather startling title. We played around a bit with possible alternatives, but it was on the publisher’s recommendation that we came back to this, the original title.
I know for sure that a few years ago, I could not have kept this name. (It is another matter entirely that once when my son went in as a decoy customer to check out response to the book, another customer advised, “son don’t take this book, it is surely not for children, not with that title!” – well-meaning adult strikes again!)
The story too, which deals with the impact of terrorism on a young boy, peppered with death and violence, would also have found it difficult to find a home some years ago.
The fact that this book has been awarded, has been put onto many recommended lists and is being taught in schools, and, more importantly has been extensively reviewed in mainline newspapers and television, are all signs of our Indian children’s literature coming of age.
Of course, all of it doesn’t need to be grim and unforgiving. Hunt for the Golden Langur by A K Srikumar (CBT), Arup Kumar Dutta’s Kaziranga Trail (CBT) and Crystal Cave (NBT) are just a few that take a positive look at environmental issues through a story. Or, my personal favourites, Kalpana Swaminathan’s The True Adventures for Prince Teentang (HarperCollins), The Weekday Sisters (Rupa & Co) that take a sharp look at reality through a very fantastical and funny lens.
One can’t talk about the Indian children’s literature market without looking at myths and legends. I say, there is a need for those as well, but it can’t be the whole and soul of literature for children from India. It is a huge market, because those well-meaning adults, especially of the NRI category, feel that they’ve done their duty to the motherland by buying Indian myths and legends for their children’s brain food.
But children often find this hard to digest, “We can’t read about rishis and munnis and raja- ranis all the time!” is a common complaint. So Dhira Kitchlu, in her Granny’s Greek Tales (Rupa & Co) gives a fine twist by Indianising and contemporising (if there is such a word) Greek myths.
Although I wonder a bit, I think it would be relevant for me to share an amusing incident here. When I was in England on a storytelling tour, children and adults, British and Asian alike, would ask, “but are these Indian stories?” I’d reply, “I’ve written them I’m Indian, so yes.” They’d say, “But they don’t sound like Indian stories.” And what should Indian stories sound like? Princes and princesses, lions and snake charmers, they’d tell me.
When I confronted them with the fact that English stories no longer confined themselves to damsels and knights in shining armor, the point hit home. Children in today’s India, lead contemporary lives, so their literature should, must and is beginning to reflect just that.
Yes, children’s literature is finally growing up.
(Paro Anand is the author of fifteen books for children with more coming soon. She headed the National Centre for Children's Literature, National Book Trust, India.)
