Sudha Murty gives another bagful of stories for children

Bengaluru: Writer and Rajya Sabha MP Sudha Murty launched her 300th book title, Grandpa’s Bag of Stories, on Sunday. A collection of 19 stories for children, the book is published by Puffin, an imprint of Penguin. 

Sharing her journey with columnist and actor Twinkle Khanna, Sudha said that as an engineer-turned-writer, she was slightly scared when she first published her Kannada book, 40 years ago. “But today, when I look back at this journey, I feel writing has given me a sense of purpose and belongingness, and a way to transcend time and touch hearts,” she said. 

Sudha has authored 46 books, which have been translated into 23 different languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Konkani, Tibetan, Urdu, Assamese, Sanskrit, Kashmiri and Italian. 

Having written in six different genres so far, Sudha said that she would like to experiment in writing shlokas with her next project. 

Responding to Twinkle’s question on the title of her new book, Sudha said, “The grandpa (Narayana Murthy) does not have stories to tell children. I do. So in my voice, I told his stories in my new book. He would rather write books titled ‘Python for Six-Year-Olds'."

She said writing for children requires the narrative to be carefully filtered, thus making it a prolonged and tedious process. She said she takes suggestions from children according to which the book undergoes multiple stages of editing. 

The book launch was followed by an interaction with the audience, moderated by social entrepreneur Deepa Rao Acharya. Several industrialists, entrepreneurs, writers and children participated.