The Child as a Reader

Communicating Belief

Deepa Agarwal

Last May, at a children’s literature festival at Srinagar, a young girl approached

me. ‘Please give me,’ she breathed, her grey eyes large and serious, ‘give me a
few words that will guide me through life.’ For a few moments, I was stumped.
She looked so earnest that it made me nervous. What a terrible responsibility
she had imposed on me! Finally, I gathered myself together and mumbled,
‘Always believe in yourself and never give up.’

It was not the first time a child had requested such a one liner. Never, however,
with such intensity. The incident reminded me yet again what children expect
from us as writers—words that can act as a beacon in times of confusion and
distress.

We well know that a one liner, no matter how worthy the sentiment it
encapsulates, cannot be the ultimate guide in the complex business of life, and
somewhere I felt like a fraud. To bring more honesty into our interchange, I
picked up one of my books from the book stall shelf. It was my title Not Just
Girls. ‘Try reading this,’ I said.

I hope she read that book, because it is about girls trying to believe in
themselves and not give up and hopefully she found situations that illustrated
what I said.

Katherine Paterson, one of the most respected children’s writers in the world
says in her book A Sense of Wonder: “I do believe that those of us who have
grown up have something of value to offer the young. And if that is didacticism,
well, I have to live with it. But when I write a story, it is not an attempt to make
children good and wise—nobody but God can do that and even God doesn’t do
it without a child’s cooperation. I am trying in a book simply to give children a
place where they can find rest for their weary souls.”i

She goes on to explain that she is trying to act as a companion to a confused and
fearful child, reaching out through a story, “…peopled by characters who are
me but not simply me.”ii
This whole question of politics apart, we all know literary works are
intrinsically linked to the author’s personal experience, social background, core
beliefs and prejudices. While writing for children, writers may delve into their
own childhood memories, sometimes just to share them, or to answer questions
that baffled them when they were young, or raise issues that disturbed them.
Your parents’ happy or unhappy marriage, the sassiness of your younger sister
or the bullying ways of your older brother or his wimpyness will turn up
somewhere in a story sooner rather than later.

Yes, in your writing, it is hard to get away from what and who you are and what
and who you want to become. And when I look back on my first published
book, sometimes I cannot help wondering if it mapped a particular course for
me; even though I know it is not strictly true. The itinerary had been present
somewhere long before I began writing. That year Children’s Book Trust had
announced a competition on the theme “Portraying Boys and Girls as Equals”
and I decided to enter. Why? To quote from a paper I presented at a conference
in Mangalore organised in 2008 by the Children’s Literature Association of
India on the theme “Politics and Polemics in Children’s Literature”: “As the
mother of three young daughters, the theme immediately struck a chord. And a
picture book story Ashok’s New Friends (1990), about young Ashok’s
encounter with a boy who likes to cook and his sister, who is good at karate,
was the result. The book went on to win the N.C.E.R.T National Award for
Children’s Literature in 1992-93. ”

The need to inspire my daughters and other girls to challenge stereotypes was
definitely on my mind when I wrote Ashok’s New Friends. This book was a
precursor to many other stories in which girl characters shatter the conventional
mould. But it is also true that many of these characters sprang into my head
without the impetus of a given theme. In fact it was a revelation when readers
observed this element in stories where such noble notions were far from my
mind. For example in an article, writer and critic Nandini Nayar states:
“Agarwal pays special attention to the boy-girl equation in her books and
attempts to be fair to both the sexes…But in most cases the girls display
courage and initiative that marks them out as braver.”iii Among others, Nandini
has mentioned my second published title A Capital Adventure. This book,
however, grew organically and was conceived as a mystery story meant to
entertain rather than influence. It was the storyline that grabbed the reins when I
was working on it rather than the aim to depict strong girl characters.
Traveller’s Ghost is another book in which the narrative formed itself, though a
girl named Kriti does take the initiative to lay the spirit haunting her and her
friends. Again in my fantasy novel Anita and the Game of Shadows, which
appeared a few years later, the protagonist Anita is the one who has to confront
and destroy the evil King of Shadows and rescue her parents. I think that when I
was writing these stories it was absolutely natural for me to believe that a girl
could accomplish those daring tasks as well as a boy.

Several years later, I was commissioned to put together a collection of girl

empowerment stories by Paro Anand for Rupa & Co, which appeared under the
above mentioned title Not Just Girls. When I was making a selection from
stories that had appeared in magazines earlier, I was delighted to discover that I
had enough to make up a book. One or two had indeed been written on a given
theme. But there were also stories like “Delivery Girl” in which a girl opts for
the dangerous choice of helping to arrest a criminal who has made use of her,
and others like “Never Talk to Strangers” in which a timid girl strives to break
out of her mould and trust her instincts.

Some of these characters could have been inspired by spunky girls I

encountered in my childhood or diffident ones trying to stretch their comfort
zones. But more recently I made a conscious choice to write two books with
inspiring female protagonists. The biography Rani Lakshmibai, the Valiant
Queen of Jhansi is one. The other is my latest book Rajula and the Web of
Danger, a retold folk epic of Kumaon in Uttarakhand. I had heard about this
unusual tale of a girl’s bravery and determination, rare in our oral tradition and
was keen to write a book based on it. In this thousand year old story, the
heroine’s daring and initiative and her spirited challenge to her powerful
magician father makes her the perfect role model for the contemporary girl, and
I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.

Katherine Paterson also says in The Spying Heart: “It is not enough to simply
teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations—something that will help them
make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own.”iv

Right from childhood I have found it hard to make sense of social inequities and
that is another question I have been attempting to answer through my stories. In
one of my early picture books, The Toy Horse I tried to show that give and take
at an equal level is possible between children of unequal means. In this simple
tale, a middle class child covets Rami, a banjara (gypsy) girl’s toy horse. Rami
gives it up, but the other girl senses that she is sacrificing something precious
and impulsively hands over her own doll. A short story “Fire” from the
previously mentioned collection Not Just Girls! examines this issue in greater
depth through the complexities of the relationship between Puja and Paruli.
Based on a childhood memory, this story is about a friendship between two
middle class girls and a maid’s daughter, which founders when Paruli, the
maid’s daughter tells a lie to avoid punishment. Puja adores Paruli but cannot
forgive her for lying, till she understands Paruli’s compulsions, but by then it is
too late. In the story “The Odd Weekend,” from the collection Everyday Tales,
Mitu is jolted out of her complacency when her mother’s friend, the ‘crazy’
Zoya Aunty with whom her parents have left her for the weekend, takes her to a
slum for social work. Mitu begins by wrinkling her nose at the scene: “Heaps of
garbage rotted all around and smelly drains (which doubled as toilets) ran along
the houses. Didn’t anyone tell them about germs, I wondered? Well, Zoya
Aunty did.”v Asked to narrate stories to the kids, a sulking Mitu soon finds
wonderful warmth filling her up and leaves as reluctantly as she had arrived.
This story too, is based on an unforgettable childhood experience.

Bringing domestic help into children’s fiction sometimes makes writers

uncomfortable because they feel it indicates that the author is ratifying an
exploitative practice. I am not so sure. All middle class families employ
domestic help and often mothers bring young girls along to assist them in their
chores. I feel portraying bonds that sometimes develop spontaneously among
children, makes a story more true to life. Many urban children tend to distance
themselves from people not of their social strata; are very conscious of
differences and often have a stereotyped view of the other. Involving children
from under privileged groups as active participants in the narrative rather than
mere background figures helps to reinforce empathy and smooth the
awkwardness that is responsible for the distance. I also feel it is imperative to
depict that any kind of sharing with a needier person should be free of
condescension. In a very early title of mine—Three Days to Disaster the initial
encounter between Sonali the protagonist and Kamli the banjara girl who helps
solve the mystery, is based on a real life incident that had a deep impact on me.
A brusque shopkeeper refuses to sell biscuits to Kamli because she does not
have enough money. When Sonali offers her some in an impulsive gesture, she
refuses. In the above mentioned article Nandini Nayar says, “She [Kamli]
maintains both her dignity and the sense of awe at being noticed by the
educated, well-dressed girl.”vi When, in the course of the story, Kamli is in a
position to assist Sonali and Gogi in capturing the criminals, “Kamli is terrified
of the consequences of helping the children, yet she goes ahead.”vii In my
mystery novel The Hunt for the Miracle Herb, Harku the boy domestic helper
plays an important part in locating the herb Rina, Ajay and Geeti are looking
for, also in apprehending the man who is putting obstacles in their way.
Similarly, in The Capital Adventure, Mohini, the maid’s daughter, whom Shipra
has befriended, is courageous enough to free Amit and Rohan from the
criminals who capture them, at great personal risk. Better still, she daringly tries
to get hold of the brief case full of cash that the crooks have extracted as
ransom. Caught in the act, she does not give up fighting till the others arrive
with a rescue force. Thus, she not only displays initiative and guts but her
participation becomes crucial for the successful resolution of the story.

The big question, however, is—do such stories really influence children’s
attitudes? Here I would like to quote from a blog post on The Toy Horse by a
lady named Pallavi, which I stumbled upon. “It's an invaluable book to have
because it teaches in such a tender way the difference between haves and have
nots…” she writes. Again, “I read it out often to my daughter who is only 4
years old but really very moved by the story. It also gives us an opportunity to
provide her with a perspective on things she will see and experience all around
her in India.”viii In a review of Rani Lakshmibai: the Valiant Queen of Jhansi
Rohini Ramakrishnan writes in The Hindu, “…it remains with you long after
you have finished the book and through these [narratives] you relive the past
and realise that here is a woman who can inspire you to face life, despite all the
hurdles and hardship…”ix

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “You don’t write because you want to say something,
you write because you have something to say.” The truth is, whether you
fashion a story deliberately to educate children or let one emerge organically
from the deep, dark well of your consciousness, unless you believe in the issue,
the most diligently crafted words will slip through the reader’s mind like water
through a sieve. You have to create a story that will resonate in the reader’s
mind long after she has finished reading it. Where the child reader is concerned,
it is not just about choosing politically correct themes. It is about
communicating your faith, your conviction in the most honest way you can, so
that it touches the heart of the reader and leaves a permanent imprint.

References
Agarwal, Deepa, Not Just Girls (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2004)

-- Ashok’s New Friends (New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1990)

-- A Capital Adventure (New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1990)

-- Everyday Tales (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 1994)

-- Three Days to Disaster (New Delhi: Ratnasagar Publishers, 1990)

-- Ashok’s New Friends (New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1990)

-- Traveller’s Ghost (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 1995)

-- Anita and the Game of Shadows (Gurgaon: Scholastic India Pvt. Ltd. 2002)

-- Rani Lakshmibai (New Delhi: Puffin Books India, 2009)

-- Rajula and the Web of Danger (Gurgaon: Hachette India, 2011)

-- The Toy Horse (New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1997)

-- The Hunt for the Miracle Herb; (New Delhi: Puffin Books 1995)

Notes
i
Katherine Paterson, A Sense of Wonder (New York: Penguin Books, 1995) p. 59
ii
Paterson, Op cit. p. 60
iii
Nandini Nayar, “Deepa Agarwal and Indian Children’s Literature in English: An Introduction”, Perspectives on Indian
English Fiction, Ed. Jaydipsinh Dodiya (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2006) p.322
iv
Katherine Paterson, A Sense of Wonder (New York: Penguin Books, 1995) p. 301-302
v
Deepa Agarwal, Everyday Tales (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 1994) p. 37
vi
Nandini Nayar, “Deepa Agarwal and Indian Children’s Literature in English: An Introduction”, Perspectives on Indian
English Fiction, Ed. Jaydipsinh Dodiya (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2006) p.322

vii
Nayar, Op cit.
viii
http://kinderwagon.blogspot.com/2011/09/toy-horse-deepa-agarwal.html#comment-form
ix
http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/kids/article2003345.ece