00:38 S1: Children and young adult books writer Paro Anand has headed the National Center for Children's Literature, and runs a program Literature in Action. Her books include No Guns for My Son's Funeral, Weed, I'm Not Butter Chicken, and Wingless. Marie Munkara is of Rembarranga, Tiwi and Chinese descent. Her first novel, Every Secret Thing, won the David Unaipon Award, and the Northern Territory's Book of the Year. Her two children's books are Rusty Brown, Rusty and Jojo, and the second novel is, A Most Peculiar Act. We all know how... 01:41 S1: Music and other aspects of Indian culture. She is author... Magic Miracles and Mystical Twelve. Her ongoing graphic series on Carnatic music legends titles... Are biography of educationist Y. G. Parthasarathy and An Incurable Romantic, The Musical Journey of Lalgudi Jayaraman. We also have with us Andaleeb Wajid, who has written Kite Strings, Blinkers Off, My Brother's Wedding, More Than Just Biryani, No Time for Goodbyes, and Back in Time. Now, we shall begin with the book launches, and I would request the moderator to carry forward the session. Thank you. 03:45 Andaleeb Wajid: Hello everyone. Thank you for being here. I just wanted Lakshmi... Lakshmi wanted to say a few words about her book. So we'll just start our session as soon as she can... Yeah. No, you start. 04:17 Lakshmi Devnath: Hi, all of you. I'm Lakshmi Devnath. I've just been requested to say in two minutes about the book that we launched today, Poorva: Magic, Miracles and the Mystical Twelve. While I write for all age groups and on different subjects, on which I'm not going to elaborate now, this book involves time travel. And before I continue on that, I just add a line that my passion lies in taking lesser known stories from our heritage to the young in a very entertaining format. So this particular book, Poorva: Magic, Miracles and the Mystical Twelve has this protagonist, 11-year-old protagonist called Poorva, slipping back into the era of 12 saints, who lived between the fifth and the eighth centuries. While their stories are mythological, their existences are a fact of history because their literature is available with us. And one of the most splendid literatures in vernacular. This one in Tamil. So this kid slips back into that era without her knowledge, and she fits herself into the surroundings. And from then on, every moment there, she's going to live there for more than four centuries because she goes up to the ninth century and comes back to the 21st. And every minute, there is a process of discovery for her. 05:42 AW: That sounds amazing, Lakshmi. 05:44 LD: Thank you. 05:45 AW: I was reading it, and it's really, really amazing. 05:46 LD: Thank you. And I'll just wrap up in a minute. And this is... So her first discovery, she's invisible to human eyes, including the eyes of the saints. The second discovery is that she can interact with all other life forms, and she can walk through closed doors, whatever. It's a whole lot of fantasy, but three strands make up the story; fantasy, mythology, and history. Thanks. 06:13 AW: Thank you, Lakshmi. Just speaking very briefly about my book. It's Back in Time, a second part of The Tamanna Trilogy. And again, that is also about time travel, strangely enough. But then, of course, mine has a huge romance and all in it, so. We will talk about this later. I would like to start with the panel. So again, thanks to all of you for being here. Yeah, so what I thought was I could ask a question probably directed to any one of the panelists. But if anyone else feels they want to weigh in, they're free to do that. So Paro, I wanted to ask you this, since you write a lot of fiction that has a lot of gritty themes. No Guns at My Son's Funeral, and a lot of other such books which deal with a lot of real issues. What is your take on this recent, not so recent trend in young adult literature, which focuses... Something called sick lit has come up, where protagonists are dying or eventually die, like The Fault in Our Stars and all that. So do you think this romanticizes death? Does it make young... Does it make death for young adults more real, or do you think it can be dealt in a different way? 07:37 Paro Anand: I had never actually heard of sick lit. But certainly, one thing that I keep in mind in my writing, because I do write about very difficult issues and things that... These are not books that are written about children for adults. I write for a younger audience. I write for a young adult audience. And if adults read it, great. But basically, what... The thing that I have to keep in mind is that I don't want to indulge in poverty porn and violence porn. I don't want to sexify it. I want to... But I still want to tell it like it is. I work a lot with children in difficult circumstances, and my stories largely are inspired by those very inspiring children who are living their lives despite their circumstance. But, I think, the response that I get... 08:39 PA: No Guns at My Son's Funeral is the fastest selling book for young people. It came out on January 22, and by June it had gone into reprint, because... So obviously, there are young people who want those books of honesty that are no longer playing safe and keeping to the kind of books that parents would buy for their children. There are kids going out there and buying the books themselves. My son, when he was quite young, went to buy No Guns at My Son's Funeral at a bookshop because he wanted to gift it. And there was a gentleman standing at the counter and said, "Beta, don't buy this book." So my son said, "Why?" [chuckle] And he said, "Oh, it doesn't sound like a very good book. It's not nice for children." So my son said, "Well, my mother wrote it." [laughter] 09:36 AW: Ouch! 09:37 PA: And this man gave him a very pitying look and said, "Bechara, [chuckle] what a terrible mother he has." But I think, it's the honesty, the truth. And also, the kids in those circumstances often say to me, "Write about us." They demand the stories to be written by me once they have shared their lives. 09:57 AW: And their stories have to be heard. 10:00 PA: And their stories have to be heard. We have to get them out of... Out from the confines, but at the same time, being careful not to indulge in... 10:08 AW: Romanticizing it and... 10:10 PA: Poverty porn... Yeah. Yeah. 10:12 AW: Yeah. So, anyone else wants to add something to what Paro said? Or shall we move on like you know, because I wanted to ask Marie, since she writes fiction for adults as well as children. So is your writing process any different? So, when you sit down to write, do you consciously think, "Oh, I'm writing a book for children or I'm writing a book for adults"? 10:35 Marie Munkara: Oh goodness, it was so hard. Look, when I first got this email saying, "Can you write these kids books?", I was really shocked, and I said, "Kids books? My books have sex and my books have a lot of swearing. Yeah, you want me to write kids books?" So anyway, they said, "Oh yes, it's a sense of humor that we want." So I proceeded to sit down and think about, "Okay, how am I gonna write a kids book? Never done this before." And so I just sort of put myself in a position like I thought, "Okay, what would my little brother be doing at that age?" So I just, yeah, just characters that are role playing that sort, and it was really easy. Once you slip into this place, it's just, yeah it just happens and it's really... It was... It's actually really quite a interesting and a very easy process. So, yeah, it wasn't difficult, no. 11:21 AW: What about you Paro, since you also write for adults? 11:25 PA: No, I think the story finds the level. I don't sit down and in an intellectual way say, "This is for this age group, and this is what I'm going to write for this age group, or these are the words I can and cannot use." I think the story finds its level and you have to let, I let my story lead me by the nose. I don't lead the story at all. [chuckle] 11:52 AW: What about you, Rohini, since you've also written fiction for adults as well as some very charming fiction for children as well? 12:03 Rohini: Yeah, I think no matter what else I do in my life, I still think of myself as a writer. I haven't written enough to qualify for that, but yes, I did write a medical thriller a long time ago when my kids were very tiny. And when my kids were older, I wrote for little children. So something's topsy-turvy about that. I think, as Paro said, when the creative instinct comes, you don't say, "Am I going to write for this particular audience?" The story is born, right? The urge to write that story and share it is born. But I must say that as a publisher of children's books, that when I wrote for children, I also did it with the purpose that we need to create many, many, many more writers of children's literature in this country, both fiction and non-fiction. We need thousands, and if not lakhs of writers because we just have not developed that space yet, and it's so nice to see so many authors here, but much more needs to be done to encourage writing, to encourage illustration, and to encourage reading, and platforms for distribution. So really, my focus has been, in the last 10 years, as much on that as on writing. 13:13 AW: Okay, that's wonderful, and we all agree with you. I think there are a lot of writers out here, but there aren't any focused children's writers who have a particular mission or something like what you were saying. Lakshmi, what about you? Since you also write for adults, do you have, do you have any particular thing, especially since you choose some? I just want to add one more thing to this, since you write historical themes for children and very unknown stories from heritage, so what is your... Is there any secret to making them exciting enough for the kids without being preachy, without being something their kid... Parents would tell them to read? 13:57 LD: Right, that's a very good question, because the subjects I take up and try to take to children are those that sometimes are dismissed as very scholarly, for the nerd, or... So I make stories out of them, sometimes even just out of the subject matter. And so they'll... Like Poorva, for instance, I have chosen these lesser known stories, and I have packed them into fantasy. So you were talking about devices. Another series of mine, an ongoing series of mine, which they introduced, are stories from the Carnatic music heritage, because that music is one of my passions, and so I said, "Why not?" I'm just telling them stories, I'm not preaching anything, I'm not teaching anything. There are stories in every heritage in every subject. Why don't we read them just as stories, not attaching any connotation to them whatsoever, either of religion, race, culture, genre, nothing. Just read them as nice stories."And the onus of making them interesting. I adopt different formats for different things and different characters. It's just fun and frolic, believe me, and in between this flows. 15:17 PA: I just wanted to add one thing. 15:19 AW: Yeah, sure. 15:20 PA: In writing for adults and writing for young adults, teenagers, there is one difference that I keep that I'm very conscious of, and that is that when I'm writing for a younger readership, the story has to have hope in it, no matter how difficult the circumstance, it has to end on a note of hope. I'm not... I don't need to do that for adults, right? That's just me, but I think that I can't leave a teenager feeling hopeless at the end of a story, no matter what the subject is. 15:53 AW: Absolutely. 15:53 LD: True, and if I can just add one more thing, not on just... Even the approach to writing for adults and for children, because I handle these subjects for all age groups, and I write really well-researched scholarly articles as well, and then I write the same things for children in a very enjoyable format. The language that I use, everything, is really very different. I'm very conscious about the words, the phraseology, everything, and this has to be really children friendly. When I write, it's for children, such a difficult subject, it is even more difficult for me. 16:29 AW: You know, there's one thing what I have noticed in a few writers who are writing children's books, is they're very conscious, like you said, but I've read your book, and it doesn't seem like you've made a conscious attempt, which is a good thing. But there are some writers who make a very conscious attempt to sound young. 16:46 LD: Right. 16:46 AW: And that voice of the protagonist is really important. So how do you go about achieving that voice? 16:53 LD: Absolutely, yeah. 16:53 AW: And I can ask this to all of you also. 16:54 LD: Yeah. 16:57 MM: Look, I think I'm an accidental sort of young adult writer because I didn't actually set out to write for young adult. I just write because it's something that I really enjoy, and it's a topic that I just find fascinating or funny or whatever, so I just write. And funnily, half of my books have ended up in universities and schools as class texts, which surprised me, I must say. [chuckle] So yeah, there's no... I don't sort of either set out to, "Okay, I'm gonna talk to this audience or that one." The audience finds me. And yeah, that's, I guess... As long as it's a good experience for me, I'm happy. 17:33 PA: Yeah, I'm not conscious of that I'm writing for a particular readership. I write. 17:38 AW: Maybe that's why certain writers have that, and maybe that's why the voice is natural, because I have this voice thing fixation. The voice of the child or the young adult should come naturally. So when a young adult actually reads it, they shouldn't feel like this is some adult trying to trick me in. 17:57 PA: Yeah, yeah, some aunty using cool words, they get it. 18:00 AW: Yes, exactly. 18:02 PA: They get it. 18:02 AW: They totally get it. 18:02 PA: And they reject it, instantly will reject it. 18:03 LD: I think it's important to get into the skin of the protagonist, and there is a child in every one of us. And when we write for children, I think it's the kid in that who's reacting to situations in the novel that we are creating. And then I think it is natural. Yeah. 18:19 AW: Okay. Rohini, you had mentioned something about wanting to talk about the joys and the challenges of writing. I think we covered the challenges. So what are the joys in writing for children? You said you started kind of topsy-turvy. 18:30 Rohini: No. Actually, the challenges are very great, writing for young children, very young children, because I write for the age group of three to five really, and I think it's very difficult, because you have to not only look at the language, it has to be simple, especially because we are writing, at least from Pratham Books, my audience, when I'm writing for, is probably a child who's never had a book before, who's getting first access, who's probably a first generation learner. So how I write has to be, even though... Of course, there has to be a flow. I can't artificially put something, but I'm always very conscious that the language has to be simple, that the context has to be real, and so it's very tough. And then you have to entertain the child, the child has to feel like turning the page, or having the rest of the story read to that child, and it's not at all easy. I grapple with it. So, it's fun, of course, when you get it right, but you get it wrong a lot as well. So I think writing for very young children is very challenging. Probably easier to write a 250 page novel than to write a 100-word something really excellent for a very small child. At least that's my experience. 19:42 AW: So I've seen your book and Lakshmi's book, they have illustrations also. So what's your scene with the illustrator? So do you discuss things with them, or do they read the book and then come up with the illustrations? And I think, Rohini, your illustrations, that Sringeri... What is it? 20:04 Rohini: Sringeri Srinivas. 20:04 AW: Yes, Sringeri Srinivas. Very quirky, very fun. 20:05 Rohini: Yeah, I got really lucky with Angie & Upesh working on many of my books, actually. Paro, have they done anything with Pratham Books for yours? No, I don't think Angie & Upesh have done something for you, but you really have to have a rapport with the illustrator. Because what you have in your head, if the illustrator has something else, either you have to submit to that in some sense and change your words when you're writing for very young children, or the illustrator has to really work with you. So I prefer, when I've written out something first, to find the right style of illustrator, and then have conversations. I'm the middle of another book where this young illustrator called Ruchi Shah is working with me, and so we're really going back and forth. I'm willing to compromise and say I'll change the words based on what you draw. So I think when visual... When the graphic side of a book for young children is so important, you have to have a strong rapport. 21:00 LD: Absolutely, because I author and publish graphic biographies, I totally relate to what Rohini has just said, the rapport has to be very strong, and the brief that we... Sometimes for the graphic biographies, I even enact out the scenes for my illustrator. Yeah. 21:16 AW: That's very interesting. [laughter] 21:16 LD: And I say, "Now catch this pose." And well, he does a rough sketch there, and yeah. But there have also been occasions when I have changed the script to match the illustration because then it cannot be changed. There have been situations like that. 21:28 PA: I'm also currently going through a very interesting process with the book which I've co-written with a Swedish writer, and we envisioned it as a very different book. When it went to the illustrator, she said, "No, no, this is a graphic novel, this is not at all the story that you imagine." She's turning it into a graphic novel. And it's coming out so exciting, and it's not at all what we thought that book would be. Similarly, this book, Wingless, also had an illustrator who spent almost three years illustrating it, because he was so invested. So actually, within this book, there are two books, because one story is the story in words, and one story is the story in pictures, and you can spend as long reading it as looking at it. 22:17 AW: Okay, that's amazing. Three years, I can't imagine. So, there's one question which I would probably address to Marie, but all of us can answer it. Do you, since you said that you didn't really think of yourself as a children's writer or a young adult writer? So do you think this whole genre thing, is it a trap for... Does it restrict you or the audience? But then since you said that you really didn't think... I think Paro would also like to answer, but do you think this genre dividing this, is it a trap? 22:48 MM: I think it is. For me, I just have... 22:52 AW: Only the publishers are happy with that because then they know where... And of course, the booksellers because they know where to stock these books. 22:58 MM: Oh yeah, but this is annoying 'cause I don't wanna be classified because it might... Whoever my book appeals to, or books, rather, appeal to, then that's fine, that's how... But like I said before, I didn't say it before I think, but I'm a really selfish writer, and I just write for myself, and I have to enjoy it, and I have to love it and have a good laugh about it. And if a publisher wants it, that's great, and if someone wants to buy, that's even better, but I don't... To categorize, and yeah, like I was saying, with my first book being... No, the second one as well, actually, now they're class sets, that wasn't something that I even envisaged, but that's wonderful. Yeah, so no, to try and classify, it sort of starts... It takes away some of that spontaneity. You just want it to flow and you don't want it to sort of, "Okay, I better think like this or think like that." 23:44 AW: No, yeah, you wanted to say something Paro, remember. 23:47 PA: Actually, this is something which has really brought me to a boil. I was at a workshop recently in Delhi where there was an international writer who said that if you go to a publisher saying, "This book is for 8 to 10-year-olds," the publisher will fall at your feet in gratitude and be very happy, whereas if you say, "Oh, this book can be read by everybody, the book's not going to get published." I really take issue with that. Even with the topic today, tweens to teens, what the hell does it mean? Are we saying that Harry Potter was for 8 to 12-year-olds and nobody else? And if it had been categorized by that, it wouldn't have been the success it is. Or that Tolkien wrote for a particular age group? No, he just wrote a really good book, they wrote really good books. And if you enjoy it, great. I've written a book for 80-year-old women... About 80-year-old women. I would hate it if only 80-year-old women read it. Similarly, the theme of this is... Of this festival is Northeast. In the audience, are there only going to be Northeastern people in that, or is it going be everybody? Or if it's about Dalit writing and Aboriginal writing, I want to know about that as well. So why are children's writers specifically cut up into little pieces and served up as bite-size pieces? Why can't we be wider and bigger and... 25:24 AW: All encompassing. 25:27 PA: All encompassing. It really annoys me, this categorization. So there's pre-reader, early reader, new reader, whatever, whatever. No, if I write a good book, I want everybody to read it. Haven't so many of us enjoyed Where The Wild Things Are? Whether we were children of that age or not, we loved it. 25:49 AW: At this moment, allow me to do a little bit... 25:51 S7: Can I say something? 25:52 AW: Yeah, sure. 25:52 Rohini: As a publisher, we are guilty of doing this, okay. Because we have four levels, very clearly, level one, two, three, four, because the children we want to reach, we need to make sure that the adult that makes... Who makes the choice for that child doesn't overwhelm the child with something that's beyond the comprehension. And I'm not looking down on the children. Today, I would love to read a book for a toddler, and with my sister's grandchildren, I do that all the time. So adults can read a very good children's book all their lives, but we have to be careful when we're writing for very young children, and some, perhaps, guide rails. I agree with you when it comes to teens, tweens or whatever that is, but for very young children, perhaps, there is a case to be made for levels. 26:36 PA: Well, I have an interesting story, but I think I am talking too much. 26:39 AW: No, no, go ahead. You wanna go ahead? Tell, tell us. 26:45 PA: A friend of mine whose daughter had grown up brought a box full of books because my daughter read a lot, and I couldn't afford to buy so many books. So she just put this box full of books. My daughter fished out the biggest, thickest book that there was in that box. I hadn't read that book, but she started reading it, and some pages in, she said, "Mama, you don't read this book." I said, "Why?" She said, "Because it will be very embarrassing for me if you read it and you know that I've read it, it's too embarrassing, so don't read it." I said, "Fine." And then after a while, she said, "Okay, I need you to read this book." I said, "Why?" So she said, "Because I have questions which I don't understand. So first you read it, then I'll ask." I was with her when she finished reading the book, and as she shut it, she said, "Mama, you have got to read this book." So I said, "Why?" She said, "Because I think it's a very important book." Now, of course, I was so curious and I started reading it, and I assumed it would be sort of a romance between a boy and a girl, and she was 10 or 11 years old. And imagine my horror when it was a relationship between a boy and an older man, and in some chapters, pretty explicit. 28:04 PA: I was really annoyed with my friend that she had put this book into a box which a 10-year-old, 11-year-old had access to, and I thought, gosh, she was too early to... It was too early for her to have read this book. But the question she asked me was, "Why was society so against this relationship? They loved each other. So what was wrong?" Had I waited till I thought she was ready, maybe at 16, 17, to read that book, maybe some prejudice would have come in, but she, in fact, has grown up without prejudice about gay people. So, I don't know whether we as adults and caregivers should be the ones to decide that this is appropriate for you and this is not, because we may be surprised, and I constantly am, as to how much wisdom they bring to their writing. 29:02 MM: I absolutely agree with you. I had a similar situation with my daughter, the oldest one, and I thought, well, you know what, these are things that you can't teach. There are things they are teaching themselves and they're finding out for themselves. And the whole thing about writing to me is honesty. No matter what you do, no matter who you're writing for, be honest, and this is sort of like an honesty in that this child was of reading this without a clouded perspective at all. She saw it for what it was, and that's a wonderful thing. And to try and censor that, I think is maybe dangerous, or not dangerous, might be wrong at times. I think our children should have the freedom to find their own way in the writing world for themselves. 29:48 AW: Yeah, to just round this whole talk of this genre thing, I just wanted to do a little bit of self-promotion. [chuckle] So since my book Back In Time, we were talking about genre. So it's young adult, it's got romance, it's got time travel, it's got fantasy, so I've ticked as many genres as possible hoping to get a wide audience. And the funny thing is that it's not just young adults, but also a lot of people, say, in the 30s, in their 40s are enjoying it because it's about this girl who goes back to 1982 and her take on life there. So a lot of people, they have that element of nostalgia for it, while younger adults who are reading it are surprised, "You guys used rotary phones, [chuckle] and what is drunk-dialing?" [chuckle] Not drunk, trunk-dialing. Those things, it's fun, so I was just trying to... 30:40 S?: Maybe they should know about drunk-dialing [chuckle] as well. 30:43 AW: Yeah. Trunk-dialing. Yeah, so genre, I also feel restricted by it because most of my books are for a younger adult audience, but I don't want just young adults to read it. So I think we can ask the audience for questions, if there's anyone? 31:08 MM: Come on. There's a question out there, I know. [laughter] 31:12 AW: Question with Marie's name. [chuckle] 31:15 S?: [31:19] ____. 31:22 AW: Thank you so much, Nandita. Thank you. So really? No questions? [chuckle] [background conversation] 31:39 S?: See, there's a kid lurking in all of us, and some of us don't get the time to read every book that's out there. So I'm sure... I hope everybody... Because instead of people trying to be polite and ask questions which really don't mean a thing, one para each from each of your books in case you're carrying them. So keep it short and you remain within the time, but at least we get a flavor, because all I knew about you was that you wrote a book on food. Paro, I know her very well, Rohini's work I know very well, but I haven't read the other two. So it's... Most of us will be in the same boat. 32:17 MM: No, I don't have mine here, sorry. 32:19 AW: You didn't get your book. Oh okay. [background conversation] 32:32 S?: Yes, thank you for that very insightful panel. It's not a question, it's a comment, but you might like to also respond to it on genre because that's something I feel very strongly about. And as an aboriginal writer, I think the whole genre thing is really fraught for that particular... Coming from a particular cultural context, because some of the Western genres like autobiography, for example, just don't fit our writing at all, 'cause we write... Autobiography, for example, is writing of the self, and people... All our stories belong to other people as well as ourself, and we might be the voice piece or the teller, but it's not really an autobiography. It's like collective memoir, if you like, but there's no genre for collective memoir. And then it goes down on all these different tangents like, I get this one a lot, "Is it fact, or is it fiction?" It's a story, and we don't make that distinction, as I didn't grow up making that. A story is a very important thing. We don't have a Western take on a story, anyway. 33:39 S?: So I think probably, to sum up, I think the whole genre thing is very culture-specific, and that needs to... That's a conversation that needs to be had, and there could be a very strong argument if you must use genre at all, but publishers seem a bit bent on it, so that it should be culture-specific, that there's a genre... There's genres that are appropriate for aboriginal writing that aren't for... And vice versa, if you must have it. 34:13 MM: That's an interesting comment, but I get really irritated when I get put into a category, because I consider I'm a writer first, and I'm an indigenous person second, and I want people to look at my writing as something that I as a human being have created. And so it gets prickly at times for me when I have to... With publishers and I'm saying, "No, no, don't put me in the indigenous section. I'm a writer, I'm writing about life as I know it. Yeah, and there might be some indigenous stuff in it, but don't put me in that box because to me first... It's me as a writer first." 34:50 Rohini: With Amazon, I think what happens is that new genres get created with every person. [laughter] I think today there's a lot of... [overlapping conversation] 35:00 AW: They will post saying I'm in the top 100 or in the top 10 in this particular thing, no one will mention the genre, but in the top 10 in Amazon. So you go look for it in Amazon, it won't be there, but you go and dig under that particular genre, you might find. 35:16 S?: Someone wants to ask a question. 35:20 S?: Agree, me, Dr. Mansoor Pasha, I agree with Rohini madam about the comprehension part of the children, the different categories you mentioned. My question to Rohini madam is, is your writing in your book a fiction, imagination, or your experiences in childhood? 35:46 Rohini: Yeah, it's really not coming directly from my childhood. I Think it comes from interacting with children a lot, and I like being around very little children, and I think just wanting very much to entertain them and keep them engaged is where my writing comes from. 36:05 AW: Arundhati wanted... 36:19 S?: Yeah. My question is, when we write for adults, I'm a children's writer, when we write for adults, it's the adult who goes to the shop, to the bookstore, and buys the book because that's what they want to read. But with children's book, there's a contradiction. You write something that you think a children... A child would want to read, but it's the parent who goes to the store and picks the book up. So I've had three books out this year. One struck gold because the parents thought the child would learn something from it, but it was also a great book because it was fun for the child to read. The other two books did not teach the child anything from the parents' perspective. The children thought it was great fun. But it didn't... These two books didn't do as well as the first one. So how do we handle this? How do we get the parents to... Because the parents want to either thrust a moral on the child, or teach history, or science, which is why non-fiction sells, or fact plus fiction sells. But what about stories that a child would enjoy reading? 37:18 AW: Paro, you want to say... 37:19 Rohini: Because... And maybe Paro should say something on this, but we are very conscious of that. You know, that it's the adult that makes the decision. But I think as the world is opening up and the future is digital, children are going to have devices in their hands. Pratham Books is going digital in a big way now, a child will be able to make a choice. And I think that's really going to open this field up. 37:46 PA: Yeah, I think to some extent it is changing. Wherever I go, I try and persuade schools to have children on their book purchasing committees as well. But the other day in a bookstore, there was a young child who kept bringing books to the mother and saying, "Can I take this, can I take this?" And she kept asking him... He was, I think six. And she kept asking him, "But do you think this book is age-appropriate for you?" I don't know whether he could understand even the word age-appropriate at all, but she kept forcing a book onto him which he didn't want. But hopefully... 38:24 AW: I'm guilty of that, you know. 38:24 PA: It's changing, and I think greater and greater access through the digital media perhaps will change it. 38:29 AW: I'm guilty of that. [laughter] But it's not about age-appropriate or something, it's like I've always... So my son brings me something and I'm like, "No, not this, not this." I don't know. So, okay, I will probably change and he is probably sitting there feeling as if he's gone somewhere. 38:46 S?: I have a question about the stories that you write that evolve in the minds of the audience, sometimes beyond what we expect to happen. So when we put an idea out there which we want to guide and steer in a certain way, and someone else comes out and says, "I saw this in your novel." And sometimes it's a surprise, it's a delight, and sometimes it shocks you and you're like, "No, no, no, no, no, I don't wanna go there. That's too far for me." Have you faced that, and is that frustrating for you? And then I have a second question as well. 39:19 PA: I did face it. I had somebody in the audience. I missed, because the mic wasn't working, I missed when she mentioned which book it was, and she was talking about everything that she saw in that book. And I said, "Who wrote that book?" And she said, "You did." [laughter] I didn't recognize much of it, but I was so moved by what she had found, because I wrote it with the ferocity of the place that I was in at that moment. She read it in the ferocity that she was in at that moment... 39:52 S?: Right. Completely different interpretation. Yeah. 39:52 PA: And she took something else from it which I hadn't consciously put in there, but maybe somewhere subconsciously. Sometimes in a story, I get taken by surprise. There is one character in one book of mine who was sort of in the background and I wasn't noticing what she was up to. And then suddenly in chapter 16, she suddenly did something and I was like, you know, "When did this happen?" And I went back and I found that she was building up to that moment. I didn't know she was doing it. Yeah, there are things that come as a surprise, and sometimes you think, "No, no, that wasn't it at all." But if that's where the reader has found something, it's valid. Why not? 40:35 S?: Right. I had written a poem a long, long time ago when I was in my teens. It was about erosion, and you know how things are black and white when you are growing up, so it was about eroding values and this and that. And I threw it out to this artist circle in Bombay, there was this guy who writes for the Times of India, he was a young guy, younger than me, and he turned around said, "I see a man and a woman in this poem." I'm like, "Exactly where did you see the man and woman?" It wasn't there. So it's very interesting to see what kind of take sometimes people have on what you throw out there. 41:06 AW: Rohini, you want to add something to that? 41:07 Rohini: Yeah, you know what we have done? We've actually created, because people have so many stories in them, we have created a platform where, since most of our books are out in the Creative Commons, we actually say, "Remix and Retell." We say, "You make your own version of this story." And some of our books have had 50 versions, written by 50 different people of the same story, so it's such a nice thing to know that people will interpret the same basic material in a 100 ways. 41:33 S?: Right. A quick second question... 41:35 MM: You know, I love... 41:36 S?: Sorry... 41:36 MM: I love... Oh, sorry, you still had a question. 41:37 S?: No, go on ahead. Go on ahead. 41:37 MM: No, I just love it when people say, "Oh, gosh, you know, I saw this in your book." And it's absolutely nothing that I'd... And it shows me that what that person's really absorbed from the story, and they've really interpreted it, and they've just embraced the whole thing and they've got their own... And great. Because you don't write it just to say, "Okay, this is it. Absolutely black and white." So when people say, "Hey, I saw this, or this is what I think is happening there," that's beautiful. It can be... The story just grows and grows and grows in every person's interpretation of it. 42:07 AW: Also, I just think it's... Some things which we as a writer subconsciously probably repress, so it comes out when you are writing and someone else will pick it up. And we won't be able to. Like my first novel, I'll just quickly tell you... There was one scene where the protagonist pulls out a dupatta from under her bed, sorry, under her pillow. So the lady, my teacher who launched the book at... When it was launched, she came up with such an amazing analogy for it which really shook me, because I had not thought of it. She said the dupatta is symbolic of her being restrained, and that she's kept it under the pillow because the pillow is where she sleeps and dreams. So, it was a coming of age novel. So I was actually stunned. I said, "Really? I mean, that's what you thought of it? I didn't think of it." But it's probably somewhere there in your subconscious. 43:03 LD: And I had this very nice experience were my graphic biography of Carnatic music legends, MS Subbulakshmi in particular, it was distributed to schools. And then they were asked... The children came back with their feedback, and one letter was actually sent to me. Who was their favorite character? And one kid actually wrote Sadasivam and not MS. And Sadasivam is supposed to have been the tyrant who pushed MS Subbulakshmi. But this kid actually said I love him because he helped her realize her dreams. I thought that was simply marvelous. 43:40 S?: Can I ask a quick second question, or is there someone else in the audience? 43:48 S?: How many would have imagined this but there's been, sorry, a bit of a trend about worshipping heroes and condemning villains. And of late, we've started to sympathize with villains. And I think a new character has sprung up, the anti-hero. And my favorite anti-hero has been Severus Snape because everyone wanted to hate him. And it turns out he had the best intentions. I was wondering if any of you had that kind of an idea before writing or any character who secretly inspires who doesn't care about what happens, as long as there's a greater good they have to serve. And as long as that good is served, they're content. Something along those lines. 44:31 AW: In A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney... Okay, if I were to say in present, in a very shallow and very un-literary reference, I would definitely say Damon Salvatore from Vampire Diaries. I would say add to that. 44:56 PA: I had an experience in writing of No Guns At My Son's Funeral, and it was the first one of its kind in the country. So we were a bit nervous because the story is seen from the point of view of a 12-year-old boy, and a 12-year-old boy who really admires this terrorist. And I went to... Actually, I went blind-folded and driven without knowing where I was going in Kashmir to meet a terrorist. And he was such a nice man. Very good looking, very kind and soft and wonderful man, a 24-year-old. And I really took a liking to him. But he was a terrorist. So somewhere, my writing became quite influenced by that. And because a 12-year-old child who hero-worships an adult will never see the cracks and flaws. And so he came... He was coming out as this very perfect character. I gave it to some school principals and teachers who I trusted, to read the manuscript. And they came back where they're saying that, "You have built him up in this wonderful light. What're you saying?" 46:12 PA: But at the same time, because it's from his point of view, how could I do that? So we had to actually employ some devices to where that warning voice kept going that this is not a good man. And of course, by the end of it... And then this is being turned into a film. Not for a younger audience, it's a feature film. And when we were doing a narration for a production house, he said, "Oh okay, so the bad guys are sort of the army and the good guys are the terrorists." Half way through. And again I thought, "Oh no, has this happened again?" But by the end of it, when we finished the narration, he said, "Oh, they were not good guys either." So yeah, you have to be, especially in writing for a younger audience, be very careful of that anti-hero. And not, as I said, sexify him to such an extent that he becomes someone who a young person would want to become. 47:15 AW: I think we have time for one last question. One last question. 47:22 S?: Hello. Okay. Recently, I found that there's been an over-emphasis of romance in young-adult literature. Is this normal in your take, or is it actually overemphasis? 47:38 AW: I would be guilty of that. I enjoyed writing it and I didn't really rationalize it so much. But young-adult fiction does tend to have a lot of romance generally between someone who is forbidden, that kind of that forbidden romance element is very strong. Again, I don't know it's... I'm not sure whether it's a conscious attempt, but I wrote it this way. Initially, when I thought it was supposed to be about a girl going back to her mother's time and looking at the world at that time. And I don't know, out of nowhere, the hero popped in and she had to fall in love, and it just became this whole romantic saga from there. So do you wanna add to this, anyone? 48:17 MM: Oh, I love having forbidden romances in mine, I love that. Because it just adds to the sparkle, and adds to the fun of the book. 48:25 AW: Interest, I think, to the reader also. 48:27 MM: Yeah. And readers go, "Oh, my goodness." I just love doing the shock factor, I think that's why I put it in mine. 48:35 AW: So thank you everyone for being a wonderful audience. [background conversation] 48:45 S1: In case if anybody has any questions, they can meet the authors in the book-signing area. So they can also get a signed copy of the books. And now I will... 48:53 AW: Thank you so much everyone for being this wonderful, warm and receptive audience. 48:58 AW: Thank you, Rohini, Marie and Lakshmi. 49:01 S?: Thank you. 49:03 S1: And now I would like to request the panel to sign on the BLF board. Autographs on the BLF board.