Book Review: It's All The Same!

You read a book. Then you go and watch the movie made on the book. You find small and big places where the movie has deviated from the original.

It may be as large a deviation as having inserted a whole new subplot or scene. Think the scene in HP and The Half-Blood Prince where the Death Eaters come en masse and create havoc at the Burrow, the Weaselys' home or the change in the reason why the Death Eaters realise who the real Harry is in the opening sequence of Deathly Hallows 1. (Yes, that is a large deviation in my eyes- I can be a purist that way!)

It can be a small deviation like having a trim-slim protagonist in the movie version of Louis Sachar's Holes versus the plump, podgy one in the book - a wonderfully made movie - one movie which certainly improved on the book - a difficult feat indeed!

The point is, that it a reader's/ viewer's understanding and memory of the story depends on the version they have imbibed, and thus starts the metamorphosis of the original story - happens with the writer, too, doesn't it, with each subsequent draft?

It is these versions that we are celebrating - Tulika Books had recently held a Celebrating Our Myths blogathon, in which I was declared one of the winners. My prize - this book.

Folktales and mythology. There are as many versions as the cultures that tell a particular story. Every storyteller worth their salt adds embellishments to it- some of which get incorporated in further generations. A sort of branching out in oral tradition. So the same story at the root may spawn many culturally different variations.

pic courtesy matsyacrafts

Here is a book that focuses on this very aspect of storytelling, with the help of the kaavad. I have seen one of these amazing contraptions at Artnavy's home. It is a fold-able picture book of sorts, that can be used to tell the story. The storytellers, called the Kaavadiya Bhaats, unravel the story from the seemingly intricately folded kaavad. This is a storytelling tradition that is still alive in the villages of Rajasthan.

pic courtesy tulikabooks

It's All The Same!
Written by Nina Sabnani
Illustrated by Satyanarayan Suthaar
Published by Tulika books
Ages 5+

Pappuram and Kojaram are both Kaavadiya Bhaats who go from place to place telling stories with the help of their colourful kaavads. Both tell the story of why Ganesha is worshipped before any other gods or goddesses. Both the stories take completely different paths. Both stories begin with Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha's parents. Where one version speaks their two sons, the other has a disgruntled Rama being prevented from reaching his own wedding.

What happens next? How do such completely different trajectories reach the same conclusion? Read it in our book, It's All The Same- for, at the end, it all is.

The illustrations by Satyanarayan Suthaar, a kaavadiya himself, are in rich detail, full colour, in the tradition of the kaavads, as is obvious from the two pictures here. Check out this video of the making of this book - watch the two kaavadiyas in action.


    

One more prize...

...won for an article on Womensweb. This was for their Friendship Story writing theme.

*gleefully browsing flipkart for a book to spend the Rs 200 gift voucher on*

Here's the article in full.


She did not have any friends who stayed near her house. Not a single school friend, nor anyone near her age, or sharing her interests. There were just her younger brothers, who according to her, were brats not to be seen around with.

At least, there were the cousins, who stayed a few buildings away. Something was better than nothing, so she decided they’d do, to hang around with. The cousins had a neighbour, an only child. This girl, a few years younger, latched herself onto her, becoming the proverbial Mary’s lamb!

They had nothing in common, not even their interests, but something clicked. Over the years, as the two girls grew up, the reasons for hanging out with the cousins dwindled, and those for spending evenings with the younger girl increased. They became a twosome and shunted the cousins out.

As the two friends grew up into adulthood, the natural gap of 7-odd years between them began to close. They were women, with totally different destinies, totally different career trajectories, but with complete understanding of each other’s minds. Life happened, and they lived in widely separated places, different time zones, even.

They were as different as chalk and cheese in their family lives as well, which could not have intersected at any points except the one which they both overlapped at. Their husbands never met each other, not by design, but just by chance. They each knew their wife’s friend well though, and each was always welcome to the other’s home.

Over two decades, they met maybe once or twice a year, but every time they met, it was as if they had never been apart. Each intuitively knew if the other was in any kind of trouble or difficulty, and it would be an eerie coincidence that they would try to contact each other just when a friend was needed.

Despite never being able to attend the major events in each other’s lives, they have been able to remain clued in to each other’s triumphs and troubles. If needed, one just has to reach out to find the other right there.

I am the older girl of the two, and this is the story of my friend M and me. A friendship between two completely dissimilar personalities, which has simply endured on love, loyalty, trust and understanding – through thick and thin.

In which we wish Harry and JKR a Happy Birthday

Before we go on to the topic of our post, let me also tell my readers that today is also the birthday of another literary great, Munshi Premchand a.k.a. Dhanpat Rai,born on 31st July 1880 in a village near Benaras.

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In my mind, there is clearly a before Potter and after Potter.

Rowling is one of those beautiful people who think of humanity beyond the me-and-mine, and for that, she is my hero. Every Potter reader knows the story of how it all happened. Not many know of the rest.

1990: The idea for the Potter books came to Joanne, a single, impoverished mother of a daughter.

1997: Seven years later, the first Potter book was published by Bloomsbury in June 1997. The consecutive books were published in June 1998, July 1999, July 2000, June 2003, July 2005, July 2007. The release of each book saw unprecedented frenzy at book-stores the world over. JK Rowling had truly wrought a miracle: reading had become cool!

2001: Rowling wrote : Quidditch Through The Ages and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. Both purport to be curriculum books followed at Hogwarts, and contain interesting back stories about Hogwarts, the game of Quidditch, and detailed references to magical beasts, most of them from actual mythology. Both books are supposedly copies belonging to Harry, with a lot of amusing marginalia by Harry, Ron and Hermione. Worth picking up for a true aficionado.

All proceeds from these books until 2009, and a percentage of all published after that goes to Comic Relief, a UK based charity working for eradicating poverty.

2008: Tales of Beedle The Bard was published. Initially published as a limited edition of 7, six were given away to persons closely associated with the Potter books, and the seventh was auctioned to raise a whopping 1.95 million pounds for LUMOS, a UK based charity founded by Rowling herself, that works towards bettering the lives of disadvantaged and institutionalized children. The book was then published for the public by Bloomsbury in collaboration with LUMOS, and a percentage of the sales goes to the charity.

She has also set up the Volant Charitable Trust, named after her her French great-grandfather Louis Volant a decorated WW1 hero. Quoting from the objectives of this trust:
The Trust has two broad areas of funding:
1. Research into the causes, treatment and possible cures of Multiple Sclerosis.
J K Rowling is supporting major research into neuroregeneration and Multiple Sclerosis at the University of Edinburgh. The Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic is being set up in Edinburgh with the substantial donation J K Rowling made in 2010. The Trust is therefore not considering any health care applications, including other medical research, for the foreseeable future.
2. Charities and projects, whether national or community-based, at home or abroad, that alleviate social deprivation, with a particular emphasis on women’s and children’s issues.
At present the Trustees consider the funding of major disaster appeals and this is the focus of the Trust’s International support; therefore, applications for other projects overseas are not being considered for the foreseeable future.

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Over the years, JK Rowling has been the recipient of a multitude of honours and awards, notable among which are the OBE, 2001, for services to Children's Literature and Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, 2010, which is given to a writer of enduring and rich children's literature.

Come September 2012, Rowling will be releasing her first book after the Hogwarts books, this one for adults. The Casual Vacancy, published by Little, Brown, promises to be quintessentially British.

Other than all of this, there have been the Harry Potter movies that have spread the magic of the Potter books further. I know of at least six of my daughter's friends who are not big-time into reading, but who have been inspired by the movies (and the constant nudging by A) to pick up the books and read them through. Enjoy them thoroughly too.

The spell of Potter has gone to enchant the online world, too. A and I are members at Pottermore, which gives one an insider's experience of Harry's world. This is a safe site for your children, where one joins, gets a wand, gets sorted into houses, all based on questions one answers about what one would do given a particular situation. One then goes on to discover exclusive and intriguing back stories on the various characters, places, spells, events, etc., that comprise the wizarding world. No personal information is asked, and one is even given a magical username, so that one can be anonymous.

There will be much more that happens around JK Rowling in the future. I leave you here with the Commencement Address given by her to Harvard Graduates of 2008, the full text of which can be read here: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and The Importance of Imagination.

For those who would rather listen to it directly from JK Rowling, here is the video link..

One is struck by the honesty, humour and humanity of feeling.

"So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

Think not just of the books she has created and the charities she has given so generously for. Think of the worldwide phenomenon that has created so many jobs, fed so many mouths, and interested people again in the art of reading. She is truly a hero.


Have a very Happy Birthday, Joanne Kathleen Rowling! And a very Happy Birthday to Harry, too, the Boy Who Lived!

A delicious prize!

So I've won! And the prize is delicious. It is The Sweetest Mango.

Yes, yes, I know it is currently the mango season and all that, but this one, though closely related to those mangoes, is a bit different. I recently participated in a blogathon held by Tulika books on mangoes and my post was declared one of the winning entries. My prize :  A copy of this book.

Pic courtesy tulikabooks.com

The Sweetest Mango
Written by Malavika Shetty
Illustrated by Ajanta Guhathakurta
Published by Tulika books
Ages 5+

Do you remember that when you were a child, you probably had a very close buddy (a friend or a sibling) who you hung out with, with whom you shared every little secret, and who was your partner-in-crime for all the mischief that you got into? With whom you shared absolutely everything?

But sometimes you had something really tasty. You hoarded it, hid it from everybody, even your closest buddy and ate it bit by bit, all by yourself? Didn't want to share it with ANYONE?

I would do that. My mother would give me some guL-shengdaNe (jaggery and peanuts - a really yummy combination that I loved. You split open the peanut, and stuffed some jaggery between the halves, and then popped it into your mouth. Yum!) and I would be loath to share it with anyone. I would keep it in a box in a secret place, and eat it surreptiously throughout the day, making it really last. I was reminded of that as I read this book.

Suma is a little girl who loves mangoes in any form. There was, of course, the delicious, juicy fruit, but there were also the pickles and curries made at home that she relished.

Now, Suma has a bosom buddy, Jyothi. The two girls were neighbours in a village near Udupi, a coastal town on the mango belt near the western coast of India. The village had many mango and coconut trees, and there were some around their houses. Summer meant a surfeit of mangoes, and of course, they had to be got by climbing the trees, and eaten freshly picked from the branches.

There was a particular mango tree, the mundappa mango, that grew behind Suma's house. It grew huge, round and sweet mangoes. One day, Suma spots a really big specimen, bigger than a coconut.

'But it was still raw, and it would be a few days before it ripened to sweetness. 
Suma couldn't wait to eat it. "I won't tell Jyothi," she thought. "I'll eat it all by myself."

So what happens next? How does she get through the few days of waiting? Does she get to eat it? All by herself? What about Jyothi?

A book about the joys of friendship, and the carefree innocence of childhood. A drool-worthy book, with warm, summery illustrations by Ajantha Guhathakurtha matching the yumminess of the text.

A read the book within ten minutes of its arrival at home, and was smiling as she finished it. I suppose she, too, was thinking of the way she is often loath to share some of the goodies she gets from her grandparents' place when we visit. And how we sometimes enjoy them better when shared!

Crossposted at Saffrontree.

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A word about the mundappa mango. It is a variety that I have not heard of. I did a google-search for it, and came across this article from the Metro Plus section of the Mangalore edition. Quoting from it:
"The Mundappa has a distinctive taste and develops sweetness in its very early growing stage. Even when ripe, its colour will still be green, but a reddish tinge on the top indicates that the fruit is ready for consumption. If allowed to grow to its full size (some growers do) each Mundappa can weigh as much as 450-500 grams. Though they are a local variety, the fully-grown Mundappas arrive in the market only during mid-season."

Another article, this time a blog post from a farming blog, SundayFarmer, laments the gradual disappearance of local and wild varieties of the fruit due to a demand for the 'more marketable' varieties like the alphonso, totapuri, dasheri, etc. Quoting:
"‘Mundappa’ is another local variety that many people in Dakshina Kannada district would readily recall. Ayurveda specialist Dr K.S. Kamath, from Manchi village, says this variety originally came from the compound of a house on Dongarakery-New Chitra Theatre Road in Mangalore.
A red variant of this mango used to grow on three trees in the heart  Mangalore city until a few years ago. None of them can be found today as a posh shopping mall stands on that land. Ironically, the hypermarkets at that mall stock a range of hybrid mangoes, but the local red mundappa can no longer be had for love or money."

A mango locally grown and known in the western coastal mango belt around the Mangalore area, this, along with the many others which are just as or sometimes even more delicious than the commercially known variants, needs to be preserved and propogated for future generations.

A sad state of matters, indeed. Like the 'goti mango' that I remember from my childhood. A very small, very sweet variety that is not to be seen anywhere these days.

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The Prestigious Yellow Polka-dotted Cup

I have won one more award from IHM's blog- the Prestigious Yellow Polka-dotted Cup. Am proud to display it on my blog.

Thanks, IHM!

Bragging rights...my first blogging award!

I got my first blogging award at the Tejaswee Rao Blogging Awards 2011. Am thrilled! This was a post on "Books as aids to empowering a child to stay safe from sexual abuse" that I had written for the CSA Awareness Month initiative in April 2011, and crossposted on Saffrontree.

There were many entries from all over the world, and my post was nominated by Sangi. Thanks, Sangi!

I get to display this fabulous button created by Suranga Date, a blogger friend with whom I had spent some time on my last jaunt to Mumbai.  

Thanks to all the judges and of course, to IHM, who has instituted these awards in memory of her late daughter, Tejaswee. A fitting tribute.