shyamala's world

 Vincy Quadros is this year’s Bala Sahitya ward winner for Konkani literature. His book, Jaduche Pettul(Magic box) is a fantasy middle grade novel which was first published in 2011 and won the award in 2017.  The Konkani language has five scripts- Devnagri, Romi, Malayalam, Kannada and Perso Arabic. Vincy’s award winning book has been written in the Romi script . The story revolves around Abdul, a poor boy who find a fairy in a box. Abdul inherits a kingdom without an heir and resolves conflict between kingdoms, fostering brotherhood between warring kings and promotes the message of peace.  He never returns home. The story ends when Abdul becomes an adult.  The main character of Abdul was named after a school student Quincy met in one of his school workshops.  He was teaching the process of ideating stories and posed a question, “What will you do if you find a magical treasure box?”  A student named Abdul started the story about a boy inheriting ...

Kahani Takbak’s first birthday celebrations ended yesterday. Santhini Govindan is an award winning author of children's literature with over 50 published books. She writes for all age groups, but enjoys writing in verse best.  Yesterday’s session on Manuscripts and Mayhem with the senior author and editor, was held on Facebook. The following are questions asked by the participants in the live chat. The most original ideas are taken... Someone said there are no original ideas - we just have to rework them using our own thoughts and ideas... Can't we just treat that idea differently? Absolutely! In fact that's the key - give your own spin to an idea. Do you write the first draft in one fast flow and revise it later, like some advocate? I asked that because they say don't do corrections as you write; it may stop the flow. I have that habit of correcting as I go. It all depends on how the story goes, and how the muse sings. Some stories however, j...

Today was the second day of Kahani Takbak's  First birthday celebrations. Children’s author and illustrator, Ashok Rajagopalan helmed a live chat on How to bring humour into stories?  The following are the questions asked by the participants of the Facebook chat. Have you ever read a book and thought you could have done a better job illustrating it? Hmm, no! I am like a kid, and I just accept the book as it is. But there are times when I feel the illustrations are at cross-purposes with my imagination as a reader. Since you've written and illustrated - which comes first? The picture idea or the story idea? The story idea... I try to be a writer first, though sometimes visuals come unbidden to my mind along with the words. Writing always comes first, I think. Are you a funny person in real life? Or is the funniness reserved only for your books? I am! People have complained long and loud about it. Ask my family.  ...

Primary Platypus of Duckbill books, Sayoni Basu was a part of Kahani Takbak’s first anniversary celebrations. The following is a transcript from her live chat titled  What publishers look for in kids’ fiction?  The following questions were asked by participants of the live chat: If I write something on a topic that's 'current', will it still make sense for it to be made into a book that could be read next year or even some years later... I think it depends on your writing. No topic every totally disappears from public consciousness, and in fact one of the important ways in which a book differs from a magazine piece is that it needs to bring some additional angles to the story, or different points of view. Like poetry, it is often after an emotion has been reflected on in tranquillity that something of lasting value can emerge. If one were to write a coming of age book set in the 90s do you think it would resonate with digital natives today? Yes, I ...

The following is a transcript from Nandini Nayar’s session for Kahani Takbak’s first celebrations.   So, you want to be a writer was the topic of the Facebook live chat. Minutes before Nandini went live, the internet connection went down.   Thankfully, she had downloaded the Facebook app on her phone yesterday.  As she was not familiar with using the Facebook app , she couldn’t spot the ‘Post’ button and ended up doing the entire session in the Comments section.  The questions given below were asked by the participants of the session. 1.       Where does one begin? How do you channel all random ideas into a concrete piece of work?                Random ideas are amazing. Store them, think about them. Brood and wonder- why? When? What if? 2.       Even when the manuscript is good, there can be rejection for various reasons. Th...