Children and Literature
Speakers
Sujeet Mahapatra
So, honourable MP and our love, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to
engage in this very important Global Development dialogue, which he and his team have
been engaging all of us. And I’ve been following them, and it’s very, I’m very happy that the
second series of these dialogues have been on children and the SDGs, and the Sustainable
Development Goals, you know, most of these goals we often you know they come and go,
and then we make new goals, but the question then is, you know, what is the point. So, I
think it’s good that we keep reminding ourselves otherwise, maybe we would have been
having this discussion two years before, 2013, it‘s good that we’re having this discussion 10
years before 2030, and so that there is, you know, we work towards it and education is
something, which is so important. So, at the base of everything that we do. And, of course,
when we talk about education in times of pandemic, it’s very funny you know just before we,
you know, this session started, I found a job shared in one of the WhatsApp groups, it said,
we used to make fun of our grandmothers when they said is schoolyard a bow is cool.
And now, for the first time in history. The pandemics have always happened for the first time
in history, there‘s a generation of children whose first experience of school has been the
school is good.
So, it’s kind of funny times that we are really living in, but we’ll talk about technology, we’ll
talk about those aspects, but just to repeat you know the goal of SDG for education, which is
to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and to promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all. So, I think within this context, we will have our discussion this very
important discussion about children and literature I’m very happy that you know we are
remaining diligent with whom my association goes back. No more than 10 years. He has
been, you know, he’s the best person that we turned to when we look for storytellers. He’s
the best person we turn to when we look for parenting tips and for many other things. So,
Randy let us begin with. First, maybe we can just start about you as a writer and then we’ll
go into the serious discussion.
In fact, for those of you who don’t know.
He has also written a children’s book on the story of logic and math. Right. And it’s in
English, or it’s also translated in English, Hindi and Odia in English it is called tales of logic in
that. Yeah, I remember you have that under library. So literally, you have written so many
books. I mean, you know, one of the most prolific, and not just prolific from the best of
publishers, your stories have been in school syllabus, not only in India, in Sri Lanka, and
many other places, when translated into many languages and you already written what more
than 70 books are the number of books is 39, and my work has been translated into 29
languages. Ah, so okay my number comes close.
But how did this journey start maybe I mean you have told me this but I think our listeners
would definitely like to know about how did this journey of being a writer. Yeah, see I’m
never ever tired of repeating this you know because this is my favourite questions, because
it concerns my most favourite person. So, when I was around seven years. I wrote my first
poem. And it went like this, Topsy and Tim, went for a swim Topsy swam well and broke the
spell in swam badly in Wrentham sadly. Now, I was really very proud. What a lovely creation
you know I’ve managed to indulge in or whatever creativity I managed to indulge in, so it
makes it nice crawl I took it to my father. I thought my father will say, why does this deliver
Oh, you know, instead of studying maths algebra, geometry, like Pootle Mr Chaddha son,
you’re writing silly poetry, or he would have said it’s okay but you could have done better. He
didn’t do any of these things so gee. What he did was he picked me up, gave me a tight hug
and said one word, and that word was wonderful. And today, if I’m a writer 38 books 29
translations blah blah blah and all. It is because of that one word, and that one gesture of
hugging me and giving me that encouragement, and it is my appeal to all parents to be like
that you know to be that positive in their approach towards their children. Be as empathetic
as possible, see from the point of view of the little child seven-year-old fellow who has
written some nonsense that he comes to you instead of criticizing him or correcting him.
What you do is you say wonderful you hug him, and you make him a writer for life.
You know the story, whenever you tell me, because, of course, since we have been
interacting on many platforms. You know I have heard this earlier. And whenever you tell me
the story, you know, I actually go on an introspection mode. So, I always ask, you know, well
I don’t have children, but I work with children, and I always hope. You know that someday I
want someone to tell in an interview, or in a session like this, that he became not necessarily
a writer, but whatever he wanted to become this, because of frost because of some
encouraging words or because I did something which really took him on that path. You know
I really hope I really hope all of us who are listening to this, you know introspect, and I hope
that no one ever says that this person stopped me from becoming what I wanted to become
fulfilling my destiny, but I overcame that I would rather want that all of us, featured in the
stories of your father, the way your father is in your story. That is, I would really want from
everyone, but you know that’s an interesting point that you mentioned, the first fear that you
had that your father could probably shout at you say you while you’re wasting your time.
Why are you doing this, you know, silly poems and all, why are you writing. And I‘ll tell you,
you know, it’s been 13 years to the battle library now that we started, and there are more
libraries that we started, but then very often when children come to our library and they say
that, you know, our parents don’t want us to go because they feel it is wastage of time
wastage of time. So, do you think you know what is the role of literature visibly education
because a lot of people feel that education is what happens in the school that happens in the
classroom, you know the textbooks, the curriculum. Yes, stories fiction. All this doesn‘t really
help you in any way. So, I think maybe you can talk a little about when you see as the role of
