Book review: A Bhil Story

A Bhil Story

Text and visuals: Sher Singh Bhil and Nina Sabnani

Tulika Publishers. 2015. Paperback. Colour. Rs. 175. 32 pages. English. Age: 5+

ISBN: 935046628-7

Folk tales take us back to our roots, to ancient wisdom, often to common sense. Some memorable versions of Nani’s or Ajji’s tales illuminate the trail of Indian children’s publishing over the past two decades – such as Gita Wolf’s ‘A Very Hungry Lion,’ Vayu Naidu’s ‘A Curly Tale’, and Shobha Vishwanath’s ‘The Blue Jackal.’ Retold with finesse, each has an inbuilt rhythmic narrative that is in sync with the spoken word, a grandmother’s way of evoking time and place.

‘A Bhil Story,’ in a nutshell, is about how the parched village of Jher in Madhya Pradesh searches for water. Its dramatic personae include Sher Singh, wise Bhuri Bai, a rooster with a flair for drama, and the local badwa or shaman, who can divine water sources.

The book was sparked by a workshop at the Industrial Design Centre at IIT, Bombay, supported by the Tata Centre for Technology and Design. As a follow up, film-maker/ illustrator/ animator Nina Sabnani led a team to Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh, in the footsteps of Bhil artist Sher Singh.

The tale was first realized as an animated film, voiced by the villagers. It was later reborn as this book. Sher Singh’s pithora paintings – akin to prayers in the Bhil community, with each dot evoking an ancestor – are bright, tantalizing, deeply evocative. Each dot or line is a call to the imagination as they morph into a person or an animal, each frame is infused with movement. For the reader, his is a call to explore, to ‘read’ the pictures and between each frame.

The relationship of visual to real life grows richer once we realize that Sher Singh, as a child of seven, learnt to paint from his mother Bhuri Bai. (Is hers a common name among the Bhils? Is this a true story from their lives?) By 15, he had graduated from walls to canvas, and evolved an individual colour palette. 

As I read this book through four times over, my eyes danced with delight over Sher Singh’s images. In one corner, two wild-haired heads look goggle-eyed into the text. Across another spread, meandering villagers with pots move towards a little bird that symbolizes hope. They follow a ribbon of water till they find an overflowing pot under a badwa with a dholak. His advice to the villagers is simple: go home and paint trees on your walls.  

That, say Bhil folks, is how the tribals began to paint – and how they had enough water ever after. This origin tale points to sound environmental logic – with enough trees planted, we can save the parched earth and ourselves.  

Within the Bhil community, we know that sacred Pithora paintings signify happiness, peace and prosperity. They are a must at weddings, childbirth and festivals, doubling as a visual spell to heal sick children or cattle. The local badwa, when called in to mediate with Pithora Baba, often suggests a painting as an offering.

Sher Singh’s art teems with life. It is pristine, primal, yet sophisticated, dancing to a secret rhythm.  If only the folktale retold here had responded to its call. Instead, lost in translation, the text proves lacklustre, even bordering on the pedestrian.  

This sparked a slew of questions:   

Was the text a literal translation of the Bhil tale from Jher village? Could editorial intervention have enhanced its rhythm to bring it alive in English? Why is the story less playful than its latent humour suggests? Would the use of more local Bhil words with Word Bird notes as in earlier Tulika books have helped? Would creative use of typography have proved the right match for Sher Singh’s singing pictures? Could a better designer have worked magic? Such dynamic visuals, we realize, could have told the tale on their own.

This book is disappointing because of how exceptional each of Nina Sabnani’s earlier books for Tulika were. Remember ‘Mukand and Riaz,’ ‘Stitching Stories’ and ‘My Gandhi Story’?

In this case, between the art and the story falls the shadow. No matter what the answers to these questions, this is a far cry from the best of Tulika. 

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Originally published on the GoodBooks blog:

http://goodbooks.in/node/7307

Book review: The House that Sonabai Built

Text: Vishakha Chanchani

Photographs: Stephen P. Huyler

Tulika Publishers. 2014. Paperback. Colour. Rs. 250. 32 pages. English. Age: 8+

ISBN: 935046627-9

What happens when a dedicated art educator/ writer like Vishakha Chanchani teams up with noted US-based cultural anthropologist and Indian folk craft expert Stephen Huyler? They magically, quite poetically, conjure up the life of Sonabai of Puhphutara village in Madhya Pradesh.  

Some lives are akin to those of a plant. Without sunlight and water, they wither and perish. Others struggle to bloom against all odds. Sonabai’s life – part of Tulika’s ‘Looking at Art’ series for children ~ was like a never-say-die flower.

How was the book born? As Vishakha puts it, ‘Stephen Huyler’s passionate sharings in his book on Sonabai provided eloquent reference. He brought her work into a fuller picture… I was overwhelmed by her story and the solitude of her journey. Her joyful creations spoke of a love of life that in reality had been denied, but could not be stolen from her.’

For Sonabai’s story echoes that of thousands of creative minds from rural India. Like other women from the Rajawar community, she was born to a landscape of dust and obscurity.  At 14, she was married to Holi Ram, much older than her. He permitted her to pitch in with their fields or to use the well, but she was forbidden to meet anyone, even her own family.

‘Sonabai dared not disobey him. So she stayed like a prisoner in her own home. Alone with her son,’ writes Vishakha.

Instead of succumbing to darkness or depression, Sonabai looked for light. Harking back to childhood memories of clay play, between chores she made her little Daroga Ram ‘a monkey, a girl, Krishna playing the flute.’ Her tools were born of the earth and necessity – a bristly brush from the chewed, blunt end of a stick, natural pigments of ground leaves and vegetables.

Sonabai’s journey is evoked simply yet vividly by both the text and Huyler’s brilliant photographs: ‘As the clay touched her fingers, and her fingers touched clay, something happened! Her heart leapt up, and a new light gleamed in her eyes… She suddenly remembered the days when she was carefree and young, when she had helped her mother smear cow dung and earth on the wall – how she would make zigzag or curly patterns with her fingers upon wet white lime, which was used to paint walls, and then decorate them with designs.’

Huyler’s images are like rich, dazzling lodes of Indian folk life. A hand with bangles etches lines on a clay wall, elemental yet elegant. Rice straw hair streams from a face yet unborn, as gnarled fingers shape eyes. A faceless woman paints a fashioned parrot in vivid green.

Like more urban artists like MF Husain and Jamini Roy in the Tulika series, Sonabai’s tale is both personal and universal. As her spirit began to soar, she created creepers and leaves in relief for the house Holi Ram built. To diffuse the harsh light that entered their home, she cobbled together fantastical lattices / jaalis of bamboo, twine and clay, embellished with lively human and animal figures.

Out of the blue, a team from Bhopal’s noted Bharat Bhavan for the arts came to Puhphutara. Though homes in the area were traditionally decorated, at Sonabai’s they found an unbelievable wonderland. As Huyler observed, ‘Everywhere around us was art. The columns, the walls, the doorframes, the windows, and beams and the baseboards – all alive with Sonabai’s humour, wit and remarkable eye for balance and form.’ He  researched her work for five years, resulting in an international exhibition in San Diego in 2009-10.

Some episodes touch the heart. As when the Bharat Bhavan team seek a sample to show their director in Bhopal, ‘They were so keen that Sonabai didn’t know how to refuse. But her heart broke. There were tears in her eyes when she saw them breaking off a piece of jaali to take back with them, along with the sculptures on it.’

The other villagers were just as astounded when they first stepped into Holi Ram’s house. One remarked, ‘Look, Sonabai has turned mud into gold!’

In another chapter of life till her late 70s, Sonabai travelled and taught across India and abroad, accompanied only by Daroga Ram. By the time she passed away in 2007, Sonabai had passed her unique skills on to son, her daughter-in-law, even younger folks in their community. Thanks to her vision, their village was imprinted forever on the art map of India.

            Vishakha captures the transition from village to world thus, ‘How did Sonabai feel, to be suddenly uprooted from her home, where she worked passionately, content to be appreciated by her son and no one else? Did she like going to cities, conducting workshops, training others in her village, getting written about in newspapers and books? Shy and awkward, Sonabai did it all. She didn’t complain all those years when she had to stay at home and she didn’t complain when she had to leave it.’

This deeply moving book is about Sonabai’s life as much as it is about dreaming big. It invites urban Indian children to look at rural life with curiosity and to respect its depth.  Read with attention to detail, it is about the magic latent in everyday life. It calls out equally to children who are hooked to screen devices as much as to those who are led to craft bazaars and art galleries. Its potential audience includes schoolchildren, parents, art teachers and librarians.  

To conclude in Vishakha’s words, ‘Like her many beautiful figures that would emerge from a lump of clay, Sonabai’s art grew from simple beginnings, experimenting, evolving. In the small village, with nothing to work with except what she found around her, and in spite of all the difficulties she faced, her art continued to thrive. It is this spirit that stirs us, as much as her art. This, perhaps, is her true legacy.’

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This review was originally in the GoodBooks India website. The link:

http://goodbooks.in/node/7237

Books for children: 'The Kite Tree' and 'Magnolias'

The Kite Tree.

By Avanti Mehta.

Pictures by Nirupama Sekhar.

Tulika Publishers, Chennai.

32 pages.

11 x 8.25 inches. Full Colour.

Softcover.

2011.

Rs. 160.

Available in: English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali

Age group: 6+

A TREE is a tree is a tree, did you say?

Not when a child looks up at a canopy of green that he/ she walks under on a scorching day. The streak of blue through the patchwork of leaves could provoke a question: If I reach out, can I touch the sky? The rustling of leaves overhead could make a growing mind ask: when it rains, will the clouds turn green? Is the pink-dappled tree in the distance as tiny as it seems? Do monsters live amidst odd-shaped branches?

In the child’s world of unrelenting questions and multi-pronged answers, the impossible is always possible. And any tree becomes a universe in sync with the irrepressible   imagination, morphing into fabulous forms and undreamt-of feats.

Yoking together curiosity and the imagination of a child of 6-plus, Avanti Mehta’s text takes us on a walk through seasons, through cycles of growth, and through ways of re-imagining. En route, we acquire alternate lenses through which to perceive the ordinary. And we hold our breath as the mundane becomes magical with every page we turn.

For instance, at a bend in the road we glimpse an outlined tree trunk and gorgeous autumn foliage. That provokes the words: ‘A yellow scrap of cloth hangs from a branch. Is it a man’s shirt that tore as he fled from a ghost?’

Roorkee-based Avanti’s passion for the environment comes through with every line. How does she sustain her passion? By living in a mango orchard, we learn.

Nirupama Sekhar’s illustrations elevate the text to a fantastical level. Her flowing lines lend direction to the journey to the top of the hill, to the flight of birds, to the trail of ants, and more. Her Master’s degree from the London College of Communication feeds into her delicate watercolour washes of breeze-swept branches, a skeletal tree by moonlight, even a web of insect life.

This is a luminous, magical read-aloud or read-alone book that will bring alive bedtimes, mealtimes and cosy-in-a-corner times for early learner children and their parents. It could enhance the classroom experience equally deeply, if sensitive teachers would take a cue or two from it. 

More reason to cheer? In keeping with Tulika Publisher’s vision of reaching across the spectrum of India, this book is available in nine languages.

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Magnolias

By Malati Shah

Illustrator: Amrita Kanther

Tulika Publishers, Chennai

24 pages

8.5 x 9.5 inches

Full colour

Soft cover

2011

Rs. 135

Available in: English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali

Age group: 5+

ANOTHER TREE, another tale. But with a difference.

This story by Malati Shah is set in the hill station of Shimla. Gulab is a gardener who loves his work. One evening, he decides to take a bunch of soft while magnolias ‘like the moon’ home to his wife.

But on the way, he meets many friends. He gives each of them a flower. One for the girl who loves to paint. One for the mother from Tibet and her baby. Do any of the magnolias reach his wife? That would be telling!

The story is charming. A simple one about chance meetings. About the joys of giving.   

About the little things that brighten an ordinary day. And, of course, why we need flowers and trees and a green world around.

The illustrations by Amrita Kanther lend a local touch to the book. For they are in the regional style of the Pahari miniature from Himachal, which has Shimla as its capital.

The brilliant white magnolias are central to each frame. A bloom lights up the wheelchair in which Santosh Aunty sits, for she found Gulab ~ lost and alone ~ years ago. Another looms over an old-fashioned bridge as a train chugs over it. And so on.

I can imagine how much a child of five-plus would take to this story ~ and the million stories she/ he would learn to ask as a result.

Over the past 16 years, Tulika has published some wonderful picture books for children, especially Indian children. A reprieve from the colonial world of cucumber sandwiches, licorice and ginger ale that today’s young parents grew up with ~ and a long overdue one at that. 

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Contact:

Tulika Publishers, 24/1 Ganapathy Colony, Third Street, Teynampet, Chennai – 600018, India.

Website: www.tulikabooks.com/