Generations of children have grown up reading Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. When do you think the focu

He has a Padma Bhushan, a Sahitya Akademi award, an Oscar, a Grammy and innumerable Filmfare statuettes, yet he is humbled by children. His latest offering is a book called Magical Wishes: The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha , where his version of the beloved children s story has been retold in English. In an interview with CS Bhagya , the writer, poet, director, Gulzar refused to discuss his distinguished career arc, choosing instead to highlight the urgent need to revitalise children s literature in India.
What draws you to children s literature? One of the reasons I left film direction was my work for children. I may not get a chance later. I wasn t born with innumerable years and this is what I want to do with the years I have left. In India, we love our children, but we haven t done enough for them. At least where literature s concerned, we have only provided oscar awarded movies books and translations from the West, or adapted texts for them. These are not very good efforts. In fact, it lacks genuine affection oscar awarded movies and responsibility. You have to protect what you love, but we haven t done enough to protect our children. oscar awarded movies We leave a lot of our responsibilities to teachers, maidservants, ayahs. oscar awarded movies In joint families, grandparents would come forward and take care of children; nanas and nanis, dadas and dadis would tell stories, hum folk songs and perform small mimes for them. Especially now, when parents are working and there are no joint families anymore, parents have to ask themselves if they are satisfied oscar awarded movies with the extent oscar awarded movies of their own involvement. What we do is, we make them sit in front of the television and watch Tom and Jerry and other inane shows. Inevitably, the child is becoming oscar awarded movies more and more lonely.
Has storytelling gone out of fashion? oscar awarded movies Earlier children would gather under a Banyan tree where a Panditji would come to narrate stories with morals. After listening for a while, they d get distracted and start talking to each other, eat little oscar awarded movies things one child would be sucking a tamarind, oscar awarded movies one would be running off to dive into a river for a swim, others would be playing games. But the Panditji wouldn t mind because the real education was in interacting with nature. One good trend that has started these days is that of interactive play schools they re more disciplined and allow children to mingle with each other. But the drawback is that children can t relate directly with nature anymore. This gap has to be filled. The attitude towards stories and literature needs to change someone has to tell them that when you present gifts on a birthday or an occasion, you need not just give them eatables and mithai; food for mind is equally important. The nature of our celebrations oscar awarded movies must change.
In your new book, you are retelling a story that is immensely popular in Bengal. How do you think it ll reflect with children today? Simply because these are stories it entertains them, inspires them and boosts their imagination. That s why stories have to be told and retold. I chose a story in Bangla because it is one of the richest oscar awarded movies languages for children s literature in India, a language which has worked more for them than, perhaps, any other language in the country.
What about other languages and translations? Two more languages have worked a lot for children Marathi and Malayalam. Other than these, our major languages, for example, Hindi, is totally blank. There are no children s writers in Hindi. Those who adapt from Western stories and translate oscar awarded movies are not writing. Or it s writing left-handedly, as an afterthought. Children are more intelligent than what s being written for them. Except in these three languages, there are no writers who write dedicatedly for children. Nobody s translating from one language to another either. There may be some translations oscar awarded movies from Bangla, but nothing oscar awarded movies from Marathi or Malayalam.
Generations of children have grown up reading Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. When do you think the focus will shift to our own writers? Only when writing for children is taken more seriously. One cannot assume that just because you re a great writer, you are capable of writing for children. Vijay Tendulkar may be a great dramatist, but don t expect him to write for children. It s a different medium, a different skill that you have to learn, which is more difficult than writing for adults. In adult writing, you are writing to communicate with your age group, which is only one age group. oscar awarded movies When writing oscar awarded movies for children, you re not as independent. You have to learn how to talk to a two-year old child and then you have to learn how to write to a six-year old. The languages of a two-year old and a six-year old are different, and when the child grows to nine or 12, the language has changed again. So, you have to learn those stages of language-writing, which is more difficult. It requires you to be specific, question yourself exactly what age-group the story that you ve written is targeted towards. If you re an adult writer, the