Ep 50: Shobha Viswanath, Karadi Tales: The soundtrack of Indian childhood

When Shobha Viswanath returned to India from the US in 1995, she couldn’t find audiobooks for her young daughter, something that her son had enjoyed growing up. That prompted her to start Karadi Tales and its signature audio cassettes that accompanied illustrated books. Children could read along as they listened to the story, encouraging "sight vocabulary" as Shobha calls it and, more importantly, have fun in the process!

Married into a family of Carnatic classical musicians, Shoba tells us, the family band ‘3 Brothers & a Violin’ provided the score for the books, narrated first by actor Naseeruddin Shah and his theatre troupe, and later Gulzar, Girish Karnad, Saeed Jaffrey, among others. Usha Uthup lent her voice to some very Indian-themed nursery rhymes written by Shobha and set to classical ragas.

In a journey spanning nearly three decades, Karadi Tales also set up Karadi Path, an education company that teaches English to learners of all ages and backgrounds using an immersion method, inspired by how we pick up our mother-tongue. They also collaborated with P. Sainath, founder-editor of the People's Archive of Rural India, to create chapter books around grim realities faced by children, such as migration and climate crisis, tinged with hope. 

The goal, however, remains to inspire and empower children and adults with the magic of storytelling and the joy of reading, says Shobha. Listen in!

Timestamps:
00:45 The start of Karadi Tales, nearly 30 years ago
05:09 Naseeruddin Shah as their first narrator for the book
07:50 Launching the first audio books as the pioneers
12:00 Moving into picture books
14:40 Songs that became popular, such as from Monkey King
15:00 Writing English rhymes for Indian kids, set on classical ragas
19:45 Recording with Rahul Dravid
20:50 Challenges of packaging the book and audio together
21:48 Her experience as a special educator for visually-impaired kids
25:25 Starting Karadi Path education, to support language labs
31:36 Drawing stories from rural India, with P. Sainath
38:44 Reaching a larger audience through schools
41:58 Message for parents and educators
45:05 What’s next for Karadi?
46:00 The financial challenge of recording audio books

Follow Anuradha on LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Email: [e-mail]

Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed are personal. Listener discretion is advised.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, welcome to Swishing Mindsets. This is Anaradha. I'm speaking
to Shopah Vishonar. She's the founder and publishing director of
Karate Tales, bringing the best of children's literature to Indian
and global audiences for over twenty seven years. Hi, Chapain,
so wonderful to have you here.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thank you, I know, lovely to be here on Swishing Minds.
So what her lovely title for a podcast? Thank you?
Pleasures all mine?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
And so I know we were just talking about it's
been such a long journey twenty seven years or maybe
more right, So I read that you started when you
came back from the US and you put in, you know,
find certain books for your children, right.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Could you talk about that a bit and how it
all led to this. Yeah, so it's actually twenty twenty six,
would be currently completing thirty years. And clarity is I
don't know for those of you who are based in
the north, who know whose South Indian words are limited

(01:02):
probably to only the foods of South India, Karate actually
means a bear. It means a bear both in Tamil,
in Malayalam as well as in Canada, you know, so
it is the bear who tells all the stories of Karatei,
of which come out of the publishing house, which is
why the publishing house is called Curry Details. So we

(01:27):
returned from the US around nineteen ninety five. We were
there for about seven years, and when we return and
my son was born in the US, and my first
introduction to audiobooks happened in the US, you know, at
the public libraries where they would be books which came
along with cass heads and I would bring these home

(01:49):
and my son would put the cassette and sit with
a book and he would listen to the story and
he would turn the pages as well. These were Disney
cassettes and the Disney stories. The way they they were
put together was they were drawn from the film, like
you know, if there was Pinocchio or Little Mermaid or
Lion King. The cassette was a reduced version of this story,

(02:11):
and it came along with the book simplified illustrations, and
there was a little cue at the end of the
page so that the child would know to turn the page.
So this was such a fabulous idea and of course Kaushik,
my son like absolutely took to it. I mean the
way he would consume these audiobooks. I think we'd had

(02:34):
to go around searching for new ones. I also think
it was one of the primary catalysts in his own
reading acceleration, because he was reading really really fast and
writing to soon after that when we returned to India.
By the time my daughter was born and we were
looking for similar material in India for her, and there

(02:56):
was absolutely none that was available by this time. We
also wanted we'd had a fill of sort of the
snow Whites and the Cinderellas and all of them, and
we wanted to draw from the folklore of India itself.
And although they were books, there was a much tricker

(03:16):
half course, which was very big then, but there were
no audiobooks at all for children. So that was kind
of the genesis of the audiobook. Being the first body
called in print of the current details publishing house, we

(03:36):
thought we would have lots going on under the publishing house.
We wanted it to be a music publishing house actually,
rather than a children's publishing house. Because I was married
into a family where they are all musicians, from my
mother in law to my brothers in law, to my
co sisters to my sister in law to my nieces,

(03:58):
everyone is everyone as a musician, including my husband and son.
So and they were familiar and they were involved with
all genres of music, being primarily Karnati classical musicians, you know.
So they wanted to start what do you call a
music publishing house, under which one segment would be children's

(04:22):
audiobooks here, But the children's audiobooks itself like so quite
consumed us in terms of the work that it required,
and the business of publishing and disseminating books as opposed
to music are like even though they are overlapping genres,

(04:42):
they're not exactly the same. It was. We started at
a time when it was all analog recording, you know,
you would have to rehearse your lines like a radio play,
go into the studio, have the school turned on, and
it would record on that. There was no copy piece,
you know, doesn't matter, just keep going and then we

(05:03):
can cut it from here and paste it here, so
if there was a mistake, one had to redo again.
So our first, our first narrator to Karatei was nazi
U Din Shah, and I remember approaching him with this
idea in mind, and he was just so taken in

(05:24):
by it. There was no resistance, there was no negotiating prize,
just like when do you want to do it? You know?
And we booked the studio and he was generous enough
to get his cast, theater cast to come and play
the other characters in the story. They would have rehearsals
and then they would go into the studio and it

(05:45):
really was like a radio play. Nasi it along with
the other characters and they would lit it out like
it was a radio play, you know. And then we
recorded this which one and this was the Blue Jack Hall. Okay,
Blue Jack Hall and the Foolish Line. It was very
first two titles, you know. And yeah, and like they say,

(06:05):
then there was the rest is or was history? We
started with Nazi. We also wanted to do the books
in Hindi and I remember going to uh Nazi to
do the Hindi as well, and he said that I

(06:26):
will do the Hindi only if Guzars have translates it.
So so we took the stories and went to Buzarsa.
It was easier those days. Difficult, but not as difficult
as it is now. We went to Buzarsa that day
and I remember and then he of course he said,
of course I'll do it. So he translated the stories.

(06:49):
And after he translated the stories, I remember him telling
us like you so, I mean, you don't have to
go to Nazi for it. I can also, you know,
I'm also pretty good at it. And of course we
took Gulzasa to do the stories because it was his
text and and what he did do very goods are stylish,

(07:13):
did not really translate the story about him. He gave
it his own magic, you know. And then the Hindi
stories were us both from Nasi, I know, we went
to Sai Jeffrey. From Sai Jeffrey, we went to Girish
Karnad and in the meantime we also did Nadas. We
also worked with Tom Alter and Jabi Jaffrey. These were

(07:36):
our early narrators. We did Naser in Tamar for the
Tammer stories and it was therefore nice, a nice crop
of these wonderful theater actors lending their voice. What happened
also as a result of it was because we were

(07:56):
we were the first of its kind. We were the
pioneers in India to do this format of an audiobook.
It definitely captured everybody's imagination. You know, I remember, I
mean it's unthinkable now to do it with the picture book.
When we decide when a book is complete, what should
the print run be, we take several things into consideration,

(08:17):
you know, the market, the content, the hard pack, the pricing,
all of that. We did not come into publishing with
a publishing background, None of us did. I mean I
came from education. The others were engineers or doctors or musicians.
And so we said, well, in a population like India,

(08:39):
I mean, let's just do twenty five thousand copies today,
you know, on which is a lot for children today,
we do two five hundred copies, and then we keep
it with us. I mean, if it sells across a year,
we consider it as a successful book. You know. There
we did twenty five thousand copies. It was a book

(09:03):
and a cassette and both of them were enclosed in
a package which would hang in a stand in a bookstore.
And this was how it was done. And the twenty
five thousand copies in six months got sold out. We
had to go into a reprint with it because it
was it was one of its kind. It was something

(09:25):
that the market had not seen before, continues to not
see you know, because I don't think I believe I
was going to say that. Yeah, and i'll tell you
why about to tell a little later. So then it
was like such a huge affirmation and validation and the
fact that children wrote into us loving it. So from

(09:49):
we did a whole series of books with we did
with Kirish Kanard also eight books, and that's how it
was born. And then we went into a crop of
younger actors, less theater, more Bollywood, like with thea Balin

(10:09):
or Sanjay that we even had Rahul Dravid Narry two
story stories for us. So we worked with the younger
crop of actors because now they're old with about seven actors,
you know, across a series of fourteen books, which you know,
seven books across seven actors. Yeah, so that was also

(10:32):
But what happened during this time when the cassette and
the book was catching fire, technology also not just left
pace with us, just flew right ahead of us. And
the cassette players were of course obsolete, so people were
started had started asking for CDs compact drives, so we

(10:55):
moved from the cassette to the CD. But CD also
the life of the CD was kind of short lived.
Because from the CD people moved to you know, getting
it on a USB stick or you know, having it
than from the USB stick it moved to of course
somewhere that they call the cloud, but which is very
grounded some place or extreme in somewhere, I don't know.

(11:19):
So while technology was getting ahead of us, it was
not possible for us to keep pace with that in
terms of change up formats. And because our creation itself
took what time, you know, we didn't do more than
two or three books audio creations in a year because
it took so much time to get the actors together,

(11:42):
to record, to book the studio, then to edit, then
to put a background score to it, then to add
songs to it, because it was like a full like
a Bollywood production, you know, which is also the reason
why it was so so enduring to the children, because
right in the middle of the story there would be
a situational song that the character breaks into. I mean,

(12:02):
keeping in mind what kind of works for us, you know.
So while we were struggling with the formating of how
to present the audio to our consumers, we thought, let's
we couldn't shut down the publishing house, clearly, but we
thought let's move into picture books while we get that sorted.

(12:23):
That's how the picture book genre itself was born under
Great Details Publishing House. Otherwise, I think we may have
just stayed with the audio. You know, if there was
a format that was accessible, secure, safe, and easily consumable
by the child, we would have stayed just with the audiobook.

(12:44):
Because they were doing very well. People were looking forward
to it. We were known by that. Even now, when
I go to the New Deli World Book Fair and
we put past a stand and it's got all our
audiobooks and our picture books, we have grown up children
who looking up to us saying that, oh, I grew
up on Curry Details. Oh is that an A series story?
You know? So it's that which has built the brand

(13:08):
rather than the picture books. Yeah, it's very that's a nutshal.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, it's very interesting because yeah, even I I've always
associated Current Details with audiobooks, you know, but now when
you tell it, it's a it's a very unique idea
that you know, you want to do music and publishing right,
and nobody would ever associate the two.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, music publishing is kind of even cut CDs and
all is the term is publishing only so we wanted
to put together and you know, you remember it was
those days when all these Alisia, China or were all
coming out with music in the pop pop kind of thing.
So we didn't want to create indie pop, but we

(13:52):
definitely wanted to read some kinds of wonderful music programs
facilitated and then published those records. When I mean publishing,
that's what happened, not in terms of a book because
music publishing that.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
But some of the songs are very popular. You said,
now wherever you go, I can't remember that. Yeah, from
Three Brothers and a Violin that's a bad violet.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, because they were three brothers and one of the
brothers read the violin and the violence used in so
many of our stories by my brother in law, So
it came to be known as three Brothers in the Violin.
Not that was named the game themselves, you know. For
for all the music that was created in Yeah, could it.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Remind us like if you can you know some of
the stories or the songs that became very popular.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
So at that time, from the stories, there was the
Monkey King, which was done by say Geoffrey. There was
this song Monkeys We Are the monkeys. We like to swing,
we like to sing, we like to just jump around.
I mean, I don't remember the lyrics. It's been a while. Yeah,

(15:00):
there was. But what we did was also very interestingly.
In two thousand, I think we wrote I wrote ten
Rhymes English Rhymes, which was so removed from Jack and
Jill and Humpty Dumpty, because I really really felt that

(15:24):
it was time that we sort of displaced those. And
it's been We're changing everything, names of cities and streets,
but we are still singing in even in tribal schools.
You know, Humpty Dumpty fell on a wall with no
understanding of its meaning or relevance. And I've spoken about
this before, but I'll tell you again. We were I

(15:46):
remember I was at a school just before it closed
for the summer holidays, and I was waiting for the
principal and I heard the children singing in the It
was a nursery school. In one of the classrooms, rain, Rain,
go away, Come again another day, Little Journey wants to play.
And for me, it was really sacrilegious, you know, because

(16:09):
here we're all thirsting for the monsoons to relieve us
from the summer heat and children across the nation if
they are singing rain, Rain, go away, it was like
something that ought not to be done. We should celebrate.
In London, it rains all the time, so little Johnny
wants to play, and therefore he's asking the rain to
go away. What are we doing, you know, asking the

(16:31):
rain to go away? It's our life and substance and substinancy.
We are an agricultural country. We can't be asking the
rains to go away. So I think the idea or
the germination of the idea for writing a new set
of nursery rhymes in English. See in the languages we

(16:55):
don't have a problem at all. In Marati they will
sing aary aery pausas rain tula pisa. And even in
whether it is in Telugu or Malayalam, we have songs
which celebrate what's around you. It's only in English. Because
we were handed down the rhymes from the colonial from
the British, we continued to sing them and they were

(17:17):
the ones who put together the education system. So this
was a part of that, you know. So I came back.
I remember I wrote ten rhymes and the three brothers
in a violin set it to really fabulous tunes all
set on Indian ragas. You know, all the tunes. See
the other thing with the nursery the English nursery rhymes

(17:38):
were that they were all of the same tune. A
Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars tune was across so many other
things ABCD Twinkle Twinkle, you know, everything is the same tune.
There are no varieties in tunes or I don't know
what in meat or rhythm that the children sing too. Anyway,

(18:03):
the three brothers in a Ireland just gave ten tunes
for these ten songs, and then we went to push
out to to sing these songs, you know. So from
those came about our first set of ten rhymes, which
we called us Curadi rhymes, which is now of course
we created these in twenty twenty. But those are across

(18:27):
just across all over Indiana pretty much, I mean not enough.
But wherever we go, which have a school we visit,
there are people singing Chai Tai coffee coffee, you know,
things like that. Where we celebrate trains where when you're
waiting in the train station, this is about you here
Chai chiant coffee coffee here, yes, yes, Taichiant. There's a

(18:49):
particular intonation, the way they say exactly exactly. So we
created ten rhymes first, and then we created another ten
and then another ten. So we've got thirty rhymes which
comprise currently rhymes today, which are completely contextual to children
in India. It talks about festivals, talks about sais and

(19:12):
the rivers of India, the trees of India, whatever. It's
completely contextual to India. And so when you sing these songs,
it's more related to our childhood. They're a child who's
growing up in London or the UK. But these became
extremely popular. You ask me, which is your one title
that has done really well for you, it would be

(19:35):
the Current Rhymes because they started even I know that
they've gifted it even when mothers are pregnant, when the
children start listening to it, I know. I remember when
we recorded a story with Rahul Dat it was called Chrickematics.
It was again an audiobook and his children were really
little at that time, and I remember when we went

(19:57):
to see him being gifted him the Courage Rhymes. It
was only the first volume then that had come out,
I think, And then the next time we went to
do the second story, he told us show. I don't
know what you've done in giving this. I'm so sick
confused because we get into the car and that's all

(20:19):
the children want to play again and again and again.
You know, really thinking of hiding away these cassettes. You
know you had a little at the time. Yeah, and
you know that repeat value.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
And what these books on my nephew Bulzar you were
speaking about, you know, right, it was audiobooks and with
the book, you know you have the picture book as well,
and you have the audio. If you listening all the time,
and I remember when someone came more, we would make
them listen to it.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right. This was also for us very very important in
the manner in which we gave the audiobook that while
it moved from the cassette to the CD, we still
could give the cassette and the CD and the cassette
and the sorry, the cassette and the book and the
CD and the book together as a package. When it

(21:07):
moved to USB, the pricing did not work out for
us at all. And when you put it somewhere else,
you know that is on a cloud or a stream
or something and asked him to exist it, then people
just want the audio and they don't want the books.
But our main idea behind the audiobook was also to

(21:28):
empower the child as a reader, you know, going by
my own example, on my son's example, I really believed
that listening and looking at the words and looking at
the pictures really was a catalyst for his auxiliaria.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
And I was reading that you're also a special educator
when you were in the US, and the other book
has there right.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, Actually the audiobook idea came from there because I
I specialized in uh teaching the visually impaired, and so
a lot of the knowledge that they consumed or they
wasiblen to them was through audio. This was whether it
was textbook work or whether it was just stories that

(22:08):
were told. So we would sit and create a lot
of audios for these children, you know, and the manner
in which they enjoyed it. And I would always think,
if only these audios were a little bit more embellished
during enriched, the listening experience would become so fantastic for them.
So the whole idea of the audiobook, to start current

(22:29):
details with an audiobook also stepped from my having my
experience not just of working with my son but also
with visually impaired children. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
And also you know, we say that children don't read
enough these days, right, but I think this whole multimedia
experience and a lot of parents have heard, you know,
authors also say that, you know, parents will buy children
burgers or things like that, but they won't buy them books.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
But they don't realize what you said, you know, that
peat value of a book. Yeah. Yeah. So my grandnephew, now,
my niece's son, he's all of five years old now,
and he we gave him the some of the audiobooks
when he was about two or three, and you should

(23:18):
see he's not reading. He was not reading then, but
you cannot even when the audio is not playing and
it's bedtime, and he asks me to read from the
same book. And sometimes when I change a sentence around,
he'll say, it's not like that, you're telling it wrong,
you know, because even if they don't read, they know.

(23:40):
And then even if you've not turned the page, he
knows that it's you have to turn the page, even
if he's not reading, you know, because he knows where
the next set of words come, so just by and
then of course it's completely with repeated listenings, just like
with anything, Just like we learn it anything, things get memorized,

(24:02):
you know. So he sits in front of a book
and you think he's reading so fast, he's listen to
it multiple times. What happens. The white product of it
is you can point to a letter word and he'll
be able to tell it. Not because he can read it.

(24:22):
I mean he does read it because of cyto vocabulary.
Because you're seeing that word repeatedly and you're hearing what
it sounds like. Don't really need to resort to phonics
or anything, you know. The richness of the psyto vocabulary
that happens as a result of this is immense. Although
I don't want to actually reduce this whole thing to

(24:45):
a reading pedagogy. Yeah, what I'm saying that, well, whether
you reduce it or you're uplifted to a reading pedagogy
depends on who's ever point of view. The primary what
do you call or the date is that it's fun.
Everything found the joy of it. Yeah, everything else is Incidentally,

(25:09):
you don't set out creating the pedagogy. You set out
by giving a child something that he completely enjoys, you know,
and from that other things arise. So we did start
another company, which is our saying company, but another vertical
which is into education called Current path Education Company. And

(25:31):
over the years, when we were ten years into Curry Details,
we discovered that a lot of schools were taking her
audio and using it in their language labs, you know,
and they were used or they were used to the
extent that they knew how to. So we decided, why
don't we create a really robust English language program with

(25:54):
these audiobooks where the telling of the story is in
very good okay, in very good language. We don't have
people who are telling the story who have Gothic accents.
It's a neutral accent. It's neither British nor American. It's
an Indian accent, but it's a neutral accent. And there

(26:16):
are songs which again can hook the children into getting
into the story. So we created a language learning pedagogy
called the Current Paths method of language learning, which which
takes on the approach of how you would learn a

(26:38):
mad da. You know, nobody taught us that this is
a subject or a predicate or a verb, or this
is a clause, and this is how each letter sounds,
you know, like the phonics approach to it. Nobody say
is you know that try to learn to say ama
whatever it is. So so we call it, we continue

(27:01):
to call it the mother tongue approach to language learning.
And we use the story in it, we use the
music in it, we use actions in it, we use
a listening in it as a major component for language learning.
You know, so what started as a completely joyful and

(27:24):
continues to be joyful even in a classroom where it's
not Look that is a textbook where you have to
pare it down, learn meanings of words, and everything is
understood in context. You know, my husband hits that vishnat
and when you speak to which he will always tell
you that it is so much easier for a child

(27:44):
growing up in Chenni, surrounded by family and asks to
learn Hindi to be just sent to live in Delhi
for a year. You know, what you can't accomplish in
a year in your classroom will not just be accomplish
in a year in Delhi, but much more than that,
because the environment supports it, because the ecosystem supports it.

(28:08):
So therefore he will always tell that no second language
was ever learned in a classroom. That's true.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's true because I was taught, you know, when my
father had a you know, transferable job, and I remember
we posted in Bangalo. I lived in Bangalo for ten
years as a child, posted in Nassik for a few months,
and I couldn't learn either language. So it's very difficult
in a classroom setting, you know. Yeah, it's very typical
classroom setting to take you. I mean I learned some

(28:38):
poems because you know, and also because you know, where
we were living there was not much of local language.
You spoke in the Ew English, you know. And recently
I tried learning Spanish and I'm still it's still a process.
But you know, the whole translation thing, you know, you're
trying to translate it, which is a problem, which is
that we don't encourage in our class rooms any instructions

(29:01):
to be translated into Tamal. Also if or which have
a language that the school is in.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Or with state it is in that This is how
this is how we are when we go abroad, right Like,
you stay there for some time and then you make
the connections. You hear the words, you learn the numbers
first you use, you learn small words, please, thank you
and all of that, and then you learn one, two, three,
and then you learn to string a couple of words

(29:27):
together and it just and before you know it, you're speaking.
You know, if not to communicate, you must exactly exactly, So,
which is why I always tell we we discovered immersive
long before it became the tending word. Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Also, you know, I want to talk to about vernacular
because you know, your books are translated, even your audio
and several languages.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Really we started initially with Tamay and Hindi, but we
didn't we didn't stay with that because as it is,
English audio was posing a challenge in terms of you know,
its format. With it became more difficult because the markets
are smaller and to make an audiobook is really expensive,

(30:16):
you know. So even the English books, you know how
the pricing are. If you are looking at Hindi books,
and if you're looking at English books, English books, for
god knows what, the price is always higher. Yeah, it's
not saying that the Hindi Hindi market is not an
affordable market. Of course, it is an affordable market. I
don't know why they price it lower, but this is

(30:38):
a general mindset in the publishing world itself that on
regional languages books are priced at much lower than English.
Has given some sort of artificial hierarchy in this. You
know that it is something to be aspired for, something
to reach.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Your parents want their children to pick up the language, right,
So is that the language?

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah? Correct, Yeah, but that doesn't really I mean, so
we did a few books in Common, and we did
it in Hindia as well, but that's not our mainstay.
We continue to publish in English. It's only the stories
of rural India, which we ourselves haven't translated into other languages.
But publishers from other languages have approached us asking if

(31:22):
they could license our content and translate it into their
own languages for their own market, to service their own market.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Okay, yeah, and your stories are very Indian so that
makes sense. Yeah yeah, so what about folk tales and
you know rural India. You've been, like you said, your
project drawing stories from rural India.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Correct, So this started as a collaboration between us and
people's archives of rural India. Signat is from Chenni, originally
a very well known journalist. Yeah yeah, Max says what
and Rura journalists agricultural journalists and I have gone to

(32:04):
listen to him speak in a couple of places and
really really good speaker, and I don't know, we just
became friends. And I remember when he launched this archive,
People's Archive of Rural India, which is an online archive portal.
He walked me through it, you know, and we've been
in touch ever since. And I remember once when he

(32:27):
sent me a link asking me to read a story,
and I went into the portals and I got distracted
with other stories. And the more I read, the more
I was fascinated by the kinds of happenings that take
place in rural India, everything from language to art and
craft and music, and even their livelihoods and occupations. This

(32:50):
was something me, as an adult, had not known of.
You know, where are our urban children ever going to
be introduced to her things like that unless they proactively
take interest in it. Otherwise it's only going to be
fantasy or wimpikins, Percy Jackson kind of books that are
going to capture their imagination. So I spoke to Sinat

(33:15):
and I said, we would like to turn these into
chapter books for children. The reports themselves are very small,
maybe just one hundred and fifty two hundred words, A
small report of somewhere in rural India. So but I
could see the possibility of it being converted to maybe
eighteen thousand word book. So Sinad said, you can speak

(33:37):
to the journalists themselves, and that's how this whole series
of books happened. You know, we have ten books now
in the series. They are all chapter books which are
written by the journalists who covered the original stories in
whether it was in people's that kid of rural India,
or whether it was for the Hindu or it was
for the Indian Express or whatever. We approach them. We

(34:00):
approach them for two reasons. One is that they would
know the story really well and if permissions had to
be sort if you are basing your story on a
real life, then we definitely have to take no objection
certificate from them, you know, or saying that they were
all right and they would be the best people to

(34:22):
do it, because even they would be familiar with the
journalists and as far as writing is concerned, we didn't
have to worry about it that they would write it.
We probably would just have to guide them a little
bit through this process of fictionalizing something, you know, parts
of it. So the books have been an absolutely enormous

(34:45):
success in many ways. One is it's such a huge
eye opener, you know, for us to get an insight
into rural in Deear, of the things that happen there,
of the people who lead their lives, of the hardship
they in Europe off they are true successes. You know,
here we've got urban children crying because they didn't get

(35:07):
the latest I don't know, xbox or whatever to fight
to play with. And here children are there dealing with
real life you know, life and death situations and trying
to overcome that and still finding so much joy in
their everyday existence, you know, uncomplaining, persevering, resilient. These were

(35:31):
incredible and I thought this was something that the middle
school or children need to read. I mean, I'm not
denying them their Percy Jackson, but peace along with that also.
So that's how these ten stories were born, all on
different topics, different subjects, migration, children with HIV AIDS, farming,

(35:56):
you know, climate, climate crisis, you know, communities unheard of,
like about the Cooley community in Bombay, the Fisherman community,
or a community in Mariastra that actually begs for a living.
There were so many, many different kinds of stories that

(36:16):
un continue to be you know, so this series I
see it as an infinite list of books but try
come be published in and schools have now started using
them as supplementary readers rather than you know, pick a
book like a I don't know Tale of these Cities.
We are learning the tale of two villages in India
and using that as an interdisciplinary study, not just as

(36:40):
an English supplementary reader, but to see what can we
learn on geography, or on environmental science, or climate change
or livelihood of farming or soil so geography, history, environmental science.
Everything is sort of intertwined with these stories. And they

(37:00):
are beautiful. I may say so myself.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, so how do you you know, like you know,
one would consider these are depressing themes for children or
too serious. So I know that there are a lot
of publishers, including Richard you know, peculiar books, so they
talk about serious themes for children, you know, And I
think the children, do you believe that you know they
can be exposed to it? We just try to feel
them too much? Or do you dress it up in

(37:27):
a way that you know it sounds easier for them
to digest?

Speaker 2 (37:31):
How does it? What do you think? Not really with
the party books, with this story series, rather, they're all
grim realities. Okay, a child caught in the flood environ
or something that is really what do you call, uh,
that real hardship that the child endows or undergoes. However,

(37:54):
what we've done with the story series is while the
reports themselves would probably have been left open ended, we
try to end it with a note of hope. You
know that from here on. One is not saying that
from here on everything is going to be hunky dory,
but perhaps there is still a light at the end
of the tunnel if people work together, or one you know,

(38:18):
takes up this cause, or there are people who are
worth the fight. Kind of a thing. So, Shuba, I
also wanted to ask you.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
You know, you said that you're working with a lot
of schools and organizations, et cetera. So how do you
how does this, you know, the work that you're doing
enter the mainstream where it's early childhood learning or you know,
even these rural stories.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
How do yeah, how can how do they enter the mainstream? Yeah?
Uh so see the best way, you know, what's happened
to the retail business itself in India or anyway for
that matter. In terms of bookstores, bookstors are closing down
and bookstores are less of bookstores and more of so
many other things. Of course, there are in a lot

(39:00):
of bookstore still there, but the numbers of retail stores
that used to exist when we started current details is
like to one tend to fit now I think, you know,
across the country. So and with the retail stores, of course,
your book has to be discovered in the light of
so many other books, so to reach people, the retail

(39:26):
store is not the way. I mean, you can be
there for visibility for your brand and for people who
come there to pick it up, but best is to
be on online platforms across and of course through schools.
Through schools is the best thing because finally, anyway, they
are your customers and consumers. You know, you want the

(39:48):
children to read. So whether the school takes your books
as part of their library sets, or the school takes
your books as supplementary readers to read the book and discuss,
that's the way to get it into mainstream. But the
very interesting thing about the books that currently path uses
you know for as a part of their currently the

(40:10):
methodology is that these books that we would think is
only for the urban affordable income family is now also
available to all these children through the program because currently
PATH not only works with the CBS and the state

(40:30):
board schools, they also work with a lot of government schools,
tribal welfare schools, schools that are supported by CSR programs.
You know, so a child who's probably in the I
don't know, remotest village in Odisha probably gets to see

(40:50):
a really lovely book which would you see, would see
in Bolognia on a bookshelf, or probably even in one
of the metros in a fancy bookstore. You get to
see in the hands of a child. I think that
is what makes it for us extremely satisfying and fulfilling,

(41:12):
that you are not really involved in only a self
indulgent exercise of creating beautiful books for your own love
of art and story and consumption, but you are actually
sending this out to this public at large to say

(41:35):
you also take out whatever it is that you can
take out from this book. We are not telling you
what is there to take out, But look at it
and see whether how you like it, how you enjoy it.
Look at the art, look at the pictures, Listen to
the story, yeah, wonderful show. Thanks so much.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Any message for parents, educators, you know, anybody like that
when it comes to books, really I would.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, I would only say to keep aside, if you can,
all these policies and things that dictate your choice books,
you know, because what will happen then is all publishers,
because everybody wants to be successful, We'll start creating books

(42:19):
that will adhere to some policy which has been put
in place by somebody or an existing government which could
change later. And just look at books for what they
are and your own personal response to it, and introduce
them to your children. You know. Don't come with preconceived

(42:40):
notions about anything about the way an apple has to
look even in a book, or even how a story
has to start somewhere and end somewhere, how only certain
kinds of characters need to be in the story. Of course,
one has to keep in mind about the age of
the child whom you're introducing the book to. You would

(43:01):
not want to introduce the child to bad language, of
seeing language, or maybe even violence when the child is
very young, because the child is not in a position
to handle it at all. But even in that age group,
there are so many other stereotypes that can be broken
that you don't have to Can we look at it
in another way? Can we see a story in another way,

(43:25):
from another point of view, to question it and always
to draw attentions to the art that so many illustrators
take plains takingly to do and the publishers take time
to publish that. Don't just flip through it hurriedly. Maybe
there's something there that your child can discover.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
Yeah, absolutely, the illustrations are sure art, really and with
regards to the story series, it's really I mean, I
so compel and urge.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
The teachers of all strata of schools, whether you're a
government school or whether you are an ib school. These
books are so needed for the children. It is needed
for the rural child because he or she needs to
see herself represented in the book. It is also needed

(44:17):
for the rural child because all rural India is not
the same. A child in rural India, rural Tamunade is
not the same as a child in rural behard, you know,
even the rural demographics change, the environment change, the ecosystems change.
So it is for the rural child, it is for
the urban child. For the most obvious reasons. Let us

(44:40):
be sensitive to the life of another child who lives
a life so completely different from you from yours, and
celebrate that difference and diversity and empathize, most importantly empathized.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
I think, yeah, absolutely, what's next, sho, there's so much
you're doing already.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah. So interestingly, I don't know, I'm probably it's probably
early to say it, but we are relaunching our audio
books because what we have now found a way that
should technology even develop even further, that we would have
a way to give our audience or give our customers

(45:25):
a way to consume the audio. So we are having
the books being sold with a QR code at the
back of the book, where if you scan the QR code,
it will take you to a place where you can
listen to the audio. Well, that's great. So the book
is part of the package. The book is part of
the so it is the book that you will see

(45:47):
to buy buy the book, and then you have to
buy the book to access the QR code in order
to get there.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
You also, you know, before we end, you know you're
going to talk about why not every publisher can do this,
you know audiobooks, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
And not every publisher came. See we got we got
lucky because we were all musicians. Okay, so but if
you have to create a story today and give it
that kind of audio that the current details of audio has,
it would cost you a couple of flaks. And in
the least, you know, because you have to hire a studio.

(46:24):
You have to get people like Nasio whoever to come
tell the stories, and then you have to create songs.
You have to get You've got Shankamad even announcing the
songs for us, you know, so we've got to have
the we've got somebody to come sing the song set
that you'd write the lyrics. There are so many components
to the audio itself, far more than the book. The

(46:45):
book has an author and an illustrator, while the audio
has so many. So many musicians are involved with it.
A music directors, composers there, and an arranger is there,
plus all these other instrumentalists and all that. And we
would do everything acoustic, so which is probably the reason
nobody else could do the same thing. And because the

(47:08):
family were musicians, the music was also unique in its genre.
It was not like the dumbed down versions of tunes
that you use for children that was simple and moronic. Yeah,
so it's really difficult. So even today, if I was

(47:30):
to take a story that I want to turn into
an audiobook, the next title in the audiobook series, and
I approach a musician for it, the cost is so
completely unviable unless I can draw from the skill and
the talent from my own family, you know, because clearly
they're not paying the market value.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Obviously that's true, you know, because it's the entire production,
as you said, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah, entire production.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Yeah, it's been it's been an interesting journey, lots of
ups and downs and plateaus. And but would we have
done anything else, No, I think we would still be
doing this. We wouldn't have made a whole lot of
money in our entire career, but that was never the goal.

(48:21):
That was never the goal. Yeah, because there are we
all have possessed enough skill and talent to take up
a job in an M and C which would pay
you for five blacks or ten lacks a month, you know,
and climb that corporate ladder. But that was never our intent. Yeah,

(48:42):
what was the goal? If I may ask, what was
the goal? The goal was to make reading a completely
pleasurable thing for the child to get to reading and
use Curadi as a storyteller to draw the child into
the world of books and stories. Fantastic, and I think
you're still on that journey. It's so nice.