It Takes a Village to Raise a Writer

Illustration by Ishaal Azeez It had been almost a year since the pandemic began. The classrooms at my tiny, alternative school, Al Qamar Academy in Chennai, India, had been transformed into flickering, gray boxes punctuating a dreary Zoom screen. Worse still, the school was headed for closure. The pandemic and slew of governmental regulations had made survival impossible. Just thinking about how a decade of my effort was simply headed down the drain made me numb. Al Qamar had always been different. In an environment where education was reduced to test-taking and rote memorization, the school stood out. We believed that children learned best through field trips, by meeting fascinating people, and reading a multitude of books, all the while talking, thinking and innovating. The previous three years had been life-changing for the small cohort of middle school students. They had participated in a unique experiential ecology program curated by educators from the Pitchandikulum Forest Consultants (PFC). For most urban Indian children, the sense of place is associated with built structures, crowds, dirt and noise, where humans, vehicles, cows and crows intermingle in concretised spaces. Urban degradation in the form of filthy rivers, toxic effluent and overflowing garbage cans are a part of the landscape for these children. Through the PFC program, Al Qamar children discovered the hidden spots of beautiful biodiversity in Chennai, where nature came into its own. Walking through the forest in the Adyar Poonga and seeing, as students described it, the “river shimmering in brilliant blue weaving across the land like embroidery on a dress” or the “bleary-eyed owls sleeping in a thousand bedroom house” had a powerful impact on the children. The “journey grew bigger, like raindrops to an ocean, like a ripple to waves, like whispers to echos,” until the pandemic struck and put an end to this romance. And now, the school was shutting down. What was to become of the effort the school and PFC educators had put in to shape the children? Was it going to quietly be buried as one more unfinished business? Al Qamar would frequently invite interesting speakers to the school. Our thesis was that children needed to meet real people who were making a difference in the world around them. Children had interacted with award winning, human rights activist Nityanand Jayaraman, who spoke time and again for the marginalized. They met Sridhar Lakshmanan who worked with tribal communities to harvest forest honey. Children visited with activists who were trying to raise awareness about garbage recycling and enjoyed sessions with folks from ComuniTREE who were creating pockets of urban forests. Were these experiences also going to be quietly buried as more unfinished business? What could be done to preserve these experiences so that they didn’t just remain as memories, fraying and dissipating over time? What could be done to give shape to the strong beliefs children held about their city and nature? How could these children share their voice with the world, before they went off to “regular” schools where the test-taking culture would take over and numb their brains? I got talking with Ramnath Chandrasekhar, a dear friend, film-maker and nature educator and shared my sense of despair. I don’t know whether he said it, or I said it, or we both said it, but the idea emerged, formed and was given a concrete shape—the children could write books about their nature experiences. Write and illustrate books for other children which would be powerful and lasting testimony to their memories. Teaching creative writing, for us at least, was a community effort, with different people and organizations providing experiences, mentorship, ideas and inspiration. This is a narrative of how a community came together to mentor children into becoming authors. It takes a village to raise a writer! We called our project the Earth Authors Program. It began with Ramnath setting the groundwork by giving children an authentic reason for writing. Ramnath told them about how stories are a powerful voice for the marginalized and dispossessed. Since rich prior experiences provide inspiration for stories, we conducted a visioning exercise to help children recollect memories of their field trips. Though the children were physically locked in their homes due to the pandemic, their minds and hearts flew back in time to the wetland at the Poonga, the forest in Guindy, the Muttukadu beach and the scrubland at Pallikaranai. They were sliding down the sand dune at Marakkanam again and squelching through damp sand in tide pools, they were back amidst the greenery, the silence and the peace. A gap in classes of about two weeks helped the memories play around in the children’s heads, so that creative ideas could be incubated. We then donned the mantle of metaphorical midwives to help children bring their stories to life. Some of the children were very clear about the theme of their books. Sarah was bothered by the vehicular pollution she had witnessed on her way up the Yelagiri mountains and decided to write about it. Mansoor had read an article about turtles dying on Chennai’s beaches and he just knew that was his story. Abdurrahman, ever the maverick, wanted to highlight how privileged twitterati thoughtlessly defend animal rights, often at the expense of the lives of the marginalized communities in India. He wanted to write about a man-eating tiger and a conservationist who had to hunt her down. Other children were more tentative as they explored ideas, ruminated and let their minds wander. Would their story be about a kitten? A mango tree and a girl? Deep discussions, reflections, and appreciative inquiry helped us guide the children while being mindful about not taking over the reins from them. It takes a village to raise a writer!  Each child’s creative journey was unique and required different mentoring approaches. Fifth-grader, Athiya, who wrote the whimsical book “How Haju Weaved the World,” explained how she came up with ideas:

In my usual type of way, I sit in a calm and quiet place and imagine things. I would be dreaming, of course and from there I get an idea. And if I don’t get an idea, I just go surfing into books and bump into my favorite. Sometimes when I read that book, I get a thousand ideas.

In contrast, pragmatic seventh-grader, Khadijah, trawled her memories of the experiential ecology program to put together the “W’s & H” (where, who, what, when, and how) of her book. Her story, “The Lapwing’s Tale,” is a first person account of a migratory bird visiting Chennai’s Pallikarnai Marsh. Eighth-grader Anam kept us on our toes. Browsing through the Google classroom one day, I saw a private comment from her:

I like this. Writing. Here. My parents are divorced so I don’t talk much. My father remarried. My mother didn’t, but she is busy.

I was speechless. I knew her family. Well. Very well. I had no idea that her parents had gotten divorced. Right in the middle of the pandemic. Was this child sharing her trauma with me in a Google classroom? Heck! I was a mentor. Not a shrink! Honestly, I didn’t know how to react. And then I read on. Slowly, a suspicion grew. Quickly I messaged her, “Anam, what is this all about? Is this comment the story you are writing?” Turns out, it was. The beginning of what was eventually a hard-hitting story about a teen’s mental health issues and social media addiction. But it took me idly surfing through our Google Classroom to unearth it. As the stories started taking shape, we held review sessions on mechanics of creative writing. Stuff the children had learned, but forgotten during the pandemic. How to write evocative descriptions, build intriguing characters, check for plot holes and call the COPS. Yup, Call the COPS: Capitalization, Order, Punctuation and Spelling, the mind-numbing, but essential work which is often forgotten by many children. This phase of the writing process was fraught with self-doubt, despair and irritation. Everything was challenging now. Writing. Revising. Illustrating. My colleague Naqeeb spent hours working with the children untangling their ideas, critiquing the flow, pushing them to think of alternative endings. As project deadlines approached, we were repeatedly roused from sleep by a beeping phone: A Whatsapp message from a distraught author whom we had to soothe and calm. A phone call in the midst of cooking lunch. Another author steeped in self-doubt. Sometimes we had to be the proverbial dog with the bone. Not give up. Not allow the kids to give up. The greatest challenge in the project was illustrating the books. Illustrating came easy to some, like Ishaal, who is probably going to blow the world away with her artwork someday. But for others it was an uphill battle. Children started off with deeply held beliefs that, while they could write a book, they couldn’t illustrate to save their lives. Slow encouragement, gentle pushing and a firm, unwavering stance left kids with no choice but to try their hands at sketching. Kids, being the smart kids they were, resorted to shortcuts like making a single outline and replicating it digitally. They traced artwork from elsewhere and modified it with their own elements. At the end of the day, it was tremendous hard work with drafts, more drafts and loads of revisions. Nothing, nothing was okay till it was perfect. The process of illustration became an inward journey for the children to find in themselves a strength and persistence they didn’t know existed. It takes a village to raise a writer!  To break the monotony of writing and to reinforce the relevance of their authoring journey, we invited speakers. Activist and author, Rohit Kumar lifted spirits when he told them about his book-writing process and how the quote “A drop of ink makes a million think” inspired him. This one quotation became a rallying cry for the children who held onto it each time they wanted to give up. Aishwarya Soni, Ashvini Menon and Devangana Dash held classes on illustrating, book design and cover pages. The most animated session was when librarians from Bookworm in Goa talked about how they were instilling a love for reading in their community. It was a wild session. The little authors, die-hard bookworms due to Al Qamar’s reading program, typed in a lengthy list of favorite books into the Zoom chatbox. The librarians were thrilled—they got almost a hundred book recommendations for their library. It takes a village to raise a writer!  Stories we write should reflect who we are. One doesn’t realize the power of cultural imperialism and how it delegitimizes the identity of the not-so-white as authors, until one reads stories about blonde, blue-eyed princesses penned by dusky, dark-haired, black-eyed Indian girls. Middle-class Indian school kids grow up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton, Michael Morpurgo, RL Stine, Jeff Kinney and other assorted Western writers. Their stories are frequently about characters named Jane or Harry, living in cold, western cities, using approximated “American” slang that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, eating food very different from the crispy dosa or pepper chicken. In the process, the little writers erase their own lived reality and replace it with what they believe constitutes a legitimate story. Colonization is not only about politics and economies. It shapes the very being of a third world child. Deconstructing the deep mental conditioning is hard, painful work for mentors. It requires convincing the children that their lives and experiences should shape their author’s voice. It requires answers to questions like Maryam’s, “Why would a kid in the USA want to read a book about an Indian child?” We started the process with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” which emphasizes the importance of writing as who we are—people of the global south—and reflecting our reality, because no one else can/will authentically do it for us. We insisted that children use local names for characters, local places as settings and local issues for plots. Localization, localization, localization became the byword. Slowly “Peter” and “Tom” gave way to “Haju” and “Amira.” The story of the wolves transformed into a lapwing’s tale. Pristine rivers in cold mountainous regions were replaced by the Adyar River wending its way through Mambalam. Tamil found its way into the dialogues. The eventual books are a result of how the children peeled away layers of subconscious colonization to discover and reveal their deeply Indian selves. And then we were witnesses. Witnesses to the blows that life deals to children. And witnesses to how they respond. One of the hardest jobs as teachers. Shahana was a student who was really on the ball. She was diligent, took every bit of feedback, and turned in impeccable work right on time. The kind of kid every teacher dreams about. Suddenly she missed a class. And a deadline. It was so unlike her that I started wondering what was going on. I was irritated too, mentally ranting about the thoughtlessness of today’s youth. Then I received a Whatsapp message from her mother:

We all tested positive for COVID. Make duas [prayers].

The Delta wave was just starting up in India. The wave that eventually took over four million lives. Including Shahana’s dad’s. Shahana went incommunicado. I informed the colleagues and we quietly shelved her book. And then, a week after the tragedy, we received a message:

“Hello all of you”

“Hi Shahana”

“I’d like to start working on my book again. Pls tell me where I can start. I took a long break so I am all over the place.”

“Sure Shahana”

“Also, I’d like to change my dedication page”

“Sure. Let us know what needs to be done.”

“Okay thank you. I’d like to dedicate my book to my dad. This will be a good gift for him”

Shahana taught us a lesson that day. One we won’t forget. Every time, I am down, out, and ready to give up, her words come back and bring me back to my feet. If she could come back to writing her book, almost immediately after the irreplaceable loss of her dad, what possible justification do I have for not persisting? The entire project took over eight months, four months over what we had originally estimated. Each of the resulting 14 books is a unique piece of work carefully crafted by the children. Some books are written in first person while others share multiple points of view. Some are targeted at very young children while others are for a teen audience. One book is about a sea-eagle displaced by urbanization, while another narrates the experience of a butterfly content to live in a restored wetland. We meet Ayrah, the last crow’s egg in the world in dystopian “Eggs-pedition,” and Pointy Marsh the cheeky, young crocodile, who is a mirror image of the author himself. The books were professionally designed. A book launch was held in Chennai, where the authors were interviewed by Happynesswalas, Vani and Avis. The event was live-streamed and reported in newspapers. The books have found their way into homes and libraries in India, Malaysia, UAE & the USA. Finally, Maryam’s dream—“the thought of my book read from all around the world and my own written text sitting on my palm in it’s very bookly form”—was realized. Truly it takes a village to raise a writer.   Note: the books can be read online here.